V
Each morning, I checked the mail for my visiting order, but each day I was disappointed. I started to think someone was messing around with it. X, as a remanded prisoner, should have been allowed extra visiting rights to someone who’d already been convicted, and I couldn’t help feeling like problems were deliberately being put in our way.
I called the lawyer, Joseph, and told him my concerns.
“I’ll get on it,” he said. “It’s his right that he’s allowed visitors, and you should have been allowed to see him by now. I’ll make some calls and hurry things along.”
“Thank you,” I said, before hanging up. I hoped someone wasn’t causing X trouble inside.
The buzzer to the gates of the house sounded and I checked the cameras. Dylan Ferrera was back. I noted how this time he’d chosen to use the intercom rather than letting himself in.
I wasn’t sure what his attitude would be toward me after last time. A part of me braced myself for any repercussions for shooting Vincent. Dylan could easily have called some friends together and come to the house for payback. But perhaps Dylan hadn’t been so friendly with Vincent after all. Maybe he figured I’d done him a favor.
I hit the button to open the gates, and in less than a minute, Dylan was walking through the front door and straight into my father’s office. He stopped beside the desk and turned to face me, his butt resting upon the edge, his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted to one side as he regarded me.
“Hello, Dylan. I hope you have some news for me.”
His lips twisted. “You know, Verity, it doesn’t seem right, you girls being here all by yourselves. You need a man to take care of you.”
I cocked my eyebrows. “Do you seriously think that?”
“Hey, I know you can handle yourself.” He pushed himself away from the desk and stepped in closer to me. “I’m talking about other things a girl can’t get on her own. Who’s keeping you warm at night?”
“I’m plenty warm, thanks. I don’t need a man for anything.”
Dylan was a good looking guy, but I wasn’t interested. It wasn’t just about X, though of course that was the main reason. I also knew that I needed to keep him down. If he thought he had a chance with me, I’d just be another broad to fuck and ignore. I needed to elevate myself higher than that.
“I’m sure that isn’t true. Everyone’s got their needs.”
“Now, now, Dylan,” I said, keeping my voice sweet. “Don’t make me shoot you, too.”
He froze at that. “You’re a crazy bitch.”
“You know who my father is. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
At the mention of my father, the flirty attitude vanished. “Have you heard from him yet? I tried his cell, but it was switched off.”
I shook my head. “No, but I wasn’t expecting to. I told you, he’s left everything in my hands. I was expecting him to be away for a while.”
“Why didn’t he discuss any of this with me?”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust you as much as you thought.”
“But he’d trust the daughter who was going to rat on him?” he snapped back.
I smiled sweetly. “Dylan, has it ever occurred to you that it was all bullshit, and something else entirely was going on? Maybe my father ‘forgave’ me because there was nothing to forgive.”
The expression on his face faltered. “That’s not what happened.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He would have told me.”
“Perhaps he thought you might try to undermine him.”
“What? On this deal he’s doing now? The one he’s going to be away for an indeterminate amount of time for?”
His tone was still sarcastic, but I could hear the doubt creeping in. Dylan didn’t want to believe me, but a part of him thought it was a real possibility.
“It’s a massive deal, one that could put him right on top, not just of New York, but of the United States. It’s going to take time, and the last thing he needs is you men constantly trying to contact him, flapping around like a load of old women who can’t handle anything by themselves.”
A twitch in his cheek, eyes narrowed. “I can handle things.”
“Yeah? Then start acting like it.”
He glared at me, and for a moment my heart stuttered, wondering what he was going to do, and if I’d underestimated him, but then his expression relaxed. This was a man who preferred to be taking the orders rather than making them, however tough he might be, and he obviously decided it was easier to wait for my father’s return than try to take me on, and deal with the consequences.
“Anyway,” I said, changing the topic, but hoping I’d put enough seeds of doubt into his head to stop him asking so many questions. “How have you gotten on with that other thing I asked you to do.”
He nodded with a single jerk of his chin. “Yeah, I’ve been looking into it.”
“And?”
“Harvey Baglione was killed at Tony Mancini’s house. There are numerous blood spatters, and obviously we don’t have DNA equipment like the cops, but we think if your father spotted the body, and decided to keep hold of it, he would have called in one of the cleaners. Those guys have special places they can hold onto corpses for a length of time, just in case it’s not a good time to get rid of it yet.”
“You got any idea what cleaner he would have used?”
His eyes narrowed again. “Why don’t you just ask him that?”
“I told you, I can’t bother him right now, especially not for something as trivial as this.”
“Finding a body don’t seem trivial to me.”
“Yeah, but getting someone out of jail isn’t something my father is going to want to be bothered with. I’ve already spoken to Joseph Monroe, and he’s working his side of things to get this guy out. We need him. He was doing some work for my father, and he can’t complete the job if he’s inside.”
“If he’s been inside, the cops are going to be watching him. Are you sure your father would want to keep him working when he gets out?”
I scoffed. “If we didn’t work with people who’d been inside, most of New York’s mafia would be out of business.”
My comment caused a smile to quirk the corners of his lips. “Okay, you have a point.”
I thought of something else. “Do we have anyone on the inside who might be able to have this guy’s back if he gets into any trouble inside?”
Dylan’s mouth twisted. “Not in that part of the prison. He’s being remanded, right? Most of the guys in there are just parole violations and are only serving a year or less. Doesn’t mean they’re not nasty sons-of-bitches, but the guys we have inside are all on longer terms.”
“Dammit.” Okay, that option was off the table, then. It was a shame. I would have liked to know X wasn’t on his own in there—not that I could really trust anyone.
I moved back to the topic of finding the body. “Okay, find me the cleaner you think my father would have used, and then you can take me to him.”
“I’m on it.”
I saw Dylan out, and turned to find Nicole standing behind me, nibbling at her nails, something that had become a recent bad habit of hers.
“You think he’s suspicious?” she asked.
“Yeah, he’s suspicious, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be suspicious of. He’s got no way of knowing the truth, Nickie. Try not to worry.”
I knew it was easier said than done. I worried all the time myself—about X, and the baby, and my sister, too. It was my normal frame of mind to worry about Nicole. She had barely left the house since we’d been back, except for the odd occasion when she’d come out with me to make visits to people my father used to know. I tried to encourage her to contact some of her old friends—the same ones she lamented about missing so much when we’d been in Witness Protection. Her whole reason for breaking our cover in WITSEC to Tony Mancini was that she’d wanted to come back to her old life here in New York, yet now she was back and our father was gone, she’d holed herself away like a little mouse. She told me this was enough, and that she only wanted to be here for me and the baby when he or she arrived, but I was concerned it wasn’t enough for her. She was eighteen years old, but she’d also recently lost a man she’d believed she’d loved, however brief their romance, so I told myself she was also in a period of mourning.
“Everything will be fine, Nickie. We just have to keep it together, okay?”
“Okay,” she replied, but from the way her teeth dug into the skin of her lower lip, I wasn’t so sure she would be.
***
I went to bed that night feeling as though I wasn’t doing enough to help X. I vowed I’d do better, and would get up early the next morning to figure out what more I could do. But when I woke, I’d already slept well into mid-morning, and Nicole was standing beside my bed, holding something.
“Vee, you got some mail.”
I sat up. “I did?”
No one knew I was here—at least no one official who’d want to send me anything by post. There was only one thing that I knew would arrive by mail. I took the letter from her hands and eagerly checked the official stamp on the outside. I tore the letter open.
Finally, it was here. My official notice allowing me to visit X in jail.