“And if I'm going to be providing protection for your sister, then it's my concern too.” I lean back, mirroring his pose. “I can't do this job properly if I'm being kept in the dark. If you think there is someone within your ranks who may be coming after you or is aligned with an enemy, I need to know about it.”
Teresa folds her hands on the table in front of her. “There have been whispers for a while. Nothing concrete. But enough to make everyone uneasy.”
“Whispers of what?”
Vito’s expression hardens a fraction.
“Information got somewhere it shouldn't have,” he says.
I don’t move. “What kind of information?”
“The kind that doesn’t get guessed.”
“Vito,” Teresa sighs when he doesn’t elaborate. “Two weeks ago, a car was rerouted on an errand that only a very small number of people knew about. The route change had been made late. No one should have known about it, but someone did.”
I go still.
“What happened?”
“The vehicle positioned to force a stop,” Vito says.
“And?”
“The driver managed to get out of it.”
That is not the same as saying it was nothing.
“What was in the car?”
Vito holds my gaze. “My brother’s pregnant wife and child.”
I flip through my mental files. That would be Nico's wife, Erica, and their one-year-old daughter, Emma.
If you took the threat at face value, they wouldn't be considered principal targets, but close enough to cause harm or send a message.
Or maybe they were exactly the right target if someone wanted to test response times without attacking one of Luca's children directly.
“So you figured that someone on the inside leaked it.”
“Not yet, no,” Teresa says quietly. “There were suspicions, but what convinced everyone was what happened after.”
I look at her.
She says, “Three days later, one of the garages used to store vehicles specifically used for family transportation was accessed with the right code on the first try. No forced entry. No fumbling. Whoever it was knew which garage mattered and which code was current.”
That would do it.
Because codes can be changed. Patterns can be watched. But hitting the right one on the first try means somebody had current information from inside or from someone standing very close to inside.
“Anything taken?”
“No,” Vito says. “That’s the problem.”
I understand immediately.
It confirms that this wasn't a theft. It was a test.
Somebody seeing how far they could get. Somebody proving they could get close without taking anything, which means the point was not the garage. The point was the message.
