But Federico called to him: “I need a cop.”
“Yeah?” Valerio said. “Why do you think you need a cop?”
Federico scratched ferociously at his neck. “Girls in trouble.”
Valerio had been reluctant to listen at first. But Federico told him about two cargo trucks parked in a warehouse on the outskirts of Rome. They were part of Luca’s smuggling operation, he said, abandoned when the Rome network was compromised.
“Luca’s waiting,” he told Valerio.
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for the heat to die down. But it’s been two days. Fuck. Fuck. Those girls.”
“What girls?” Valerio pressed.
“You gotta get them out,” Federico insisted. “They’re gonna die in there.”
With dawning horror, Valerio understood.
By the time the police broke into the warehouse and opened the cargo containers, it was already too late for two of the women.
Of the seventeen women and girls they rescued, the youngest was thirteen.
Federico had assisted throughout the rescue and investigation and, battling for sobriety, had begged Valerio to lock him up. Instead, Valerio got him into a treatment center.
—
Valerio was nearly a block away when he heard footsteps and his name called.
Federico wasn’t wearing a jacket.
“What will you do?” he asked, rain glancing off his thick eyeglasses.
Valerio shrugged. “I’ve run out of time. I can’t allow Luca and his Ghost to hurt Gemma and Davide. I have to turn myself in—tell them what I know, and the part I played.”
“You think you’re safe with the police?” Federico exclaimed. “You won’t make it past the first night.”
“I trust the guys I work with,” said Valerio.
“Luca will shoot your family first,” Federico said. “To remind you of your mistake. You’ll be in jail, and can’t do anything to help them. He’ll keep you alive for a while to make sure you feel it. Then he’ll kill you, too. Painfully. To make an example.”
Federico’s eyes were wide with concern, his strangely large hands moving in the air, as if trying to unwrite this future.
“Tell me what to do, then,” Valerio said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Federico’s hands hovered before him, reaching for an answer. None came.
Valerio clapped the old man’s shoulder. “You warned me,” he said. “I should have listened.”
—
Giorgia answered the door in a housedress.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Are the kids here?” Valerio asked.
“Why should they be here? They have friends, don’t they?”
