Page 50 of The Woman in the Hollow
My stomach bottomed out.
Because that garnered some results for sure.
The only difference was the results included one or two extra words.
Grassimobfamily docks.
Grassiorganized crimefamily docks.
“What the hell…”
My finger frantically tapped the scroll down, watching pages and pages of information flash before my eyes.
None of it good.
The Grassis, that kind, welcoming, very normal-seeming family, was aFamilyfamily. They were a part of the mafia.
Dante Grassi was a mafia capo.
I went into my little search knowing next to nothing about organized crime, save for some movies and one documentary I’d seen about how Las Vegas was pretty much built by organized crime.
But by the time I surfaced at nearly four in the morning, I was damn near an expert. At least on the New Jersey mafia.
Some part of me didn’t want to believe it at first but as the pieces all started to fall into place, there was no denying it.
The way all the Grassi men were always dressed. The constant guards around the garden center. The vague way they spoke about work. Their lack of surprise at the damage to personal property. The expensive jewelry. Even the way they spoke.
My fingers flew over the keys, tying in the names of every Grassi I’d met, trying to find anything incriminating.
It wasn’t until I got to Domenico that any actual crimes came up. Before that, it was all conjecture and accusations.
But Domenico Grassi had gone to prison for assault. In fact, it was only recently that he seemed to get released.
Honestly, Domenico was the one guy I could easily believe was a criminal. It explained that dark air he had about him. And, well, his glee at creating fake bodies in the woods.
A shiver racked my system, wondering how safe I’d actually been around these men.
Especially when I’d found that body.
And now more than ever, I was convinced itwasa body. Though I wouldn’t let myself believe that Domenico or Dante had been responsible for it. First of all, because Dante had seemed genuinely surprised by my terror and by my account of what I’d seen. Second, because of that half-baked lie he’d fed me after he’d seen for himself.
What was it then?
A message?
Some sort of warning?
It also made a heck of a lot of sense why they hadn’t wanted to call the police, why Dante had been so quick to get me out of there when I’d suggested it.
The last thing a member of an organized crime family would want was the police sniffing around their business.
Their business that had to be, I was certain, some sort of front. A way to wash money earned through ill-gotten means. The sheer amount of cash that passed through hands and got dropped into the safe at the end of the night was astounding.
I wish I could say that upon learning that Dante was a lifelong criminal from a long line of other criminals, who had—through hiring me—made me some sort of accessory to his crimes, that all my desire for him disappeared.
The truth was, though, that no amount of cold, harsh reality seemed capable of dousing those flames of desire.
That said, I was not someone who would get herself involved with a criminal.
