“Didn’t you put a tracker on him?” Seb covers the phone mic to question me about it.
I nod. After he slipped away, I fucking did. I put two. That’s how I knew he was in that alley. “He left his jacket here.” I point at the fringed one on the sofa. “And his handbag.” Which is in the bedroom. Did he forget them? He was in a rush. Maybe…is he planning to come back? No, the note is clear, he has no intention of returning. What would be the point?
“So, Art opened the door, telling Carlo that his dog had disappeared. Carlo came inside to help him look for it when Art hit him in the head with a skillet and ran away. Is that right?” Marco recaps the most idiotic escape. “What about Vince? Ryan? Wasn’t he in the parking lot? And Aldo?”
“Vince was helping me at the warehouse with Jeff, Ryan was on the phone with Seb, and Aldo was gone to buy dinner for him.”
“Art wrote about the house I was taken to when I was kidnapped.” Fly suddenly lifts the note in his hand.
“We thought it was used for human trafficking and prostitution. I do remember seeing blood in some of the rooms,” I hear Marco saying.
Seb hangs up his phone. “Filippo accompanied Detective Casper there. After he got ananonymoustip. They found over twenty bodies buried in the backyard. The most recent ones were of young men killed the same way Doppi’s son was.”
Fuuuuuuck! More heinous acts exposing Mario’s true rotten nature. When is he going to pay for them? I leave the cigar, grabtwo throwing knives I hid in one of the drawers in the kitchen, and throw them at the wall across the room.
I hear Fly’s surprised scream and then Marco’s cursing. “It’s okay,amore mio. That’s Luca’s way of…venting.”
“I should have killed that twisted, depraved psycho motherfucker years ago,” I snarl. Uncontrollable fury floods my body, almost choking me. If only Art had told me Mario was in Boston. Did he hate me that much for kidnapping him and forcing him to stay?
“So, he placed the body of Coretti’s right-hand’s son in our turf to start a war between Coretti and us,” Marco muses.
Mario was taught well how to shift blame and pin sins on others. Just like Jack Enzino did with my father. I grab the knives pierced in the wall, yanking hard on the handles.
“He did it to stop the wedding. The Enzino man you interrogated said Mario was against it. He doesn’t want Art to get married,” Seb declares, brushing his finger over his lip.
“Why is he so against it? Jealousy?” Fly asks.
“Father and son don’t see eye to eye,” Seb explains.
“They hate each other’s guts,” Marco feels the need to clarify further.
“I have more news to share.” Seb’s monotone voice and the tilts of his head as he examines me make me growl.
“Just say it.” My grip on one of the knives’ handles tightens.
He walks to me as he talks. “Mario was the one entering Art’s apartment, ransacking it and punching his closet door. The landlord was finally able to get the CCTV footage from thesecurity company. Mario avoided the camera near the back door and on the apartment floor, but he didn’t know about the new ones that were installed on top of each apartment front door just a few weeks ago.”
I tense, hating every word that came out of his mouth and with them all the possible reasons popping inside my head as to why Mario forced his way into Art’s apartment. Seb grabs my shoulder and gives it a couple of pats. His hand feels heavy. My muscles there relax a little, and I let out a long sigh. He rarely touches people; he must think I’m a ticking bomb—with a raging beast waiting to come out.
“That guy gives me the creeps.” Fly tucks himself into his fiancé’s arms. “When I saw him the first time, he was smiling at me while holding a knife with Art’s blood on it. I could see the enjoyment in his reptile eyes. And the way he talked and stared at Art? It was the most disturbing brotherly behavior I’ve ever seen.” He visibly shudders. Looking repulsed by the memories.
“So, that means that Mario was hiding in New York all this time.” Marco goes back to the previous conversation, sending me a grave look.
“No,” I growl, remembering once again how Art didn’t tell me about his brother hiding in Boston.
“On and off. We can create a timeline of his appearances. Doppi’s murder happened two to three weeks ago, the apartment’s break-in around ten days, and the shooting?—”
“Mario is responsible for the shooting too?” I bark, glaring at Seb while tossing the knife. It hits the same exact spot in the wall from before. That motherfucking piece of scum almost killed me. If Art hadn’t pulled me down, I would be dead. I stroke my chest,feeling it throbbing inside. How ridiculous is it that he yanked on my chest hair? God, he’s so infuriating.
“Enzino was in Miami when the shooting happened,” Seb tells us.
“He could have made one of his men do the dirty work,” Fly suggests.
“The rifle used in the shooting was found along with the corpses in the backyard of the house. The bullets match.”
An overpowering urge to grab my Enzino killer blade and stab it in that fucker’s face overtakes me. It feels so strong it’s tearing at my insides. Did Art know his brother was behind the shooting? How about the break-in? What kind of relationship do they have? Did he go back to his abusers? I have so many fucking questions, and Art isn’t here to answer them. A deep-rooted need to go find him and bring him back here makes me growl. It comes from deep inside, from my slithering guts, from my scarred soul, still bursting with fury.
Seb’s placating hand is once again on my shoulder. I glare at it, but he doesn’t move it.