Stephanie
I wake up to some stark words waiting for me on my cell phone. We need to talk. Now. Meet me at my office.
It’s Bryan.
It’s not even six AM and the text messages came in an hour ago. He either got up insanely early or was up all night working on this.
Already, I’m feeling a surge of nervous energy and I get dressed as quick as I can.
Bryan’s company, IdentaLock, is based out of some brand-new six-storey office building in downtown Arroyo Falls. There’s hardly a soul in the lobby when I get there, except for a night security guard just leaving his shift and a janitor. Which isn’t much of a surprise considering it’s hardly even six thirty in the morning.
Bryan’s waiting for me, pacing back and forth in the lobby.
“You need to see this,” is all he says, the words exploding out of his mouth before he turns around and starts towards the lobby elevator.
“What is it?” I say, once the doors shut on us.
“This is serious, Stef. You are not safe. I looked up his brother, like you asked, and went through a couple back channels to run some checks into his background, look up any police records, and such. It’s all complicated stuff. But I got the results back early this morning, since some of the records I requested were actual hard copies on the east coast.”
“And?”
The elevator doors open to the fifth floor and he leads me at a frenetic speed to his office, a small windowless closet not far from the elevators.
“Read it for yourself.”
His computer’s already on and I sit down at his desk and start flipping through the information on the screen.
None of it’s good. Nothing is even close to good.
I feel sick.
“You’re sure this is his brother?”
Bryan nods. “Date of death matches up. Location matches up. Name matches up. It’s him.”
“And you’re sure he was a suspect in all of these murders?”
There’s a horrifying amount of case files on my screen.
He gives an exasperated sigh. “Stef, IdentaLock does background checks for Arroyo Falls PD and most of the other police departments in this part of California. We’re tied in to a lot of the databases. It’s him.”
There’s so much of me that doesn’t want to believe the proof on the screen in front of me — that Luca’s brother is a suspect in a score of gang-related murders in New York and is named as a killer for the Durante Mafia family — but there’s a part of me that knows it’s true.
“There’s more,” Bryan says, with a self-satisfied note in his voice, and he leans in to hit a few buttons on the screen. “I kept digging.”
What I’m looking at changes. Instead of reading about Nicolo Moretti, I’m looking at report after damning report about Luca.
Killer.
Criminal.
Liar.
There are so many bodies. Enough to match up to that crude tattoo I saw on his back.
“You looked up Luca, too?” My voice comes out hoarse, strangled.
I’m upset, even though I knew he’d do this very same thing. How could he not?
“Of course I looked him up. I wanted to be sure.”
Even though everything I’m reading confirms what I’ve suspected, there’s a part of me that wants to deny it.
I don’t think my heart can handle this. It’s too crushing.
“None of these say that he was ever convicted of anything…”
He sighs again. “Stef, there’s almost two dozen police reports on murders alone that list him as a suspect. Including this one…”
He his a few more keys and another tab opens. This one lists both Nicolo and Luca as suspects. It happened nearly a year ago. Right around the time of his brother’s death.
I read it over.
I can only get part way through, just past the names of the victims and their ages, before I have to stop. It’s too much.
“This can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“But a woman? And her kid? Bryan, every other victim is a gangster or someone else mixed up in crime. Why would they do this?”
“He’s a murderer, Stef. That’s all you need to know.”
The room feels tight, like with every blink the walls close in further and further, and I’ll be trapped here until I suffocate, facing the awful truth that I happily hopped into bed with a despicable killer.
My stomach heaves. I fight to keep it down.
“You’re in real danger, Stef. You have to get out of town.”
That jolts me and I look back at him over my shoulder.
“Leave town? I can’t just leave dad. And what about the shop?”
“What about the shop? Look, I know you and your dad are having trouble with it right now or whatever, but losing out on some business is better than losing your life.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that simple, Bryan. I can’t just leave. Besides, there has to be more than what’s here. I know him, I know he can’t have done this.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. For once, I don’t feel like he’s trying to hit on me. For once, he feels just like a friend.
“It is that simple, Stef. You need to get somewhere safe. Look at who he is, look at what he’s done. And who knows what he’s involved with right now? If you don’t get out, soon, you’re going to get really hurt.”
I stare at the screen, and, without thinking I get up and head for the door. The weight of everything I’ve done, everything that’s wrong with my life, is crashing down on me at this very moment.
I’m used to pressure situations; working in the ER, I’d deal with the crazy practically every single shift and twice as much around any holiday. But this? I don’t know how to deal with this shit. No one should ever be in the kind of situation where they even have to learn how to deal with this kind of nightmare.
“Where are you going?” Bryan calls out from his office as I take off sprinting down the hall to the elevators.
I don’t answer. I don’t look back.