The screen cuts to footage of the warehouse Rafe sent me to when Marco Lombardi's body was in my trunk. But it looksdifferent now. I see police tape stretched across the entrance, officers moving in and out, and I feel a rush of nausea.
God only knows how long it will take to connect all the dots behind the scenes. I've seen the mess of financials Rafe uses to mask his involvement—Salvatore too. The FBI will have to do some digging to clear it up, but I know exactly why Rafe brought me here. He's afraid the Feds will go search his house, and if that happens, his precious "asset" would be taken away.
A surge of anger spools to life in my chest but I have to bite it back. Rafe told me I'm not just his asset, though I know how Salvatore Ferretti feels about me. If the FBI does follow those leads and links me to them, Sal will order my execution. And if not, and the FBI figures out I'm helping them, it means a shitstorm of trouble for me. I just don't want to think about it.
I don't want them to track me down here any more than Rafe does. I'd love it more than anything if I could reverse time to the night I was driving home to Buffalo to be with my family for Thanksgiving and pretend this never happened. As it stands, if I get picked up somehow and they don't connect me, I'm gonna have to lie and say I have amnesia. There's no way to explain being away this long…
I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn to see Rafe standing in the doorway. He's holding two mugs of coffee, with steam rising from them, and he walks over to the couch and hands one to me. I take it from him cautiously but say nothing, and as he sits next to me he remains silent too. This time, he doesn't bother reaching for the remote to turn the TV off, either. His secret is out of the bag.
We both stare at the television. The news has moved on to another story, but neither of us says anything for a long moment.
"Don't get any ideas, Riley," Rafe says finally, but there's a defeated hint to his tone. He's not threatening me, he's warning me.
I look at him. "What do you mean?"
"The FBI. Don't think they're going to save you."
"I didn't…" I feel a little offended at that assumption. He's not a mind reader. He doesn't know what I was thinking.
"You're thinking that if they get close enough, if they figure out where you are, this will all be over. But it won't. The second my uncle thinks the Feds are going to find you, he'll give the order to kill you. And if you try to run, your sister will be dead before they get through the front door."
He looks at me sadly and the pain in his eyes is crystal clear. Salvatore is a merciless man and Rafe hasn't yet shown him that I'm not a threat to them. It makes me wonder what exactly a man in his situation has to do to have a woman in his life. Must she be born to it? Or is there any chance at all for us?
Will I just end up dead no matter what?
"I'm sorry… It's out of my hands now."
"Even with the cops breathing down your neck?" I squeak, and he scrubs a hand over his two-day stubble. "He'd still take that risk?"
"Sal doesn't leave loose ends, and he doesn't hesitate. If you become a liability, you're gone. And so is anyone connected to you who might go snooping."
A hollow feeling invades my chest again. No matter what I do, I'm doomed. They won’t stop looking until they've found me,and finding me means an avalanche of horrible consequences. I almost want to call them to tell them not to keep looking, that I'm fine. But even that would just be fanning the fire.
"Would you give that order?" I ask him solemnly.
He doesn't answer right away. I see him hesitate, and for a moment, I think he's not going to respond at all. Then he exhales slowly and sets his mug down to turn to me.
"No," he says quietly. "I wouldn't. But it wouldn't matter. Sal is the boss."
Rafe is softening toward me. I've seen it happening for days now. I just don't know that it's enough to really protect me if things go sideways. Softening doesn’t mean I'm truly safe with him, and it doesn't mean that when orders come down the pipe, I'll get a chance in hell at being saved.
"Rafe, I need to know what you've dragged me into—all of it." My mind flicks to the flash drive, stored in my shoe at one point, but now stashed in my box of tampons in my duffel bag. I'm not testing him, but I do want to give him a chance to be transparent with me. It could be exactly how I know that he's being honest and wants me in his life.
If he keeps hiding things I already know about, maybe he's not the sort of guy I'd actually take a risk for.
He leans back against the couch, his arms crossed, and I see the tension in his shoulders. "You already know what it's about. Money laundering. Arms smuggling. Drugs. You've been rebuilding the records for weeks."
"I know what the records say. But I want to hear it from your mouth." I relax, uncurling my legs and leaning back on thecouch, and he picks up his mug and turns sideways, drawing a knee across his cushion to face me.
He's quiet for a long moment, and I think he's going to shut me down. But he starts talking in a calm tone and I know he's finally going to open up.
"The pharmaceutical company is a front," he says. "We bought it three years ago to give us a legitimate way to move product. Drugs, weapons, cash—all of it gets funneled through the company's supply chain and distribution network. On paper, we're just another business shipping medicine to hospitals and pharmacies. But underneath, we're moving millions of dollars in illegal goods every month."
"And the Feds don't know?"
"They suspect. They've been investigating for over a year, but they don't have proof. The banker kept the records clean so no one could trace the illegal operations back to us. But when he died, everything fell apart. The dead man's switch he built is set to release encrypted files to the authorities on Christmas Day…. I called him on his shit, told him I knew he was working for our enemies too and that I was coming for him. He got scared and ran, and now I'm in over my head."
So it's not a full confession of everything, but he's talking to me, at least. "And my job is to rebuild the records before that happens so that if Lombardi's files go to the FBI, they look fake?"
