My heart pounds against my ribs. I set my coffee down; afraid I might drop it.
“Who was it?” I mutter, trying to catch my breath.
“We believe it was Lucia Gallo,” Detective Ingram says, turning thetablet toward me.
I swallow back the lump in my throat as I stare at the image. It’s a woman with a dark coat and a hood over hiding her face. She is wearing high heels.
“Heels. That’s the noise that was going over and over in my head. But are you sure it’s this Lucia woman?” I ask as acid burns in my chest. “I don’t even know her.”
She nods. “Yes, the person walking toward you from the car and back again was definitely a woman. And we believe that the woman was Lucia Gallo. We believe your hit and run was a case of mistaken identity. Because we now have proof that her father, Eduardo Gallo, had paid for an assassin to find and kill your sister Aurelia.”
A gasp escapes my lips. I turn and stare at Dom. “The car bomb. It was my sister who was targeted?”
The detective answers, “Unfortunately. I’m waiting for Eduardo to show his face to question him, as we believe he was involved because of the assassin he hired, but he seems to have disappeared, along with the assassin.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Dom says, his voice deadly calm.
“But why was Lucia targeting my sister?”
“I can give a good theory on that,” Dom says. “She was supposed to be the one who married my son, Dante.” Dom stares at me. “At least that means you’re safe.”
I nod, staring at the floor.
“Did Lucia or Eduardo kill my mother?” My eyes lift and I lock eyes with the detective.
“That’s something else I have news on. We’ve taken Mayor Anderson into custody. We believe your mothertried to blackmail him and…” She stares at me, her eyes narrowing slightly as if trying to read my reaction. “Can you tell me why we found photos of you and Anderson having dinner?”
My spine straightens. “It was lunch. Mom was a good friend of the mayors, and she organized for me to have a meeting with him to discuss my future. She wanted me to go into politics.” I shift uncomfortably in my seat, feeling the weight of Detective Ingram’s scrutiny.
“At a lunch meeting?” Her tone is skeptical, one eyebrow raised.
I laugh, though it comes out more nervous than I intended.
“She was there too…my mother. I never met him alone...never.” I lean forward, my heart racing as pieces start connecting in my mind. I stare at her for a moment and whisper, “Did the mayor kill my mom, or was it Lucia?”
Her expression gives nothing away as she writes some notes in her notepad, then shuts it with a definitive snap and says, “That investigation is ongoing, but what you’ve just told me will be key to solving it.”
Caleb left the house early this morning, leaving me alone with Dom, who’s been looking at me suspiciously. Or am I being paranoid?
The detective’s visit has left me shaken, but Dom’s already informed me that despite the detective being evasive about the mayor, according to Dom’s sources within police circles, the mayor was in custody and facing imminent charges for Helena’s homicide.
According to his informant, the mayor had attempted to coerce Helena into divulging information about Dom, but she’d flipped the situation by using the photographs of us having lunch against him, suggesting an illicit affair behind his wife’s back. And now Dom believes he was the person trying to blackmail me.
The mayor is refuting everything, naturally, because it turns out hewashaving an affair, but withmy mother. But that was with the intention that his ultimate goal had been to undermine Dom’s position.
He used her, and she used me.
“Neither the mayor nor Lucia tried to kill you, did they?” Dom’s deep voice takes me out of my musing.
I gaze at him as he sits across from me, his piercing blue eyes studying me with an intensity that normally thrills me but today terrifies me.
I offer him a cryptic smile. “I couldn’t say.”
He grasps my hand, guiding me to his office where he seats me in his chair behind the desk. He gestures around the space. “No cameras point toward my seat. Now speak freely.”
“Disable the surveillance and then I’ll talk.”
His lips curve upward. “You don’t trust me.”
