“No one knew the layout of our house with the safe room or the hidden escape route to take Giuseppi out other than you, me and Parisi. No one else. There are no blueprints. No workers to be asked. No staff in the house ever knew. Miceli didn’t know. If you didn’t betray Giuseppi, and I didn’t, that leaves only Parisi. That leaves a man my father loved like a true brother. Did you have Bernado look into his financials?”
Valentino had found Bernado Macaluso when the kid’s mother had been working as a barista in one of the coffee shops he frequented. The boy had been a little strange and had always been on an old iPad. One day Val had noticed the kid and his mother both were upset. She’d had a black eye and bruises. The kid had been beat up all to hell and the iPad was gone. Val had told himself to stay out of it, but he’d never been able to stand looking at women with bruises. He’d followed the two home, had found out her landlord had demanded more than his rent and that she had nowhere else to go.
Valentino had taken care of the landlord, found a nicer place for them to stay, bought the kid a new iPad and a computer and a friendship had been born. Not just friendship. Loyalty. When Bernado’s mother had gotten cancer, Bernado had gone to Val, and Val had made certain she received the best of care until she passed. Bernado worked for him exclusively as his tech whiz. Right now, he was the bookkeeper as well. Dario and Val were still looking for someone to help take that load off.
Dario nodded slowly. “I sent the reports on his financials to you, along with everything else Bernado found. Parisi liked the strip clubs. We all know that. Apparently, Marge is fond of taking video of her more wealthy clients and especially any of your father’s men.”
“We have strip clubs, Dario. Why use Miceli’s?”
“Miceli started running dungeons beneath the strip clubs; an edgier addition, he called it. You were briefed.”
Val nodded. There were so many things he had been briefed on during Greta’s illness. Too many things his father had let slide and that he was trying to catch up on. He hadn’t visited the newer additions to Miceli’s strip clubs. They paid their dues on a regular basis and brought in a shit ton of money. He had so many other fires to put out that he had put that on a waiting list. He didn’t give a damn what others wanted to do with their sex lives as long as it was consensual.
He narrowed his gaze at Dario. “It is consensual, isn’t it? Parisi didn’t screw up and rape someone, did he?”
Dario sighed. “You have all the videos, but does it matter whether they’re fake or real? He didn’t come to your father to fix things. He has a wife and grown children. Grandchildren. He took what Miceli offered and sold out not only Giuseppi, but you.”
There wasn’t so much as a whisper of venom in Dario’s voice. His voice matched Val’s. They could have been talking about the weather, not about a man they knew they were going to make an example of. He wouldn’t be killed clean. He couldn’t be. Every single member of their family as well as those in neighboring territories had to know what would happen if you betrayed a Saldi. If you double-crossed one. If you lied to one or cheated one.
“All the capos on the list you trust, Dario?”
Dario gave him a faint smile. “I trust you, Val. And maybe Severu Catalano. The others on the list I believe are with us. They have good crews and are in control of them. They earn good money for the family. The ones on the second list are suspect. The ones on the third have their hands in our pockets, which means they are stealing from us. Bernado sent you reports on how deep. The second list, he’s running their financials and looking at surveillance, but we aren’t going to know if all of them are caught in Miceli’s net.”
Valentino shrugged. “I’ll know when I see them today. Have you checked out the conference and interrogation rooms where Stefano is allowing us to take Parisi and anyone else we need to talk to?”
Dario nodded. “Very good accommodations, although, Val, it’s risky to get too far in bed with Stefano Ferraro. The hotel is fine, and the conference rooms, that’s smart. Forming an alliance, I get that. Using his interrogation room, that could get us in real trouble. I searched for hidden cameras and will again, but how far can we really trust them?”
Valentino understood Dario’s worry. He had the same one himself. On the other hand, where could they safely take prisoners? To their own warehouses? They owned cops, but at the moment, they didn’t know who they could trust. That had to be sorted. They had to come out on top. Feared. They had to take back the streets and shut Miceli down. He either trusted Stefano or he didn’t. At this point, he didn’t have enough men he could trust to take back the streets. He had no choice but to trust Stefano.
“It’s a calculated risk, Dario, but Stefano loves Emme. Emmanuelle is bound to me. She can’t get away. He doesn’t want to risk her. He also despises Miceli and what he stands for. He’ll want to help me stop the trafficking ring and shut down the auctions. He’s not going to betray me. That would be the same as betraying Emme.”
“He could hold on to a video and use it later.”
“The risk isn’t Stefano seeing us. I have the feeling what we do won’t be anything new to him.” For Valentino, the risk was Emme seeing what he did. That ruthless, merciless man who would torture Parisi, cut him to pieces and leave him on his doorstep while Val’s clever computer whiz kid took apart every business and bank account, stripping the family of their money, leaving them with nothing. Instead of having the care that Giuseppi had always shown the family of even a fallen soldier of the lowest rank, Parisi’s family would have nothing. That would be the fate of a traitor. Giuseppi would have killed the entire family. He would have done so in front of Parisi if he could have, or he would have told him what he was going to do while he was watching him being hacked to pieces. That was the old way to send a message, and it was one that never failed to be understood.
Dario sighed. “I get what you’re saying, Val. Emmanuelle is going to have to accept who you are. You’re head of the Saldi family. If she’s going to be your wife …”
Val lifted his head, hands on his tie, eyes staring straight into Dario’s. “There is no if. She is going to be my wife. She will be the mother of my children.”
Dario shook his head. “You never make anything easy. The Ferraro family can move through the shadows, Val. I’ve watched them carefully for the last few years. Once you told me about Emmanuelle’s shadow and I observed it for myself, I watched her closely first, and then her brothers. They’re clever. They wear those suits for a reason. They entertain for a reason. They always have an alibi.”
Again, their eyes met. Valentino nodded. “They can be anywhere and no one would know. They can hear their enemies speak. If they want to come into a home and kill someone undetected, they can do so and leave without ever being seen.”
“I researched until I found the original Saldi myth as well,” Dario said. “Over the years, fathers told sons watered-down versions, or perhaps portions were lost in translation. Who knows? Perhaps because no one ever saw a woman with a shadow ours rushed to imprison, they did come to believe it was a myth, just as we did.”
“After the massacre of the Ferraro family, there must have been so few of them and they scattered over various countries in order to remain safe,” Val said. “It would have taken years to build their families back up. It’s no wonder no Saldi ever ran across one of them. Why didn’t you pursue Nicoletta harder, Dario, once you saw her shadow?”