‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘I think Brazzo is erring on the side of not wanting to overpromise and underdeliver. There’s at least another tenth to be shaved off at Turns Five and Six, and Eleven and Twelve. I might get you close enough to secure third place in Quali tomorrow. And we might get lucky and those two idiots will take each other out at Turn One.’
My teeth clenched so tight my jaw cracked. ‘How the hell are we discussing third place like it’s the golden pinnacle of our achievements?’
She stepped back from my fury, frustration clear in her own face. ‘Until you find the mole or get to the bottom of whatever the hell is going on, we have to work with what we have. I’ll strategise the hell out of the race plan tomorrow and give you as much advantage as I can.’
I gathered her close again and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘Grazii. I know you will.’
She held my gaze for another few beats before she nodded. Watching her walk stiffly away, I felt another pang of regret for dredging up memories she’d probably buried deep.
About to follow her out, I paused when my phone pinged.
My heartbeat stuttered for a split second before I remembered I hadn’t given Maddelena my phone number so she wouldn’t contact me this way. The only other person I wanted to hear from was Rafa, telling me that miraculously, my outburst had worked and he’d collared the traitor.
That hope was dashed too, because it wasn’t a text alert.
I frowned, staring at the app I didn’t recognise. What the fuck?
I was meticulous about what I downloaded onto my phone. As a rule I didn’t keep incriminating shit on my device that could come back and bite me in the ass, especially since the feds had had a hard-on for the Salvatores since Orazio stepped foot on Ellis Island. With the passage of time, they’d only gotten more desperate to pin something on us to put the brakes on the obscene wealth we were amassing.
So far only a handful of careless soldiers had been caught in their snares. Because most of us knew better than to open sketchy-looking apps.
I squinted at the pulsing logo on my screen.
The picture was of an… owl? Black with shiny feathers and soft glowing yellow eyes. Wracking my brain, I came up short on what it meant.
About to delete it unopened, I stopped when Rafaelle walked in.
‘You sure set the cat amongst the pigeons, eh,frate?’ The king of deadly mayhem grinned as he crossed to the buffet spread out on the far wall and helped himself to a Sicilian ham stuffed bagel. ‘I’m sorry I missed it.’
‘I take it nothing’s shaken out of the tree?’
‘Not so far,’ he replied, taking a huge bite.
I beckoned him. ‘Get over here, take a look at this.’
I tilted my screen towards him when he reached me. He stared unblinking at the app. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘Fuck if I know. It just appeared on my phone two minutes ago.’
‘You think someone’s fucking with you?’ His grin disappeared, replaced by deadly focus.
I stared at the app for a long moment. ‘It’ll be the height of ballsiness to send me something like this and assume I’ll be stupid enough to just open it, no?’
He nodded after a brief hesitation, then set his plate down and tugged the phone from my hand. ‘It’s almost time for FP2. You need to get ready. I’ll take a picture of the logo and run it past our tech guys. See if anything pops up.’
I headed for the door. ‘If it doesn’t, delete it. I don’t want it on my phone any longer than it needs to be.’
‘Sure thing.’
9
CESARE
FP2 was a shitshow, the only crumb of salvation coming from Bibi, who kept her word and optimised every advantage to help me reduce the time deficit to Narciso’s car.
But half a second off his lead with Renzo three-quarters of a second behind was still too much.
