Page 10 of The Italian Reckoning
“Ah!” I lift my hand and mock bow. “I’m not a criminal.”
“Bullshit.”
“Such foul language from the law. I ought to write in a complaint.”
To my delight, Sarah looks furious and her lips part with something surely insulting on the tip of her tongue. She looks rather gorgeous all fired up with color flushing her cheeks and her eyes wide. The insult doesn’t come, much to my disappointment.
“I don’t want to see you here again,” Sarah orders, adjusting her glasses. “Stay away from me. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from the case too. Understand?”
She spins around and strides up to the door while I back away slowly down the path, admiring the tight, gorgeous ass that’s hidden underneath her pants yet highlighted with each of her steps.
Oh, I understand, all right. If she’s working this case, Sarah and I are going to be seeing alotmore of each other.
How fun.
4
SARAH
Today is my birthday.
And celebrating couldn’t be further from my mind.
This case is dead before it’s even started. Stress builds behind my eyes, creating a tension headache that pulls across my forehead like a rubber band. With a soft groan, my head drops into the crook of my elbow while my keyboard protests slightly at being shoved to the side.
Gio refused to talk to me last week, most likely because I’m a cop, but I can’t shake the feeling that Rocky Barati had something to do with it. Seeing him come out of Gio’s house was a surprise given that the big families rarely have anything to do with what happens in the smaller families. Isn’t that how Noah was able to terrorize the Irish for so long back when Brenden Gifford was murdered?
But for whatever reason, Rocky is talking to Gio and Gio isn’t talking to me—other than to tell me that he doesn’t trust cops and we will do more harm than good. Ironic since it’s an open secret that the Italian Mafia have most of the cops in this precinct in their back pocket. Shouldn’t they be doing everything they can to help find Belle’s killer?
Maybe the pay isn’t enough.
Underneath the addition of Rocky and Gio, though, lies my real problem. I can’t shake how similar this case is to any involving The Painter. My captain is right. My guilt over that case is running rampant and I can’t afford to let it mess up Belle’s case. One wrong mistake and her killer goes free.
I’ve got no right to call myself a cop if that happens again.
When Gio proved to be a dead end, I tried to talk to Belle’s friends. A lot of them from her college class were open but told me things I already knew. She was a smart kid, she liked to party and was graduating at the top of her class. No boyfriend or girlfriend to speak of, but I tracked down her ex. He’s out of state so I left a voicemail asking him to call me as soon as he returns to New York.
And the only friend who was with her that night isunavailable.
AKA she’s the daughter of someone who works for Matteo Barati and is off-limits.
I bet she’ll talk to Rocky, though, and he’ll get to learn everything that’s being kept from me, and then he’ll hold it over me with that stupid, smarmy smirk of his. He acts like he knows everything, like the world is so incredibly easy, and for someone like him, it probably is.
My mind drifts. The only time Rocky seemed like a genuine person was when he was bleeding to death in that hallway with two bullets embedded in his back. He’d been scared, and I’d done everything in my power to make him feel safe and supported. I didn’t hear much after he was taken away in the ambulance, only that it was touch and go for a while. When the news reached me that he’d survived, I felt good for a while. It was the only positive thing to come out of that whole entire Russian mess.
My head lifts suddenly.
The Russians.
Everyone in New York knows that the Russians have the nightclubs in a chokehold. Belle’s last known location was one of those nightclubs. A coincidence or cause? After what happened at the gala, I’ve been waiting for some surging disagreement between those two factions. A lot of Italians were hurt when the Russian gala blew up, and if there’s a simmering desire for revenge that hasn’t risen to the surface yet, Belle’s death could be the first stone.
A much more plausible theory to spin to my captain than the ghost of a serial killer.
With nothing more to add to the case report, I close everything I have on Belle and drag my tired body from my office to the breakroom where shitty coffee and stale donuts become my lunch. I started this year on a kick of meal prep and good intentions, but who honestly has time to maintain making sixteen meals ahead of time? I lasted two months and trailed off with one meal a week.
My freezer was stacked with microwavable meals by my next payday.
Chewing determinedly through a dry donut that’s maybe three days out of date, I run back through the timeline of Belle’s disappearance to discovery trying to map out where everyone was based on the statements I could gather from her other friends. Belle kept herself in good shape, and due to her habit of going on long hikes, no one thought it was strange for her not to text back for a day or two.
