Page 118 of Power & Punishment

That and I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder every time I heard the door swing open, expecting Leo to walk through it. I even turned off my phone because I was waiting on his call like a thirteen-year-old girl.

If this is what being in love feels like, then I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

“It’ll work,” Keith says, setting down his bag and taking out his laptop with a loud clunk. "But I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. I’m still coming up empty. Adrian Moretti is clean as a whistle, and our other suspect is dead. Are you sure Leo is⁠—”

“He’s innocent,” I snap, cutting him off. “You can’t find anything on Adrian’s connection to the Carusos?” I ask, quickly changing the subject while writing a big question mark on the whiteboard under Marco Bellini’s name.

Keith exhales, sliding a metal chair across concrete, making my ears cringe. “I can’t find anything official. No shared shell companies, flagged transactions, or mutual associates that aren’t already public knowledge. If your gut is right, he’s going to be hard to pin down.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and stare at the board, feeling my vision go blurry from looking too long. “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.”

I tap my marker against my side as I scan the mess of names, arrows, and half-formed theories that will never hold up in court.

I was able to piece together some things based on Vince’s files Alice sent me and the stuff he compiled for Leo before he died, but they’re messy and barely legible.

“Walk me through what you were able to dig up,” I ask, tossing my hair over my shoulder.

He nods and starts rambling off things I already know, but I lock in on the new information. “Any property records tied to Marco Bellini went cold a few years after he died in that warehouse fire. The body was never recovered, but⁠—”

“Wait, what?” I ask, almost snapping my neck.

“The body was never recovered?” he says again, but this time as a question.

I turn back to the board and feel my pulse picking up again.

“Would it be crazy if—” I stop midsentence, my eye drifting to the corner of the board. There’s a small note from Vince’s files. The first time I saw it, I thought it was gibberish.

“Keith,” I say, stepping back. “What if Marco Bellini never died?”

He blinks. “That’s insane.”

“Maybe not,” I say, turning back to him. “My family started out in the counterfeiting business. They’d make fake products like purses or clothes, but they also did IDs and other shit that could be used to create a new identity.”

Keith’s expression slowly morphs from disbelief to plausibility. “You’re saying Bellini faked his death and what…became someone else?”

I nod, turning back to the board. “It makes sense,” I explain, feeling focused and reenergized for the first time in a long time. “He died a few days before his arraignment, and the case against him was ironclad. He would’ve been in prison for the rest of his life.”

Keith leans forward, resting his chin on his hand. “How did he walk away? Surely, someone recognized him. His mugshot would’ve been blasted out across the city.”

I tap on Vince’s note on the board: Check shipment routes from 2006

“My family moved things that people didn’t want traced. No customs, paperwork, or questions. That could’ve been his way out undetected.”

“Do you have the logs? I can look at the ones that happened before the fire.”

I nod, tossing him the flash drive that Vince left behind. Technically I stole it from Leo, but I don’t feel guilty about it now. If anything, I want to rub it in his face that I caught something he didn’t.

Keith goes to work, plugging in the flash drive and typing away on his keyboard.

After a while, he murmurs, “Most of this is junk, but maybe this—there. I think there’s a gap right here,” he explains, turning the screen toward me. “Does three days sound off to you?”

“Yeah,” I say, my pulse hammering against my skin. “What left before that gap?”

He pulls the screen back toward him and scrolls down. “Looks like there was one truck, but no record of cargo or a driver ID.”

It’s a crazy theory. A fucking long shot at this point. But it’s the first time I feel like I am onto something, and I can’t ignore it. “Can I see his mugshot?”

“Sure,” Keith says, quickly pulling up the photo on his laptop and sliding it to me.