Good. Let her feel that fear.
It might keep her breathing.
OLIVIA
The chill from Dom's visit lingers in my apartment long after he's gone. His face when he told me to back off wasn't the calculated charm I've grown accustomed to.
It was raw fury.
He really thinks I’m a part of Rocco’s abduction. Or that someone I work with has set me up to look guilty.
What if he's right? Everything he said makes sense, if he’s right.
I know I didn’t kidnap Rocco.
And I know my car was in for servicing because I was off. Did someone take my car? How did Dom even figure out it was my car?
My training tells me Dom is manipulating me. Playing me. Using our connection to protect his criminal enterprise. Yet something else is at play.
He wasn’t just irritated like he’s been in the past. He was angry. Murderously so.
Most people would tremble at having a mafia don storm into their home and issue threats. But what struck me wasn't fear.
It was the fierce protectiveness in Dom's eyes.
The genuine belief that I or someone in the FBI is behind Rocco’s kidnapping.
I should be offended by his accusation. Instead, I'm troubled by how plausible it sounds.
Haven’t I been having similar thoughts?
I grab my secure notebook and start mapping connections. Dom accused my supervisor; the same man who’s caused me doubts lately.
I note Blackwood's unusual interest in La Corona.
His specific targeting of those who are most vulnerable in the family, women.
The informants who end up dead.
The operations that somehow never yield arrests but always increase tensions between families.
If I'm right about this, I'm not just risking my career. I'm risking everything. Including my life, as Dom insinuated.
I stop writing and press my fingers against my eyes.
What kind of FBI agent trusts a mafia don over her own supervisor?
What kind of professional sleeps with her target?
What kind of woman finds herself respecting, maybe even admiring, a man who lives outside the law?
The kind who recognizes truth when she hears it, regardless of its source.
I stare at my scattered notes until the words blur together. My father's badge sits on my bookshelf, normally a talisman that settles me.
Dad always said the badge meant something, that we stood for justice, not just law. What would he think of me now?
I find it hard to believe my boss is at the center of this, and yet when I consider others in my office, none have the authority to make information go missing or to order reports not be made. None have been investigating La Corona as long as him.
