Page 71 of Savage Claim

The bedroom door was kicked open, and Isabella screamed again, clutching the bedsheets to her chest in an effort not to be naked in front of whatever was coming.

A man in full SWAT regalia come storming into the room. He was carrying a rifle with a scope on it. “Lorenzo Vitali,” he boomed, “you are under arrest for felony arson. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to remain silent…”

He droned on as another SWAT member approached me. His gun was holstered, but not strapped, and he held a pair of handcuffs in his hands. Isabella was frantic, begging them to leave me alone. “Dolcezza.”

She fell silent and watched, eyes wide and sad, as they clapped the handcuffs onto my wrists. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, but the SWAT with the rifle pointed it her way before she could move to get off the bed. She froze with a whimper. “Don’t point your gun at my wife,” I growled.

“Shut up, Vitali.” But the gun moved away from her, aiming at me instead. That was fine. I could handle that.

As they led me out of the bedroom, I could hear Isabella scrambling after us. Elio was standing in front of Amalia in the hall. Damian had been stopped on his way to the office. “Chiama il mio avvocato,” I called to him.

“I’m on it. Don’t worry.”

I wasn’t until I saw the absolute terror on Isabella’s face. The Feds could put on a horror show all they liked, but if something happened to her or the baby because she was stressed out, I would make them all pay.

CHAPTER 45

Lorenzo

Iwondered if the person who designed interrogation rooms got some kind of royalty check because they were all exactly the same. Various shades of gray, uncomfortable chairs, conference table. Cameras in the corner that may or may not be on, depending on what the agents wanted recorded. I was sitting in my pajama pants, shirtless, because they wouldn’t give me time to get dressed before I was dragged out of my home.

A scowling Federal investigator, Special Agent Matthews, was sitting in front of me: they’d stopped trying to ask me questions when I told them that I was waiting for my lawyer, but they didn’t leave me alone either. Maybe they thought if they glared enough, I would say something.

Our staring contest was broken when the door opened, and an agent showed in my attorney, Elias Greco. His family wasn’t a part of the Cosa Nostra, but Elias’s law office took care of all of the families, legally speaking. He was carrying a bag.

“I would like a few minutes with my client,” Elias barked.

“What’s in there?” the investigator across from me asked.

Elias glared. “A shirt.”

The investigator’s glare didn’t fade, but I could see the color draining from his face. He stood and stomped out of the room, distinctly trying not to look like he was running away with his tail between his legs. “What have you said?” my attorney asked as the door shut. He handed me the bag, and I took out the dark tee shirt. It was new. I yanked off the tags and slipped it over my head, ignoring the stale department-store smell as best I could.

“I’m not a moron.”

A smile cracked through his serious visage. “You know I have to ask.”

“I know.” It had been drilled in my head since I was a kid, learning to take over for my father, to never talk to police. We had our moles, here and there, but I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Miriam since I stepped foot in the building. “When am I getting out of here?”

“Two or three hours,” he said. “I’ll work as fast as I can, but you need to leash your anger. You know they’ll say anything to keep you here.”

I knew that too. Unless they had Alfie stashed somewhere, I knew that they didn’t have anything physical to tie me to what happened at Efram’s loft. The only thing they had was a coincidence and a hunch.

Elias and I sat together for another thirty minutes before the same scowling investigator came back; this time accompanied with a woman smiling far too much for a Federal agent. “Hello, Mr. Vitali. I’m Special Agent Lewis. How are you doing today?”

“We can skip the pleasantries,” Elias said.

The smile dropped from her face, and I understood why they sent her. “Okay,” she agreed. Her voice was less bright now. “Your client is being charged with arson for the fire that engulfed half of the Bronx. The origin of that fire was tracked to a bomb set off in a loft, where we found two bodies. Neither of whom died due to fire-related injuries. It was the same type of bomb that was used to blow up Mr. Vitali’s property weeks before.” She slapped a folder dramatically on the table in front of us, and I had to fight not to make a sound of derision.

Someone must like to watch cop procedurals.

Elias shifted through the contents of the folder with disinterest. “And this proves what, exactly?” he asked, voice neutral. “That the same person who blew up my client’s building and killed sixty people also set this fire?”

“You don’t find it odd that a ‘storage’ building had sixty people in it at the time it blew up?”

My attorney stared at the investigators with a look of pure disdain. “I believe there is a rental agreement on file between Mr. Vitali and his tenant. How the tenant chose to use the space has nothing to do with Mr. Vitali. If anything, that makes him even more of a victim because the space was permitted as storage. He had no way of knowing that his tenant, who paid regular rent and never gave him any issues, had violated their agreement.”

I watched Agent Matthews’s jaw clench. “You really expect us to believe that?”

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