Martina’s doing something on her laptop in the kitchen when I emerge from the secured room where I left Ale. Her earthy scent is all over my hands, and I resist the urge to take one big inhale before I wash my hands at the sink.
My gut told me she’d make me fucking crazy. Maybe it’s time I start listening to that particular organ more.
“What are you working on?” I ask casually, as if there isn’t a half-naked woman currently strung up a dozen feet below us.
She’s down there, in pain. The thought of it sends a crawling sensation over my skin.
“Nothing,” Martina says.
“Have you found a culinary program yet?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
I eye her as I dry my hands. She spent four years trying to convince me to let her go abroad for college only for her to scrap that entire plan after her abduction. She was supposed to move to England at the end of the summer. Now, there’s no chance of that. Mari didn’t even fight me on it. She hasn’t been herself since she came back. My sister’s got a gentle heart, and the death of her friend traumatized her, so I know she feels safer staying here with me. But I also know college was a dream of hers.
I keep telling her to find a good online program, but each time, she shrugs me off. I’m worried. It’s like she’s lost her spark. Cooking used to be her favorite thing, but she hasn’t made anything since she returned.
I don’t know what I can do to help her heal. But making sure that the man who took her is dead feels like a step in the right direction.
I walk over to look at her laptop and steal a piece of cheese off her plate. “Let’s look together.”
“What about the woman?”
“Mari, forget her, okay?”
She looks down at her hands. “I just… Well, she said she could explain. She did help me, Dem.”
“I know she did. But that doesn’t mean she’s guiltless, or that she’s not still helping whoever took you.” Ale knows who’s responsible for what happened, but she won’t tell me. If she was innocent and on the run, why would she hold that information back?
Our conversation its interrupted by a knock on the front door. “That’s probably Ras,” I say.
She nods and folds her laptop under her arm. “I’ll be up in my room. Nadia left dinner in the fridge, so I was thinking of warming it up in a bit. Are you going to be here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll let you know once I talk with Ras.”
“Okay,” she says. “Maybe we can bring some down to her too. She needs to eat.”
“I suppose she does.”
My sister nods and heads up the stairs.
I unlock the front door with the fingerprint scanner. One look at Ras’s face, and I know he found something.
“Tell me,” I say as he steps across the threshold.
He takes a black leather passport case out of the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it to me. “This was in her new apartment, hidden between the sheets and the mattress. It’s her passport. The one she said got stolen.”
“That was easy,” I mutter as I crack open the booklet. It smells brand new, as if it’s barely been used. My gaze zeroes in on her name.
“Valentina Conte.” That last name doesn’t ring any bells.
“Married to Lazaro Conte. Lit up like a Christmas tree when we ran him through the databases.”
There’s only one man who can get us access to those systems that quickly. “Napoletano is helping you?”
Ras shrugs as we walk in the direction of my office. “I brought in the big guns since I know time is of the essence.”
I give him a grateful look. “Who is Conte?”
“The head enforcer of the Garzolo clan of New York. They’re one of five families originally from Sicily. She and Lazaro got married a few months ago. Valentina shot him a few days after their two-month wedding anniversary.”
I feel a perverse satisfaction at that. “Ouch.”
“The whole clan’s looking for her.”
Ras sits down in an armchair, and I walk over to the mini bar to pour us some whiskey. “Lazaro wants his wife back?”
“I don’t know if he’s alive or not. No one’s seen him since the incident.”
“Who’s leading the search?” I hand him his glass.
He takes it and meets my gaze. “Stefano Garzolo. The head of the clan. She’s his daughter.”
Well, fuck.
“You’ve got yourself a mafia princess.”
I down my whiskey in one big gulp. This situation is getting more complicated by the hour. “What are the chances she’s here on her father’s behest?”
“Zero. He wouldn’t send his own daughter here for a job. She’s far more valuable to him back home.
There’s a bitter tang inside my mouth. She wasn’t lying about being here on her own.
“I think she really ran away with only a passport and some cash to her name,” Ras says. “There was nothing else of hers in the apartment besides a small amount of clothes. The question is why?”
What made you run, Valentina? “She told me her family weren’t good to her.”
Ras makes a face. He’s not buying it. “She was born and raised into this life. It would take something drastic to make her leave everything and everyone behind.”
“Like having an enforcer for a husband? She must have been close to all the dirty work he did.”
“I doubt he brought many of his targets home like he did with Mari.”
“I don’t know about that. Mari said the basement looked like a torture room from the movies.” She’s never seen the real ones on this side of the world.
“Maybe Valentina couldn’t stomach sleeping by a man who murdered people a few meters below their bedroom.”
That could explain why she reacted so strongly to the incident with Nelo. It reminded her of what her husband did to people.