"Yes. If you make it look like the company's always been legitimate, then when the Feds come knocking, they won't find anything. The dead man's switch will trigger, but the files won't match the records. They'll have evidence, but it won't be admissible."
"What about you?" I ask. "What happens to you if I fail?"
He doesn't look at me. "Prison. If I'm lucky… Sal won't take the fall for anyone, and he won't save me if it means his looking bad. It's his way, and he's not a bad man for being that way. It's sort of understood within the family that we take the risks upon ourselves. I respect it, but in situations like this, I am left hanging out to dry."
He speaks the words without any emotion in his tone. It's like knowing his future has carved out a hole in his chest he has no say over and he's resigned himself to the grim future that may be in store for him. No wonder he sees me as more than an asset. I might just be his salvation… or the stone they hang around his neck as he drowns.
"You're losing control," I say.
"Yes."
"And without my help, people will die."
He turns to me now, his eyes locking on mine. "Not just people—families. The politicians we've paid off, the law enforcement officials who've looked the other way—if this falls apart, my uncle will make sure they go down with us. Their wives. Their kids. Anyone who can be used as leverage or eliminated as a threat."
The words are a knife in my chest. They silence any residual fear I had that Rafe isn't being honest with me or that he doesn't mean what he says. It's the smoking gun in my hand that can be aimed at his entire empire and he just handed it to me freely.
He trusts me.
What a sobering thought.
I stare at him, and for the first time, I see past the threats and the violence and the cold control. I see a man who was trapped in this world the same way I'm trapped now. A man who made decisions out of necessity, who built walls around himself to stay alive, who's spent years doing things he probably hates because the alternative was being entirely alone or suffering death or imprisonment.
He's a prisoner, just like me.
It all makes my chest ache and I touch his arm gently. We're not that different, though the reason I'm in this situation doesn't mirror how he got here. Rafe's just scrabbling for hope the way I am, and a strange sort of sympathy arises inside me. I feel bad for him. I want to help him.
"So I need you to stay quiet." His eyes bore into mine. "Don’t try to reach out to your family yet. Keep things on the down low because one wrong move could ignite a forest fire… Can you do that?" he asks, and I chew the inside of my cheek as I nod at him.
I don't want to see him go down for all of this when he's not the only player, and I'm not sure, even if given the opportunity, if I could turn in that flash drive at all now. Not knowing what it might mean for Rafe.
He stands and walks toward the kitchen, leaving his coffee mug on the table. I watch him go, and I feel something shift inside me. I am in love with this monster of a man and I can't even understand why. I actually fucking care what happens to him now.
I sit there on the couch, staring at the television, and chastise myself for feeling sorry for a mobster. He's the reason I'm here.He's the reason my family is suffering. The reason my life's been turned upside down.
But there's always more than meets the eye, isn't there? They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we do it all the time. We judge people because of their profession or the color of their skin. In this case I judged Rafe as a complete monster the minute I met him. What he did to me is shit. There's no disguising that. But he's not a total monster.
Rafe has a heart—a good heart. He helps those kids at Christmas every single year, and he cares that they're suffering. The things he does for Salvatore do not negate the good I see in him. They taint it, twist it into something not ethical or publicly acceptable, but they don't remove it.
And that's the part I'm falling for. Hard.
I pull my knees to my chest again and wrap my arms around them, staring at the television screen. The flash drive is still hidden in my bag, a reminder that I have options, that I have leverage. But using it means condemning those families to whatever fate Rafe's boss has planned for them.
And it means condemning Rafe too.
I don't know why I care. I don't know why the thought of his going to prison, or worse, makes my chest tighten. He's done terrible things. He's hurt people. He deserves whatever consequences come his way.
But despite all the reasons I should hate him, I find myself wanting to help him.
Somewhere along the way, I started to see him as more than just my captor.
16
RAFE
"They raided the warehouse on Elm Street."
Feodor's voice comes through the car speakers, and I feel my grip tighten on the steering wheel. I'm twenty minutes outside the city, heading back to the safehouse after a meeting with Sal and the advisors that lasted three hours too long. The highway stretches ahead of me, snow piled along the shoulders, and I keep my eyes on the road while my mind processes what he just said.
