Page 90 of Savage Proposal

“Forty-five casualties at the moment,” Damian murmured. He still sounded groggy from me shaking him awake to come with me, and for the first time in all the years that we’d known each other, he looked truly unkempt. I think the only reason he had on actual clothes was that he knew we’d see other people here. “The first responders told me they expected it to be more with the amount of damage.”

“Fuck.” Rebuilding was going to be a goddamn nightmare.“We’ll need to start calling all of the investors,” I said, and Damian nodded, already making a note in his phone.

“Mr. Vitali?” An NYPD detective came over to us; his face was set into a rock-hard expression. “Do you have time to answer some questions for us?”

The detective wasn’t someone that I was familiar with, which would likely prove to be a pain in my ass in the long run. He looked young, so that meant he was probably looking to make a name for himself by taking on the big, bad Cosa Nostra.

Detectives like that rarely lived long enough to get on my payroll. The smart ones who were assigned to my territory knew that getting on my good side kept them safe.

“Sure,” I said. “Although there isn’t much that I can tell you, Detective?—?”

“Heistand,” the detective grunted. “Why don’t you start by telling me what this property…was?”

Scemo. “Thiswasa rental property that I had inherited from my father after he passed,” I said, and legally speaking, that wasn’t a lie. When they pulled any of the public records about what was here, they would find documents that proved that I was a landlord. “I’ve had a storage company renting the space from me for a number of years.”

Detective Heistand raised an eyebrow. “Astoragecompany was using the space?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir, and their management company takes care of any maintenance issues, so I barely ever deal with them. I guess there really is no such thing as passive income, is there?”

Heistand didn’t look impressed in the slightest. “Your company runs a hotel, yes? How does a hotelier go from that to opening a storage facility?”

Sometimes, I loved how predictable men like this were. He wanted to see if he could maneuver me into confessing something. “Like I said, I rented the property. My father had ahead for real estate investments, and my family owns a few such places all over the city. This particular building has been rented to the same company for more than ten years, but I don’t have anything to do with it besides housing it.”

“So, you have no explanation as to why there were sixty plus people in this building when it was blown up?”

I put on a show of looking confused. “Sixty people?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What are you saying, Detective? That my renters weren’t using the place for storage?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Mr. Vitali.” The detective puffed up, as if he were trying to look bigger and more domineering. “So, is there anything you want to add before we start digging into you?”

I had to fight off a snort. Beside me, Damian actually did laugh. I elbowed him in the chest. “Ignore him, Detective,” I said. “This is all very overwhelming for the both of us.”

Heistand was staring at Damian now. “I’m sorry,” the detective said, not sounding apologetic at all. “What’s your name again?”

“Damian Gallo,” he said with a little bob of his head. “I’m Mr. Vitali’s executive assistant.” He gestured toward the ruins of my casino. “I’m the one who created and filed all of the rental paperwork. I’d be happy to email it to you in the morning.”

Detective Heistand exhaled through his nose as he handed Damian a business card. “Do that,” he said.

“Heistand!” Another man in a suit, older and looking far more official, came running over. “What did I tell you about harassing Do-uh-Mr. Vitali?”

“I was just getting some routine information,” the detective insisted.

“Save it for the Feds,” the man said. “A bomb went off here. That’s federal.”

“So, we’re here to babysit the scene?” He sounded like he was pouting, and I bit the inside of my cheek to stay quiet.

“Exactly. Keep the civilians away so they don’t contaminate any evidence before the Feds get here. Then it’s their case, and they can do whatever they want.” He looked at me. “Sorry about all of this, Mr. Vitali.”

“No problem, Jim,” I said. “Is Special Agent Tucker coming in for the Bureau?”

He nodded. “They know to send her.”

“Good man.”

I watched the two men walk away under the guise that they had better things to look at than me. As soon as they were out of earshot, I turned to Damian. “Did you get anything from the security system? Did the back-up send?”

Thank God for foresight. My father had always been gun-shy around technology, so when I took over the casino, I revamped the whole security system so that it could be checked through an app on my phone, and a special feature of that app was that it kept a back-up of a month’s worth of security footage. After a month, it would delete and start saving again.

Obviously, the NYPD wasn’t aware of these back-ups.

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