Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
When I hang up, I dial Uncle Nico.
“What’s going on, Angelo?” he asks. “Toma just told me Lieutenant Lavigne paid your wife a visit.” A small hesitation follows before he adds in a sly tone, “I hope she didn’t betray you.”
The glee in his voice rubs me up the wrong way. “Is Toma always reporting back to you?”
He coughs. “Of course not. We happened to talk this morning.”
“Another one of your convenient coincidences,” I muse.
“We talked about the wedding,” he says, sounding wounded. “Are you accusing me of something?”
Not yet. “Any word from Marziale?”
“I think he got your message. There’s been no more suspicious activity at the warehouses or the docks.”
“Keep tabs on him. Let me know if anything changes.”
“You didn’t answer my question about the lieutenant.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Toma said your men intercepted him.”
“Did they?” My reply is curt. “He never set foot on my property.”
“Ah.”
Did I detect the slightest hint of disappointment in that expression of understanding?
“What about Sabella?” he asks.
My voice turns glacial. “What about her?” Like I told him, my wife is none of his fucking business.
“Did she go through with it?”
“With what?” I ask, gritting my teeth.
“With the deal. Did she give him information? Toma said they spoke outside.”
Toma isn’t privy to the fact that I used a drone. Since Toma’s slip-up in mentioning that my niece showed up at the new house, I’m sharing information with my cousins on a need-to-know basis.
“The matter doesn’t concern you,” I say.
“We have a right to know, Angelo.”
My uncle’s persistent curiosity is getting on my nerves. “Discussing my wife is off-limits. I thought I made myself clear.”
“If you don’t want to tell me, I can only assume things went south. Did you interrogate Lavigne? Is that how you know what went down?”
“Why are you so interested in my wife’s reply?”
“Aren’t we part of the business?”
“Exactly,” I bite out. “You’re a part of the business. I’m at the head of it. Do you need a reminder?”
“Don’t be so touchy, nephew. I have our best interests at heart.” He pauses before adding with an air of gravity, “If she betrayed you, you know what must be done. Don’t think with your dick, son. Use your head like your father taught you.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do exactly as my father taught me.”
“Good.” Uncertainty rides on his words. “Do you need help with cleanup?”
He’s fishing for information on what I did with Lavigne. I don’t take the bait. “I’ll let you know if I do.”
“This better not lead back to you.”
Yeah. People are going to wonder where the lieutenant is, but there’s no proof he arrived at his destination. There’s no evidence that he’s been on my property. My men got rid of his rented car. It’s lying at the bottom of a cliff a good few hundred meters under the sea.
“He’s not a common criminal or an insignificant figure,” Uncle Nico continues. “He’s a high-ranking police official.”
“Thanks for pointing that out.” My tone is dry. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Be serious, Angelo. This is not an issue to joke about.”
“I can guarantee you I never joke where my wife is concerned.”
He sighs. “Just keep me posted. I want what’s best for you.”
That remains to be seen.
He’s uttering a meaningless warning about being careful when another call comes in. It’s from my contact at forensics.
I end the first call and accept the second. “What did you find out?”
“A lot actually, thanks to the fact that we didn’t have to dig deep. It went a lot quicker than I expected. Although, it was a motherfucker to get the remains through that narrow cave opening and to carry those bags out of the gorge on foot.”
“Spare me the dramatics. Just give me the facts.”
“And here I was hoping for a sympathetic ear. I still have blisters on my feet. The gash in my hip from squeezing through the gap in that rock needed stitches.”
“You owe me. Suck it up.”
“So cruel,” he says with dramatic humor before he finally turns serious. “Right. You’ve got yourself an interesting case. I have dental record matches. The male was Lisandru Albertini, forty-two years old. The female was his wife, Maria Albertini. Thirty-eight.”
My cousin and her husband.
“Both were shot in the back of the head, execution style. There were no signs of disintegrated clothes or threads of fabric. They were buried naked. The chemical analysis shows they’ve been dead for approximately two months. I’ll have to do more tests to nail the exact date of their deaths.”
Fuck. It’s what I expected, but for the sake of the kids, I hoped it would be different. “What about the shotgun I gave you? Is that the gun that was used?”
“I was coming to that,” he says with mild irritation. “Be quiet and try not to interrupt. According to the firing-pin matching and breech-face markings, the shell casings we found on the site were fired from that shotgun. They were shot at close range. No other injuries. No signs of struggling. Classic case of homicide.”