“Whereiseveryone?”
“Once the police were called in an hour ago, they suggested that members of, well, someorganized crimegroup might have abducted you, so they set up, along with everyone else, upstairs.”
Upstairs. The boardroom is there, plus a bunch of meeting rooms. “He really made the whole firm work on finding me?” I ask slowly.
“He really did.”
That’s not good. Forsomany reasons. Not the least of which is, I don’t need anyone demanding to know my whereabouts today, and certainly not the goddamn NYPD. I look at my phone, which is still angrily buzzing with the occasional incoming message, all of them demanding to know where I am and if I’m okay. Miranda was right. I picked the wrong day to turn my phone off.
Correction:Nick Fucking Fontanapicked the wrong day to turn my phone off.
Chapter Nineteen
Carlo
Miranda and I go up a floor together and as soon as the elevator doors open I can hear the hum of activity, a little beehive of workers scurrying to and fro. It takes more than a second for anyone to notice me, and I make it halfway to the conference room before the noise stops and turns into whispers and dark looks.
Can’t blame them. Half these people are already staggering under their caseloads, and taking an hour off to search the city for my ass will put them more than just an hour behind. For some of them it will mean missed deadlines, skipped meetings, angry clients.
From the receptionists up, the staff of Bianchi and Associates is gathered here. All of them are on phones, landlines or cells, calling on people, using up favors, scribbling down notes. In meeting rooms, in the open spaces, at desks:allof them are focused on my whereabouts, and I’m nervous to see some whiteboards which have mentions of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens…all places Nick dragged me to today. Most of them have question marks next to them, thank God. The working theory seemed to be that I was still in Manhattan.
Not one of them reacts like Miranda did. There are no gasps of relief, just blank acknowledgement of my presence and a gradual silence filling the floor as everyone turns to look at me. But then, I’m not what you’d call a popular guy in the office. People tend to avoid me, suck up to me, or hate me, and all three reactions are tied to my last name. I get treated like the slightly-less-scary Bianchi, but not less scary by much. And the truth is? They all know I’m twice as good as even the best of them.
And on top of that, I make it lookeasy.
None of them have seen the work that goes into putting on that face for their benefit, the two-hours-sleep-per-night for weeks at a time, the absence of friends, of social activities. One of the reasons I hook up casually and often is because I crave human company but don’t have time for a relationship. Some of these people here are married. Some of them havekids. Fucking amateurs.
So I don’t care that no one’s particularly glad to see me, except maybe my personal legal secretary and my team, who probably just didn’t want to have to deal with a crushing extra workload if Ihadbeen taken out.
I look back at the faces looking at me. Everyone’s waiting for their cue. “I’m afraid your time has been wasted. All of you can go back to your usual work.” They’re slow to obey, some of them glancing at the boardroom door as though uncertain whether my father might have something different to say on the matter. But when I add, “Go!” in a loud, echoing voice, they begin to scatter.
Miranda alone ignores the directive. “Come on,” she snaps, brushing past me to throw open the boardroom door.
It’s just as packed and busy inside as it was outside, only here we have what looks like half of New York’s finest standing around, plus every private investigator Bianchi and Associates has on the books. They all look up and, again, fall silent at my entrance.
“Mr. Bianchi,” Miranda says proudly, like she found me herself, “Here’s Carlo. He’s okay. He’s fine.”
My father, who looks like he’s been in the process of dressing down a police detective—the belligerent look on her face is a dead giveaway—glares across the room at Miranda, outraged at the interruption, and then looks past her to see me.
I’m not sure what I expected from him, but all he does is roar, “Everybody out!”
On her way past me, the detective—Garcia, the same one I saw just the other day when I was representing Nicky, so that’s not great—gives me a look that should shred my insides. I give a polite nod back to her.
Miranda’s still standing there next to me until Papa turns those rage-filled eyes on her, and I figure she’ll scram. But she doesn’t. She does step away closer to the door, but she stands there like she’s planning to be a witness, and I’m actually grateful for it.
My father points at her, clicks his fingers at her like she’s a dog, and snaps, “Out.”
I glance over my shoulder at her. She’s looking at me, waiting for me to give the word. “It’s fine,” I tell her quietly. Papa and I watch her go, and I’m left with faint admiration that she ignored my father so utterly and completely.
Papa, predictably, is unhappy about it. “That conniving little—” he starts, and I hold up a hand.
“Forget about Winter. What the hell is going on?”
My father stays right where he is, staring at me from across the room. I spread my arms. “So here I am, Papa. Safe and sound. Not sure why you’ve turned the firm upside down to look for a fully-grown adult who turned his phone off for the day, but all’s well that ends well.”
He comes around the end of the massive conference table, walks slowly to me, and then strikes me, hard, across the face. “Where thehellhave you been?” he growls.
I put a hand to my face, rubbing to take away the sting. “Doing my job,” I tell him. “And don’t ever fucking hit me like that again. I’m not a child anymore, Papa. I can hit back now. Understand?” His hard expression wavers, so I press the advantage. “What exactly happened here to make you lose your mind like this?” I demand. “Everyoneredirected to looking for me? Thecops? You think Luca D’Amato’s going to enjoy hearing we invited them in here?”
