Page 7 of The Italian Reckoning
“Since when did you care about the cops?” drawls the Southern twang of my mechanic.
“I don’t. But the less reason I give them to pull me over, the better. I’m notactivelylooking to be locked up overnight.”
“You drive a Kawasaki Ninja H2R.” He snorts. “You’re already on their radar.”
“Dude, she’s amodifiedKawasaki Ninja H2R.” That correction is important. My meticulous care and modifications on my beloved Kawasaki are the only reason my baby is road legal, and I’m not looking to give that up for one broken mirror.
“Whatever. The parts won’t arrive until tomorrow. Think you can last until then?”
“Sure.” What choice do I have? “You’ll call me as soon as?”
“Yeah.”
“Cheers.” The call ends as heavy footsteps stomp through the garage toward me, signaling the arrival of one of the Barati guards. Tan boots appear on the other side of my bike, tapping one toe as they wait for me to untangle myself from my vehicle and greet them.
Maybe I should make them wait purely because I don’t want to talk to them. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of me and I pull myself out from underneath my bike and peer up at the charcoal-suited man staring down at me.
“You'd better have a good reason for interrupting quality time with my baby.”
“Belle Marino is dead.”
Coldness seeps from my skull to the back of my neck as my stomach tightens and my good mood fizzles into nothing.
Belle. The niece of one of my closest friends—his daughter, for all intents and purposes.
“When?”
“Cops found her last night.”
Climbing to my feet, my mind drifts with concern over Gio as I distantly try to clean lingering oil and black grease from my fingertips with the rag I keep tucked in my jeans’ pocket. “Does Gio know?”
“Telling him as we speak.”
“Fuck. I take it you’re here because she didn’t die naturally?”
The guard shakes his head. “Boss wants you to keep a lid on it until we know more.”
Of course he does. My father has been keeping alidon everything ever since Noah, a rat from one of the smaller families under our control, went crazy last year and nearly ignited a catastrophic war between us and the Irish. Any decent leader would use that to build strong alliances with some of the families around us but instead, my father chooses to shut usdown. He doesn’t really care about Gio. He just needs me to make sure he won’t be a problem.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Rocky, your father wants to make sure you understand that you’re just to keep a lid on things. Squabbles of the smaller families aren’t our business?—”
“IsaidI’ll take care of it.” Heat licks at my words as I shoot a piercing glare toward the guard. “And tell myfatherthat when one of our own turns up dead, we need to look into it regardless of what family they’re from. Now run along and report back, there’s a gooddog.”
My fatherand I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but this is one instance in which we differ greatly. If I follow his rules, taking care of Gio will mean sending him away somewhere secluded where he wouldn't cause any trouble for the family and then quietly forgetting all about Belle. That’s not how I see things. When Noah was causing shit for the Irish, it was my hands-on approach that prevented a war between our two factions.
All my father sees is my being a nuisance and sticking my neck where it doesn’t belong.
Where he sees interference, I see connection. We can’t get by in this life by treating everyone like a commodity. Friendships are hard to come by but more rewarding when nurtured.
Gio’s house is in darkness when I arrive later that afternoon. He lives close by, so walking gave me time to plan how to approach this. As I stroll up the stone path lined with multicolored pansies and daffodils to the peeling front door, my final planning attempts crumble in my mind. How do I comfort someone who's just had a loved one ripped away from them?
I’ve had similar talks before in the past, but it’s different when you’re delivering news that someone’s been gunned down in a shootout. That’s part of this life and everyone expects it. Some even find it the perfect way to die.
But Belle? She was young.
Innocent.
