As I discovered the second he rounded the dining table to his place at the head and turned livid grey eyes on me.
‘When the fuck were you planning on telling me Mancinelli and his inbred spawn have been sticking their diseased peckers into our business?’ he bellowed right in my face.
Bibi flinched but kept her gaze on her plate as the men retook their seats. Renzo’s fingers drummed on the table, a conditionthat either meant he was jonesing for a smoke or he’d taken something to take the edge off. I cringed inside because right now I occupied Orazio’s full attention, but it was only a matter of time before he caught that faraway look in Renzo’s eyes. The look he’d baffled everyone with since his seventeenth birthday. The look he completely lost only when he was driving a race car.
Dante refused point-blank to talk about what the fuck was up with his twin, and we’d all stopped asking. As long as whatever secret he was keeping wasn’t a danger to himself or the family, I would let him keep it. For now.
I focused on my grandfather as one of the staff hurried over with Orazio’s favourite red wine and poured. I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew. Not after bellowing about it at the team meeting on Saturday.
I waved away the offer of wine. ‘I told you I was taking care of things. And I believe I have.’
‘Youbelieve?’ he sneered. ‘Did you not alsobelieveyou finishing in third would never happen again?’
Pointing out that I had finished second, not third, would earn me a backhand. I knew that as I knew the back of my own hand. So I cut through the bullshit. ‘Sì, we have a mole. But if the information I’ve received is correct, the problem is bigger than that.’
He froze, his eyes narrowing. ‘Explain.’
I sucked in a short breath. The repercussions if I was wrong would be monumental. It might cost me the deal I’d made with Orazio.
But my gut told me I was on the right path.
‘I believe someone is attempting to destabilise us through the Mancinellis. I hope I’m wrong but if I’m not, we have bigger problems. We might be facing a scenario where Mancinelli didn’t do this on his own. That he might be seeking help from the Russians.’
The grenade bounced across the length of the dining table, peppered with mutters of ‘miedda’and ‘figghiu ri butana’. Then it detonated with a slam of Orazio’s fist on the table.
I felt a piercing gaze and darted mine right to meet Bibi’s. Her wide eyes fired silent questions at me.
How long have you known? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? Fuck you,frate.
I responded with a brief look of apology before turning back to Orazio.
‘How long have you known this?’
‘My suspicions were raised last night. I received enough corroboration this morning.’
‘Corroboration is not enough. You better be 100 per cent sure of yourself before you go throwing around accusations like that, boy. We took a big hit the last time we clashed with thosestronzos.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said, offering up a silent prayer to all the listening saints, and a vow to hunt down Nightowl and deliver a slow, excruciating death if it turned out this wasn’t the Russians and I’d been led on a dangerous wild goose chase.
‘It makes sense,’ Rafa said, propping me up. ‘Their second driver came out of the blue with upwards of a hundred mil to buy the seat. And sure, he’s got some talent but nowhere near what the crop of Formula Two drivers have got to offer. Those fuckers are trying to haul themselves to the top by dragging us down and messing with us long enough to snatch the championship.’
‘And I have people digging into it. I’ll know if this is their entire game plan or if they’re hoping it’s another gateway after we kicked their asses last time,’ I added.
We hadn’t escaped completely unscathed. We’d lost good men and good, seasoned soldiers in our year-long clash with the Russians five years ago.
‘But you’re sure it’s Liv Ivanovski and his crew behind this? Not some other outfit?’
The question came from my father, the first words he’d spoken to me since entering the dining room.
Unlike his brothers, he’d accepted my elevation above him with grace if not open pride. And it may have had something to do with the life-altering reality of my mother – his childhood sweetheart – being slaughtered, shattering any ambition he’d harboured. The last true Salvatore battle Giacomo had participated in was our clash with the Russians, when mired in grief and hungry for revenge, he’d personally slaughtered several of our enemies.
After that, he’d just… caved in on himself.
I watched him with a mixture of sadness and empathy now as I nodded. ‘As I said, it’s being looked into, but yes, I’m as sure as I can be in this moment.’
It had been the tiniest of tenuous links. One casually tossed my way and halfway to being ruled out at the tail end of my conversation with the MIT hackers. They’d cross-referenced Willow with every crumb of information on the Mancinellis and their racing team including Stan Paul, the new driver they’d acquired at the start of this season. It’d tossed out a rambling list, at the end of which was the Russian word for willow.Iva.
It’d been like catching sight of a single flare of a match in the middle of a cyclone.
