Page 26 of The Strength Of A Woman

The simplicity of his rationale gives me pause.

“They’d do that?” I ask with irony in my voice.

“I’m sure they’d do. And they did that.”

“What are you basing this on?”

“The timing.”

“It was an accident,” I argue, just to hear him elaborate.

“Asuspiciousaccident. We’re doing that for a living, Boss. You know how these accidents work.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I say, amused. “Still…”

I ponder a little longer.

It’s not like it’s never crossed my mind.

But there was so much going on.

My fallout with Stefano Varela.

The loss of money.

Giorgio Gallo's stepping in.

A chill zaps down my spine.

There was so much to coordinate, even without taking out Bianca’s second husband. That would be a little crazy and would imply extensive planning, if, in fact, it were true.

It would, though, feed into my suspicion that everything was part of a bigger plan, premeditated, not left to chance.

That’s creepy and unhinged and fits perfectly into this family’s dark history.

He’s still waiting for me to continue.

I fill my mouth with cake to buy some time and gesture with my fork.

“Seemingly, I was the lucky husband. I’m still alive,” I joke, moving the conversation in a different direction.

“You can say that twice,” he says with humor, and we both chuckle.

“They’re sick,” I murmur, no longer laughing. “And it’s not completely out of the question. If that’s the case, they might have something to do with Bianca and Xavier’s deaths as well.”

“The word is, you put a hit on them.’

I gesture at him dismissively.

“Let them say that. It doesn’t matter what they say. All that counts is what I know.”

In this line of business, guessing who put a hit on whom could easily be a full-time job.

Too many people are interested in taking someone out at any given moment that it’s really hard to tell who’s actually done it. Too many people benefit from it, which incriminates everybody.

That’s why it’s so difficult to establish who did what.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before that multiple people were involved in committing a crime.