“Get to Twenty-eighth Street. We’ve had a sighting of Cruz at a physical therapy clinic.”
I instantly take off running with my men hot on my heels. It would take too long to drive the five blocks, and it sounds like time is of the essence. “You should have fucking led with that!”I shout into my cell. “I’ll call you when I get there,” I say before hanging up.
Thanks to daily workouts at my home gym and regular jogs through Central Park, I make it to the clinic in six minutes without breaking a sweat even in suit pants and dress shoes. Police tape wraps around the front of the building, and several cops stand guard, holding the inquisitive crowd back. Reporters aren’t on the scene yet, but it won’t take long before someone shows up.
Spotting a familiar face, I jog over to Captain Hayes, glancing all around me for any sign of Cruz. It’s a busy Saturday, and the city is crowded. I’m guessing if Cruz was here he has since slipped away.
“Hey,” I greet Captain Hayes. “What happened here?”
He scrubs a hand over his smooth-shaven chin. “Nothing good.” He pulls up the tape. “Come on, I’ll show you.” We duck under the tape, walking toward the covered body lying on the sidewalk just beside the door of the physical therapy clinic. A stroller is pitched on its side, baby toys spilling onto the asphalt. A sense of dread washes over me as the dots quickly connect in my head.
“She had no ID,” the captain says, ensuring no one is looking as we hunch over the body, shielding it from prying eyes. He pulls back the top of the covering to reveal the dead woman underneath.
“Shit.” It’s as I feared. “Her name is Bettina Da Rosa. I’m guessing her baby was taken?”
Captain Hayes re-covers the body, and we stand off to one side, away from the crowd, to talk in hushed tones. “Yes. Tell me what you know.”
“Cruz DiPietro is the father. He did this. We had reports of a sighting. Don’t suppose any of your guys got a look at him or saw the direction he went in?”
He shakes his head. “The perp was long gone by the time we got to the scene. The receptionist at the clinic called it in. Miss Da Rosa was a client, and she’d just left after an appointment when a car pulled up to the curb and fired at her. She was shot where she was standing. A man jumped out of the car and grabbed the baby.”
“Did the receptionist give a description?”
“Yes, but she was in too much shock to give us much. All she could say was he had dark hair, looked to be late thirties or early forties, and he had a limp.”
If the situation wasn’t so grave, I’d laugh and fist pump the air. Gia got the bastard good. “Definitely Cruz.” I look around, scowling when I spot a couple of news vans pulling up. “I’ve got to get out of here. Keep this contained. We’ll handle telling next of kin, and we’ll find the bastard. If you get any leads on his whereabouts, call it in.”
“You can count on it, Don Accardi.”
“Good man.” I clamp a hand on his shoulder and disappear through the front door of the clinic. I approach the front desk where a traumatized older woman is talking to a lady policewoman. “You got a back door?” I ask, removing my cell to call my brother with an update.
“Did we get any leads from surveillance cameras?” I ask a few hours later when we are all congregated around the conference table at Commission Central. Volpe and Mantegna are dialed in from Florida and Vegas respectively.
“We were able to track him leaving the city, but there are a few camera black spots, and we lost him after that,” Ben says, pressing a button to pull up a report on the large screen.
“Motherfucker,” Cristian growls when his brother’s image loads on the screen. There are cameras all over Fifth Avenue, so we have a perfect view as he hops out of a blacked-out SUV and hobbles across the sidewalk. Bettina is bleeding out on the ground, blood bubbling from her mouth, but he doesn’t even look at his baby mama, making a beeline for the stroller. We watch in tense silence as he snatches his five-month-old son and cradles him to his chest, limping back to the car with a smug grin. Before he climbs inside, he thrusts his middle finger into the air.
“His arrogance is astounding,” Agessi says. “To pull this off in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas on a Saturday is either ballsy or reckless.”
“Where were her bodyguards?” Joshua asks, claiming the attention of every man around the table. “Don’t look at me like that! She was my past. I wouldn’t have wished her to die like this, but that’s as far as my concern extends. I want to know where her protection was?”
Although Cruz had shown little initial interest in his newborn son—before he took off after the battle in February—we still suspected he’d come for him. It’s why Massimo personally spoke to Bettina’s father and demanded she move to one of the high-securitymafiosoapartments and accept protection. She wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without her assignedsoldati.
“Captain Hayes called an hour ago. They found the four men’s bodies in a dumpster a block away,” Ben explains. “I’m not sure how Cruz lured them away from their posts outside the clinic, but they all received a call at the same time and then took off.”
“Fucking imbeciles,” Fiero says.
“Someone got to them.” I tap my fingers on the table.
“And Cruz took them out before they could talk,” Pagano adds.
“We didn’t weed out all the traitors,” Cristian says over a sigh. He has taken this hard. None of us had any love for Bettina, but killing a young mother in cold blood, in broad daylight, in front of her baby, is evil personified.
“Keep the surveillance going within yourfamiglie,” Massimo instructs. “And continue to build loyalty on the ground. We will weed out the last few rats.”
“This seems very coincidental the same week Puccinelli identifies himself and requests a meeting,” I say.
“He told me he has broken ties with Cruz, and I’m inclined to believe him,” Massimo says. “But we can’t rule anything out. It’s possible he’s lying.”
