The front doors open. My Escalade is already idling and ready, driver alert, engine low. Gino flickers through my mind, still zip-tied in my office, still breathing. I won’tneed him again. I usually handle my own messes, but today my plate is full.
"There’s something in my office that needs taking care of," I tell Gordon.
"On it, boss." No hesitation. Good.
I watch him disappear back inside, then climb into the SUV with Dre. The door shuts. The engine pulls us forward. War doesn’t announce itself. It just starts moving.
Dre tosses a compact at the driver; it looks like a black brick with a single switch. "Cyclops is live."
"Good." The little box will ride under the dash, talking to the city’s preemption grid like an ambulance would. Traffic lights see me coming and decide they’re green, and it also warns the driver of any cops lingering about looking for speeders.
The engine snarls. As the gate yawns and the night takes us, I hear my own pulse in the cabin. Not fast. Just… wrong. Who the fuck is this woman pretending to be my wife? Why is she beaten up and shot?
A light at the end of the block turns green before we’re close enough to see it. Then another. Then another. Nine blocks of silence while going ninety miles an hour with no sirens going in the distance. Dre finally cuts a look at me, dry as sandpaper. "Level with me, you ever been drunk in Vegas?"
"No."
"Drugged?"
"Not since I grew up."
He nods, then deadpans. "So we’re not dealing with a blackout chapel and a rhinestoned officiant named Earl."
"If Earl exists, I’ll kill him," I grunt out. My mind has been going through the same scenarios. But there is nothing. Fuck, I haven't even been on a date in years. Not since… Nico vanished. I've been too busy tracking down my little brother. People vanish every day, but not the son of a mafia capo. Not unnoticed, not without a trace. None except him.
The next intersection turns green like we own the grid. Which we do.
Dre scrolls, thinking aloud. "The ER cameras caught a frantic Uber driver; he's still being questioned by the cops."
"Set Mallard on it." Mallard is one of our assets. A homicide detective. This might be out of his jurisdiction, but there are ways to get around that.
"Done." Dre nods. "Her face is too beat up and swollen to go through facial recognition."
Fuck, but I already figured as much when Dre told me that someone did a number on her. But that's the beauty about swelling, sooner or later it goes down, and then I'll know who this piccola tempesta—little storm—is.
"So all we know is that her name is Ana," Dre sighs.
He's rattled, maybe more than me; otherwise, he wouldn't have overlooked the fact that Ana could be an alias.
He groans, realizing the mistake he made. I wave him off, "It’s not the name that matters. It's the word she used:temporale."
"Could Nico have ever…?"
"No." I cut that off so fast it sounds like an explosion. "He wouldn’t put our word in circulation. If she knows it, it’s becausehetold her to tell me. Which means either he’s breathing, or someone is puppeteering a dead man."
I drag my palm down my face. Years of not knowing. A sliver of hope, then anguish, then mourning, again, and again, and again. Always searching. And lately—yeah—I’d let other fires take the front seat. The Venezuelans. Edoardo. Raf. But I never stopped looking for Nico; I just wasn’t letting it eat me alive for a change. Now his name has surfaced, and it’s the same blade as day one. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt. It does. Exactly like the moment we realized he was gone.
Dre exhales through his nose, a humorless almost-laugh. "Outstanding. So tonight, we’re either picking up your unknown wife, your brother’s ghost, or a trap baited with family secrets."
"Uh-huh."
He tilts the iPad so I can see the ER diagram. "I’ll go in first and clear theroute."
"If it’s a setup, they’ll expect that," I say. "If it’s not, I’m not sending you to tell a woman wearing my name that I didn’t show."
He shuts the tablet, sees something in my face, and realizes he’d better not poke. "Copy."
We rip past a line of red lights that all blink obediently to green. Every time they change, I hear the doctor again:Tell him temporale.
