“Yes, sir. I’ll go ahead and make sure everything is ready for you. Do you want the cameras off in that room?”
“Yes, turn them off. Louis is in charge of the control room tonight. Let him know what’s going on.”
“Very good, sir.” Vito patted down his fluff of silver hair as he hurried from Nico’s office.
“Luca, you’ve got my back.” He stood, a brief image of Mia flickering through his mind. He still wanted her on this desk. Maybe when all this was done, he’d make every goddamned fantasy he’d had the first time she walked into his office come true.
“I always have your back.” Luca followed him out of the office. “I might not be able to stop you from making stupid mistakes, but I can promise you won’t face the consequences alone.”
“That’s fucking beautiful,” Nico said dryly, looking over his shoulder.
Luca grinned. “Kinda like me.”
TWENTY-SIX
“Jesus Christ, what a mess.” Jack stepped to the side of the porch as the paramedics carried Ginger’s body from the house. The forensics team had left a short while ago, and Ben had just been given clearance to go back inside.
Ben glanced over at the vehicle where Daisy was huddled in the backseat with her blanket. He’d made her promise to look at her storybook until he told her to lift her head. He didn’t want her last memory of her mother to be of the ambulance attendants wheeling a body bag out on a stretcher.
“I’m sorry, Ben.” Jack gave Ben an awkward pat on the back as they walked into the living room, where he’d found Ginger dead on the couch. Although they would have to wait for the autopsy results, the forensics team had been pretty certain she’d overdosed on the same tainted product that had recently flooded the streets.
“I feel bad that she’s gone and Daisy’s got no mom, but other than that she wasn’t anything to me. And I’m fucking pissed at Rev for giving her that tainted shit.” Ben shrugged Jack away. “Christ, Jack. If I’d put a bullet through him when I had the chance, this wouldn’t have happened. I still think something was going on with him and Daisy. The bastard deserved to die.”
“Don’t say that.” Jack stared out the window as the ambulance drove away. “You did the right thing. He wasn’t a threat to you or anyone else at that moment. And, he probably didn’t even know the drugs he’d bought Ginger were tainted. We’ve had a surge of calls about overdoses in the last few weeks from a lethal batch of drugs that came into the city—a toxic cocktail of fentanyl and other opiates. We had twenty-four overdoses in the first twenty-four hours, and the numbers are climbing.”
“Nico still hasn’t called me in.” Ben stepped back into the doorway. “But when he does, it’s gonna be the end of me.” The call in was a formal order for a made man to report to his superiors, usually so he could be disciplined—in other words clipped. Ben wasn’t made, but Frankie had used the terminology when he’d ordered him to stay in Vegas until Nico contacted him, so he figured the end result would be the same.
“The offer is still there to pull you out. You’ve got a little girl to think about and now she has no mom. I’ve talked to a judge and it’s a simple formality now for you to have custody. She can go with you wherever you go.”
Ben shook his head. “I’m not gonna be able to play happy families in suburbia when I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, sleeping with a fucking gun under my pillow, worrying about whether the guy across the street already washed his car yesterday, or whether that plumber’s carrying a wrench or an assault rifle. You run from the Mafia and they assume you’re guilty, so I know how that’s gonna end. One day, a Chrysler 300C pulls up outside the door, two guys run in, pop pop, I’m dead, and Daisy’s an orphan if they even let her live. What we talked about earlier is a better plan. Daisy stays with you and your wife, goes to the same school, sees the same friends, and I take my chances with Nico. If it turns out bad, I’ve got an aunt in Florida who says she can take Daisy.”
“How good are those odds if he finds out you’ve been undercover for ten years?” Jack turned back to Ben and folded his arms.
“He’ll only care about the three years I was in his crew,” Ben said, his watchful gaze on Daisy. “And I’m gonna let him know I didn’t rat on him. He never got involved with drug trafficking, Jack. No prostitution. No human trafficking. No arms trading. He runs a clean casino. I’m not saying he hasn’t crossed the line. I’m not saying he isn’t a criminal—he’s probably got one of the highest body counts in the city. And the things he’s done to the people that crossed him—well, they scare the shit out of me. But he’s fair, and there are lines he won’t cross. He’s not a fucking murderer like Tony, who kills just for the sake of killing. Nico’s a bad guy who only whacks bad guys. He’s no saint, but he’s no sinner either.”