Page 56 of Tormented Diamonds
“That’s an incredibly large stone you’re throwing there, beloved. After all, you can imagine the thoughts that ran through my ‘fucked-up head’ when I saw a written offer for assistance should my wife ever make the not-at-all-suicidal decision to run from the mob. So, tell me, what did you and Bobby Sartorre discuss that led to that?”
I twist my hands in my lap. “Nothingmuch. He was nice … until he realized who I was.”
I wait for the lid to blow on his composure. Instead, he leaves me wobbling on a tightrope as he takes a long, leisurely drink, his only reaction coming from the white-knuckled grip on his glass. “A pleasant experience, isn’t it? Kind of like skipping barefoot across a field of broken glass. Did he provide all the answers you wanted?”
More like created a dozen more questions.
“Not really. He seemed rattled. You know, considering I bear an uncanny resemblance to his late niece, Victoria.” I watch for the slightest twinge of tension or alarm, only to get stonewalled with that same blank stare as he calmly sips his drink. “Why are you and Anton so concerned with your dead girlfriend’s uncle?”
“My business with Sartorre has nothing to do with Victoria.” At my simultaneous brow lift and chin dip, he sighs. “Okay, it does, but in a six-degrees of separation type of way. There’s too much backstory to explain, half of which I still question. But the short and long of it is, Anton found a loophole in Sartorre’s rage and crawled through it. Seems the chance to nail Marcello to his inverted cross overpowered his grudge against me.”
“Are you saying he’s been helping you?”
“More so Anton than me, but yes, in a hostile, pain-in-the-ass kind of way. But you’re deflecting.” He taps the paper with his finger. “The note, Doc.”
“I’m not deflecting. I’m not looking for a way out, Gianni. I’m trying to understand why a man who’s working with you and not against you would warn me that ‘the Marchesis are a cancer who’ll take everything from me, then when I’m no longer useful, destroy what’s left.’”
“Because I owe a blood debt to his family that he’s worried you’ll end up paying.”
“You won’t let that happen.”
The glass pauses at his lips. “You sound awfully confident for a woman who had to be pried out of her car by the jaws of life.”
For once, I have nothing to say. He’s right, and I hate the cloud that settles over me.
“Speaking of which,” he says, drawing my eyes back on him. “I have a question about the accident, if you’re up for it.”
“Will it help find the guy who did it?”
“Possibly.”
“Then, okay.”
I watch as he downs what little whiskey remains in his glass and sets it on the table. “Are you sure it was the same man who killed your mother?”
“Of course. Why? Do you not believe me?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that something’s off,” he says, his forehead creasing. “Like how did he find your location so accurately? Whythatstretch of the highway? Whythatmoment? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. But I swear to you, Gianni. It’s him.”
“Are you sure you didn’t see him earlier?”
“No. The only people in the restaurant were an elderly couple and…” I pause, the grumpy man in the corner crowding his way into my mind. “A man sitting by himself in a far corner booth. He had his back to us, so I didn’t pay attention.”
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“Only that he radiated hostility … and that he was wearing a brown Carhartt-type jacket and a trucker hat…” That ugly green cap flashes through my mind, along with the strands of greasy hair sticking out the bottom … and my blood runs cold. “It was him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hehad red hair sticking out from under his hat and…” I swallow, unsure if I’m going to black out or vomit. “He made me uncomfortable. Like that feeling that crawls up your back and you don’t know why. Now I know.”
“The son of a bitch has been right under our noses the whole time,” Gianni says darkly. “He’s been watching and taunting us like mice.”
“Are you saying he followed me there?”
He nods. “And waited for you to leave.”
