She slumps against me. “Mom wasn’t apologetic at all. She told me if she had the chance to do it again she would still conceal the truth from me because I have had a better life not knowing.” Angry tears fill her eyes as she looks at me. “I get wanting to protect your child. I would die for Rowan, and I don’t want him to know about this life yet. But he must be told when he is eighteen, if he hasn’t figured it out before then. I couldn’t lie to him about something this big. Mom doesn’t seem to realize how betrayed I feel. I could never do that to my son.”
I am surprised she doesn’t ask me about initiation and Rowan’s future life, and I can only guess her distress has clouded her mind. It is something we will need to discuss at some point but not now. We have had enough of the heavy for one day.
I wasn’t given a choice with this life, and I won’t do that to my son. I never expected to have an heir, assuming one of Natalia’s stepsons, or any child she may have with Gino, would carry the Mazzone name and keep our legacy alive, but things have changed. I hope to have more children with Sierra, and they will have the right to decide what they want to do with their lives. I won’t stop them if they want to join la famiglia, but I won’t force them if they choose to have nothing to do with this life.
48
BEN
A few days pass and I’m getting more and more impatient for new intel. I peer out the window of my office at Caltimore Holdings as I wait for Phillip to arrive to debrief me. I can’t shake the sense something is lingering outside my peripheral mind. That something obvious is staring me in the face and I’m missing it.
In positive news, we held the Bratva at bay when they attacked Philly two nights ago, slaughtering their men, leaving the dregs to slink off with their tails between their legs. We needed that win to send a powerful message to our allies within The Commission, to the Russians, and to all our enemies.
Yet still The Outfit is reticent. I tap my fingers on my desk. Why is that?
“Come in,” I call out, as a sharp rap sounds on my door.
Phillip hurries into the room, carrying a few files. My secretary closes the door behind him, and I press the ‘do not disturb’ button on my desktop phone.
I meet him at the large table in my office, the one I usually conduct my meetings at. He dumps the files on the table, before we claim our usual seats. “What do you have for me?” I ask, placing my arms on the table.
Clearing his throat, he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I have completed my background check on Terry Scott, and it was as you assumed. He was a soldier for The Outfit. Initiated when he was seventeen. His death was covered up. The real autopsy results were hidden, but they hadn’t been properly deleted from the ME’s system, so I was able to access the report.” He slides it across the table to me, and I skim over the neatly typed sheets of paper.
“He died of multiple gunshot wounds. There was no evidence of any cancer,” he adds.
“What about the house and his will?”
“The attorney who handled his affairs mysteriously vanished a couple of days after Terry’s house went up in flames. His business and his home were packed up, and I can’t find a trace of him or his family anywhere.”
“Someone helped him to disappear,” I say, setting the report down and trying to make sense of it in my head. What was Terry concealing from The Outfit that was so important to hide? Was it about me? Could this be the reason why The Outfit is stalling? It seems like a far reach, but I’m ruling nothing out now. “What else did you discover?”
“Several people I talked to confirmed Terry did leave a box for you, but no one knows where it is now.”
“I think we have to presume the attorney took it with him or it burned down with the house.”
“Those were my conclusions too, Mr. Mazzone.”
“What about Lawson?”
He squirms a little in his seat, and his nose scrunches. “I have exhausted every avenue over the past few weeks I have been working on his case, and I have hit a dead end. Johnny too,” he adds, referencing one of my PIs who has been working closely with Phillip on the Lawson file. “It’s like the man didn’t exist before he married Georgia Lawson.”
Lawson Pharma is a multibillion-dollar corporation, and it’s not unthinkable that Joseph Lawson uses his internal tech resources to control what information is in the public domain. It’s what I do. However, you will find details of my past on the web, and I have spoken about my mother in interviews and at relevant charity events. I have hidden the mafia part of my persona to protect myself and la famiglia, but I haven’t attempted to erase my past in the way Lawson has done. To wipe all trace of his background proves he is hiding something.
But what?
I scrub a hand over my jaw, more troubled than I’d like to admit.
“There is one thing I find especially odd,” Phillip says while he gathers up his files. I urge him to continue with my eyes as Leo knocks on the door and slips into the room.
Phillip glances uneasily at my underboss, like he does every time Leo is in proximity. I find it comical that Phillip is more afraid of my number two than me, but it’s not surprising. I’ve spent years hiding my dark persona behind a corporate veneer, so most people suspect nothing. Leo isn’t as skilled at hiding his true self, nor does he care to. He is mostly polite around the office, but the majority of my employees give him a wide berth. He has this way of cutting a person down with one look, without even realizing he’s doing it, and it scares most people away.
“You can speak freely in front of Leo,” I say, eager to get this done now. If Leo is here, it means the girl is ready for me.
“I find it strange that the man changed his name when he got married. It’s usually the other way around.”
“That is a little odd,” I agree because I have pondered the same thing. “But Lawson is a name that carries considerable weight around Illinois, and he knew he would one day be running Lawson Pharma. I can understand his logic, to a point.”
“A man like Joseph Lawson doesn’t strike me as the type of man to readily give up anything or the kind of man who would bow to his wife’s name in place of his own, even though you raise valid points,” Leo says, lounging against the door frame. “I agree with Phillip. It’s more than odd.”
“He wants to keep his name a secret,” I surmise as prickles of awareness dance over my skin. I look at Phillip, standing the same time he does. “His name must be on his marriage certificate.”
“That’s the other odd thing. I can’t find any record of their marriage, and there is no certificate on file anywhere.”
We are onto something. I know it.
“I will ask my fiancée,” I say. “She might know where they keep it.” It’s a long shot, considering Sierra’s family kept so much from her, but Serena might know if Sierra doesn’t. Things are still frosty between them, but it won’t last forever. “Thank you, Phillip. That will be all,” I say, grabbing my jacket off the back of the chair behind my desk.
He leaves as I slide my arms into my sleeves. I eyeball Leo. “We have her?”