My questioning of him and those I work with feels like betrayal. These are my colleagues. My people. The agency I've dedicated my life to.
Yet I can't shake the evidence.
I open my laptop and look up files on Blackwood's past operations. His success rate is impressive, except with La Corona.
Has his failure there led him to more drastic and questionable strategies?
My stomach knots as I remember Blackwood's face when he talked to me about looking into Rocco's case.
Not surprise or interest but annoyance.
Like I was veering off-script.
"Focus on Vitale," he'd said. "The rest is a distraction."
I close my eyes, leaning back against the couch. If I'm wrong, I'm betraying everything I stand for. If I'm right...
God, if I'm right, then I've been unwittingly complicit in something terrible.
I think of Dom's eyes when he spoke of family.
The fierce protection.
The unwavering loyalty.
Qualities I once thought incompatible with his criminal lifestyle, yet now find myself envying compared to the cold calculation I sense from Blackwood.
Whatever path I choose, there's no going back.
Either I've fallen for a criminal's manipulation, or I've discovered corruption in the very institution I've sworn to uphold.
Both possibilities terrify me. Both could lead to my own death.
The next day, I arrive at work early, before anyone else can disturb me. I open a fresh notebook rather than my computer.
This time I’m going to track the case as Dom has outlined it.
I draw a timeline of my investigation into the Vitale family, marking each search warrant, each surveillance operation, each informant approach.
We were never successful, but maybe we weren’t meant to be.
Maybe the purpose was to harass them without catching them.
What if these weren't failed attempts to gather evidence? What if they were successful attempts to sow discord?
I look at the greater La Corona investigation and how each FBI action created ripples within La Corona.
Isabella told the Calabresi family was behind her mother’s murder. Informant Ernie dying by drug overdose, a method Don Ferraza was known to use to kill.
Gabriella Monti made to believe Marco Calabresi was trying to overtake her father’s business.
Rocco’s kidnapping. I recall Dom talking about one of his men’s murder…who was that?
Gio…Gio somebody.
Dom questioned if I’d killed him.
I flip to a new page, sketching the power structure of La Corona as I understand it.
