I couldn't allow myself to care what Noah thought; not about his father, not about me. With proof that my parents’ case was yet again not being taken seriously, I had to come up with something groundbreaking to share with the feds to show them good faith on my part. At least, that was what I wanted to naïvely believe would happen. If not, then this entire charade had been a waste of time.
Otherwise, I would have gotten in too deep with the mafia for no reason, and I couldn't let that be the way the story went.
Without seeing Noah, I left the hotel and went to the hospital. I missed it too much, and Benito didn't really need me anymore.
Assuming he ever did.
Dr. Johnson agreed to let me come back to work, but I wasn't on the schedule for any surgeries. All I could do was check up on previous patients and walk around the surgical ward, double-checking that my colleagues were doing their jobs. It felt odd to be there, as though I no longer belonged. What once had been my home away from home was now foreign to me.
I hated being alone, but I was scared to get too close to anyone.
And I knew why, but I didn't want to linger on those thoughts. It was absurd to miss Noah; most of the time, I didn't even like him, and I was determined to put him behind bars. As a matter of fact, I might be more dangerous for him than he was for me.
He’d probably find that laughable until he found out why it was true.
No matter what choice I made, I would lose. If I didn't turn over damning information about the Costas, I would never gain closure over what happened to my mother and father. But if I did learn any truly terrible information about them and divulged it to my handlers, I would lose the tentative friendships I’d made.
There was no rock and a hard place to hide between. Instead, there was fucked one way or fucked another.
Chapter Twelve
Noah
At my father’s behest, we had contractors at the house rebuilding it, but I couldn't bring myself to go back just yet. Every square inch of that place was deeply embedded in my childhood memories—not all of them happy—from the intricate wooden scrollwork to the lions my father was so fond of. In his mind, they represented power, authority, and bravery. In my mind, they were entirely too on the nose for a mafia family. We had tunnels beneath the house in case we needed to make a hasty escape, with exits miles down the street. The closets were outfitted with secret gun racks disguised as rotating shoe racks. We had security cameras and intercom systems that could also listen in on conversations. In short, we needed to use our connections to ensure none of those details were gossiped about over lunch breaks between subcontractors. While my father was in a hurry to get back home, I couldn't find it in me to be as enthusiastic.
I met Gio at another abandoned location, this time in Harlem. We were trying our damndest to stay away from anyone’s radar, but sometimes I wondered if it was even necessary for the two of us if Dad was the intended target.
“Do you have anything new?” I asked him the second Roman and I stepped inside.
Gio turned from the wall to hand me a photo. “Do you know who this is?”
Frowning at him first, I then looked down at the picture. It was Alessandro Lombardi, the current head of their family, with his arm over the shoulders of another man. “Other than Lombardi, am I expected to know this guy?”
“Alex has been telling everyone in their operation that this new stranger is more than an ally. He’s a fucking big shot, according to them, and they’re making no secret of the fact they’re all to treat him as such.”
Looking down again, I tried to find something about him that would trigger acknowledgement. He had honey blonde hair, undetermined eye color, and was somewhere in his fifties. But the shape of his jaw rang some distant bell, and try as I might, I couldn't unring it.
“He looks incredibly familiar,” I murmured.
“That’s what I thought, but in what way? Why does he strike a chord?”
“I really don’t know, and that’s frustrating as fuck.” The urge to pace bugged me, but I pushed it back. Instead, I scooped a hand through my hair. “Have we been down the list of the usual suspects?”
“Yeah, I can’t find any record of his face anywhere. All the other made men and underbosses are accounted for, even in the Russo family.”
“Then why do I feel so strongly as if I know him?”
Gio shrugged. “Take this to your dad. Ask him the same questions.”
“I will.”
“And, for what it’s worth, I’m glad he’s doing better.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Even though it seemed as though God Himself had reached down from the heavens and cured him.
Before heading back to my father, though, I went by the hospital. I knew Sailor was trying to balance his care with her regular schedule, but I couldn't blame her for wanting to get back to work. I would go stir crazy with little to do during the day but check in on an old man.
