The rest is mine.
I dismiss everyone but two guards and Cesaro lifts his head with visible effort.
“Boss,” he croaks. “You don’t understand.”
I drag a chair across the concrete and sit in front of him.
“Then enlighten me.”
His laugh turns into a cough. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth when he lifts his head again. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Let’s start simple,” I say. “Who ordered Elizabeth moved? Because I know that didn’t come from you. You’re not smart enough to pull something like that off.”
His eyes dart away. One of the guards steps forward, ready to give him a little pain to make him focus.
I lift a hand without looking. “No. Not yet.”
I want him clear enough to know exactly when he seals his fate.
“Who ordered it?” I repeat.
Cesaro’s breathing roughens. For a second I think he’ll refuse.
Then he says, “Marino.”
Fran’s father. Fuck. Of course. I lean back in the chair, my expression giving away nothing, though rage goes black and cold under my ribs.
“Federico Marino,” I say.
Cesaro nods once. “He wanted the girl gone.”
“Why?”
His mouth twists. “Because he knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That you were already half-lost over her. And he suspected she could be pregnant.”
Because Cesaro was one of the only men who knew I had tampered with Elizabeth’s birth control.
The warehouse goes very quiet and my jaw flexes once.
Cesaro sees it and pushes on, because dying men are often stupid enough to think pain makes them brave. And, at this point, he has nothing left to lose.
“He said you’d destroy his status if she stayed. Said you’d humiliate his daughter. Said the only way to preserve the marriage was to remove the problem before you chose it over duty.”
I stare at him. Elizabeth was drugged and dragged out of her life because an old man was afraid of the truth before I had even admitted it to myself. He knew I loved her and he removed her from my life with the help of a man I trusted too much. The irony is bitter enough to choke on.
“And you agreed,” I say.
He gives a weak, ugly shrug that pulls at the bandage over his chest. “He paid.”
Of course he did.
“What did Fran know?”
That lands harder. I see it in the way Cesaro flinches.
