Chapter 9
Marco did not defend himself immediately.
That surprised me.
For the first time since the cafe erupted, he looked less like an angry Bellini capo and more like a man who had spent half his life running from one night.
“I was twenty-two.”
Lucia rolled her eyes.
“Here comes the excuse.”
Marco turned on her.
“You told me we were moving her.”
“We were.”
“To where?”
Lucia did not answer.
Marco looked at Claire.
“I drove Rachel out of the city.”
Claire’s face remained wet but still.
“Was she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Was she afraid?”
Marco closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
That answer hurt him.
Good.
Claire deserved honesty, not comfort.
He told us Lucia ordered him to take Rachel to an abandoned Bellini hunting house. Two men were already waiting.
Marco believed Rachel would remain there until Lucia recovered the second token set.
“What happened?”
“I left.”
Claire laughed bitterly.
“You always leave right before the terrible part?”
Marco flinched.
She continued.
“My mother gets threatened, you’re young. She’s kidnapped, you’re driving. She disappears, suddenly you don’t know.”
Lucia smiled.
“Rachel’s daughter has teeth.”
Claire looked at her.
Lucia added, “Shame she inherited none of her mother’s sense.”
Sofia stood.
“You’re mean.”
Lucia stared at her.
I almost smiled.
Six years old.
Perfectly accurate.
Lucia turned to me.
“You let children interrupt adults now?”
“When adults are worse behaved.”
That silenced her.
Marco continued.
Three days after he left Rachel at the hunting house, Lucia told him Rachel escaped.
He believed it because he wanted to.
Twenty-four years later, Claire’s face had forced the lie back into the room.
Rafe studied the surveillance photograph again.
“Boss.”
He enlarged one frame from the alley attack.
One of the gunmen wore a black-and-silver cufflink.
Thomas recognized it.
“Cross family.”
I looked at the wooden token.
Cross.
One of Lucia’s original seven.
The Cross family had not disappeared from this story.
They had been waiting.
Rafe lowered the tablet.
“Someone from the old faction learned Claire was here.”
I looked at Lucia.
“Who told them?”
She smiled.
For the first time all night, she looked confident again.
“Ask Marco.”
Marco stared at her.
Then me.
“I didn’t.”
“Then who?”
His expression changed.
“Rachel.”
Claire stopped breathing.
May you like
Lucia smiled wider.
And with one cruel word, she brought the dead woman back into the room again.
