“Yes,” he answers slowly, curious to see where my train of thought is going. “Elias never found out, but my father had been underbidding him for years. Taking his clients and spreading rumors and planting evidence for the FBI to find.”
“And then you killed him.”
There is no regret on Dante’s face. Nothing. Not that I would judge him for that. Dante’s father was a horrible man.
“Did Seamus McDonough want the merger?”
“It was his idea.”
“I sense a but coming…”
Dante clicks his tongue and lets out a breath. “But when we arrived in Boston to negotiate with him, he had no clue what we were talking about. Told my father he would never align himself with anyone whose shipment involved human cargo.”
“Is that how the war started?”
He gives me a grim nod.
The Italian/Irish war is carved into Seattle’s history as the bloodiest gang war on the west coast. There were so many lives lost on both sides as hails of gunfire littered the streets day after day. Nowhere was safe. The police were at a loss and gang violence rose until the day Dante put an end to it.
By putting a bullet through his father’s skull.
“Here’s the thing.” Dante rolls his shoulders back to ease the tension that is no doubt gathering there. “The initial conversation took place here in Seattle. In person.”
“Wait…” I blink rapidly several times, trying to process what he just tells me. “But you say…”
“That’s why my father was so upset,” Dante tells me with a small shake of his head. “He had a face-to-face encounter with him. Sat down and had coffee. Fucked a few whores.”
Well, I could have lived without that information.
Wait.
“No, it couldn’t have been him.”
“Trust me, Ava,” he assures me. “It was. I saw him myself several times over the two days he was here in June 1996.”
“You don’t understand,” I argue as I comb through my phone. One of the crime scene pictures Libby had of my mother’s trashed dorm room held a photo. It hadn’t meant anything before, but now that I am putting dates together, it couldn’t have been him.
“What were the exact dates?” I ask frantically as I pull up the photo.
“June 15th was the first day he arrived. He left two days later.” He frowns. “Why is that important?”
“Because—” I turn the phone around to show him the photo. “This is my mother’s graduation photo taken with my grandmother and grandfather.” I zoom the phone in so he can see the date on the bottom of the picture.
“It’s dated June 15th, 1996.”
Dante checks and rechecks, as if what he is seeing might disappear if he keeps looking away and back again. “That’s impossible,” he whispers. “If that’s him… who the fuck met with my father all those years ago?”
“That’s what I need you to find out.”
two
“Jesus,” Ivan mutters over the comm unit. “I forgot how boring he is. Kirill has barely left the house most of the week. How is he running the city like this?”
Two fucking weeks. That is how long it takes to spread the seed of doubt through Kirill’s men and put together all the information we can on him. I feel like a damn private investigator. Then again, this is what my company does.
I just don’t.
Sitting in a car waiting for hours for someone to make a move or not is not my idea of a good time. That is why I hire others to do it for me. I am a man of action. Not a spy.