Chapter 5 - Blood in the Snow
I did not ask Ciro the question in Vittorio's dining room.
I waited until we were in the elevator.
The doors closed.
The guards stood around us in a wall of black coats and deliberately blank faces.
Then I said, "Where were you?"
Ciro looked straight ahead.
"Lea."
"Where were you the night my father died?"
No one moved.
Even the elevator seemed to descend more quietly.
"With him," Ciro said.
The words emptied the air from my lungs.
I stared at his reflection in the mirrored wall.
"What?"
"I was with Enzo that night."
The elevator reached the lobby.
The doors opened.
I did not move.
Neither did he.
Saurin touched the control panel and held the doors.
"Everyone out," Ciro said.
The guards exited.
Saurin hesitated.
"Out."
He left too.
The doors closed again.
Ciro hit the button for the underground garage.
I folded my arms so he would not see my hands shaking.
"Start talking."
He looked older suddenly.
Not physically.
In the way a person looks when a memory has weight.
"Your father called me at 10:14 that night. He told me to meet him at an old warehouse near the river. I was twenty-three. He was one of the few men my father respected and the only one who had ever treated me as though I might become better than the family name."
I said nothing.
"He gave me the black seal. He told me the Compact was failing. He believed someone in the Vale organization and someone inside Lanza's circle were working together to undo it."
"Vittorio and Rafael's father."
"That was his suspicion. Not proof."
The elevator kept descending.
"He made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would protect you without bringing you into our world."
I almost laughed.
"That worked beautifully."
"No," Ciro said. "It did not."
His honesty stopped me.
He continued.
"We left separately. I followed him because I thought someone had followed me to the warehouse. Two miles from Lake Shore Drive, a black SUV came up behind his car. It rammed him once. Then again."
My throat tightened.
I had never been told that.
The official report had said Enzo lost control on wet pavement.
"I tried to get between them. The SUV hit me too. I spun into the median. By the time I got back on the road, your father's car had gone through the barrier."
The elevator stopped.
Neither of us moved.
"Was he alive?" I asked.
Ciro closed his eyes for half a second.
"Yes."
The answer broke something inside me.
"For how long?"
"Seven minutes. Maybe eight."
I looked away.
A concrete garage waited beyond the closed doors.
Somewhere above us, people ordered drinks and complained about room service.
My father had lived seven minutes after the accident.
For eleven years, I had imagined him alone.
"What did he say?"
Ciro's voice roughened.
"He asked whether you were safe."
My eyes burned.
"And?"
"I said yes."
"Was I?"
"At the time."
"What else?"
Ciro looked at me.
"He told me not to let you become collateral. He said if the Compact resurfaced, Lisbon was the place to send you because Lanza territory there was governed by old rules even their enemies respected."
"Then why did Rafael's father keep the letter instead of giving it to me?"
"I don't know."
"And why did you never tell me you were with Dad when he died?"
His face hardened with old anger.
"Because my father ordered me not to. The police had already been paid to call it an accident. If I came forward, Vittorio would know Enzo had trusted me with something. And if Vittorio knew that, he would look at you."
I pressed my lips together.
It made sense.
I hated that it made sense.
"You watched me bury him."
"Yes."
"You stood three rows behind me at the funeral."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"I was twenty-three and trying to keep my promise to a dead man while my own father told me silence was the only thing keeping his daughter alive."
His voice cracked on the last word.
Barely.
But it did.
I had never heard Ciro's voice crack.
I looked at him.
He was not asking forgiveness.
That almost made it worse.
The elevator doors opened.
Cold air rushed in from the garage.
Saurin was waiting beside the armored SUV.
I stepped out first.
Then I heard a woman's voice behind me.
"Leandra."
I turned.
Red coat.
She stood between two concrete pillars twenty yards away.
Same length.
Same deep crimson wool.
Same silver pin at the collar.
Her face was clearer than in the photograph.
Dark hair cut to her jaw.
High cheekbones.
Eyes fixed on me with an emotion I could not read.
"Down!" Saurin shouted.
The woman raised a gun.
Ciro hit me from the side.
Again.
I was beginning to resent how often being near him involved losing my balance.
A shot cracked.
Ciro fired back.
The garage erupted.
Guards moved between cars.
Tires screamed somewhere near the exit.
The woman in red disappeared behind a pillar.
Saurin shoved me toward the SUV.
"Inside!"
"Ciro—"
"Inside, Lea!"
Ciro was crouched behind a sedan, weapon raised.
A black van shot through the garage entrance.
Its side door opened.
Two masked men fired toward our guards.
I ducked instinctively.
Glass shattered.
Someone grabbed my coat from behind.
I spun.
A man in a hotel maintenance uniform had come out of the stairwell.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled.
For one second, panic emptied my mind.
Then training returned.
Not formal training.
The kind every woman learns in pieces because the world is what it is.
Heel down.
Elbow back.
Teeth if necessary.
I drove my heel into his foot and my elbow into his ribs.
He cursed.
I twisted free enough to slam the back of my head into his jaw.
He released me.
Saurin reached us two seconds later and put him on the ground hard.
"Car. Now."
This time I listened.
Ciro got in from the other side a moment later.
His coat was torn at the shoulder.
There was blood on his shirt.
My heart stopped.
"You're hit."
"No."
"You're bleeding."
"Glass."
"Let me see."
"Lea—"
I grabbed his tie and pulled him toward me.
Saurin looked very carefully through the windshield.
Ciro stared at my hand around his tie.
Then at my face.
I pulled his collar aside.
A shallow cut ran along his upper shoulder.
Not a bullet wound.
Air returned to my lungs.
"Fine," I said.
"I said fine."
"You say many things. It has reduced their market value."
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
The SUV accelerated out of the garage.
Behind us, the Halston disappeared into falling snow.
I did not realize I was still holding Ciro's tie until his hand closed around mine.
He did not remove it.
He simply held my fist against his chest.
The gesture was so quiet it frightened me more than the gunfire.
We did not return to the townhouse.
Saurin rerouted us to a secure apartment on the north side owned by one of Ciro's shell companies.
Rafael was already there when we arrived.
He had seen the enhanced security footage from the garage.
He was standing in front of a laptop when I entered.
His face was gray.
"What?" I asked.
He turned the screen toward me.
A still image showed the woman in the red coat looking directly at a camera.
Rafael sat down slowly.
"Her name is Sofia."
Ciro stopped behind me.
"Sofia who?"
Rafael looked at him.
"Sofia Lanza."
Silence.
"Your sister?" I asked.
He nodded once.
"She died nine years ago."
I looked back at the screen.
"Apparently not."
Rafael's hands clenched.
"Her car exploded outside Porto. We buried what they told us was left of her."
Ciro's eyes narrowed.
"Who identified the remains?"
Rafael went still.
"My father."
The room changed.
One more dead man.
One more lie.
One more thread leading backward.
Rafael stood so fast the chair tipped behind him.
"I need a phone."
"No," Ciro said.
"That is my sister."
"That is the woman who just tried to put a bullet through Lea."
"You don't know what she was trying to do."
"She raised a gun. I am familiar with the gesture."
Rafael stepped toward him.
I moved between them for the second time in two days.
This was becoming tiresome.
"She said my name before she fired."
Both men looked at me.
"And the first shot did not come near me," I continued. "It hit the concrete behind Ciro."
Ciro's expression hardened.
"You think she missed on purpose."
"I think a woman who has followed me for years and had access to my Lisbon address could have killed me before yesterday if that was all she wanted."
Rafael stared at the image of his sister.
"Then what does she want?"
My phone buzzed.
Every person in the room froze.
Unknown number.
A message.
ASK CIRO WHY HE NEVER FINISHED THE SENTENCE.
My face went hot.
Brin, who had arrived five minutes earlier and was reading over my shoulder, made a sound that was astonishingly inappropriate for the situation.
"Oh my God."
I turned the screen facedown.
Ciro's eyes narrowed.
"What did it say?"
"Nothing relevant."
Brin coughed.
Rafael looked confused.
Saurin looked like he suddenly wanted to be somewhere else.
Ciro held out his hand.
"Phone."
"No."
"Lea."
"Ciro."
Something almost dangerous passed between us.
Not the kind involving weapons.
Brin slowly backed toward the kitchen.
"I am going to make tea," she announced.
Nobody had asked.
I picked up my phone.
"Whoever has been watching me knows about yesterday in your office."
Ciro went still.
I saw him understand.
That meant the office had been compromised before the shooting.
Not just watched from outside.
Listened to.
"Saurin," he said.
"I'm on it."
Saurin left immediately.
I waited until the others moved away.
Then I looked at Ciro.
"Finish it."
He knew exactly what I meant.
"Not now."
"Absolutely now."
"Lea."
"If you walk past me one more time in that dress... what?"
His eyes darkened.
I stepped closer.
"What were you going to say?"
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, very quietly:
"I was going to say I would forget why I spent four years teaching myself not to touch you."
My heartbeat stumbled.
The entire world seemed to move one inch farther away.
"That was the sentence?"
"No."
"Then finish it correctly."
He stared at me.
"If you walk past me one more time in that dress," he said, each word measured, "I am going to stop pretending I do not want you."
I should have stepped back.
Instead I said, "That sounds like your problem."
Something in Ciro Vale finally broke.
His hand came to the back of my neck.
He kissed me.
Not politely.
Not carefully.
Four years of silence and seven years of restraint disappeared in one breath.
I grabbed the front of his shirt.
He backed me against the wall, then stopped himself so abruptly his whole body went rigid.
His forehead rested against mine.
"Tell me to stop."
I was breathing too hard to sound intelligent.
"Do I look like I want you to stop?"
"You look furious."
"I can be two things."
His laugh was barely there.
I had never heard that sound from him before.
Then Saurin's voice came from the doorway.
"I deeply regret interrupting whatever historic event is happening here."
Ciro closed his eyes.
I leaned around him.
"What?"
Saurin held up a tiny electronic device in a plastic evidence bag.
"We found the transmitter from your office."
Ciro straightened.
"Where?"
"Inside the base of Miss Moretti's desk lamp."
My stomach dropped.
"Who had access?"
Saurin's face went grim.
"According to building logs, three people besides maintenance. Me. Ciro."
May you like
He paused.
"And Rafael Lanza."
