Chapter 8 - THE BURNER PHONE
The silence in the clinic lobby was absolute.
Rico didn't lower his gun, but his eyes darted from Dante to Clara. “What is he talking about?”
Clara stood frozen. The air in her lungs vanished. Agent Vale. The name echoed in her head like a funeral bell.
“Tell him, Clara,” Dante sneered, keeping his gun leveled at her. “Tell him why a broke waitress was suddenly assigned to work the VIP section of Il Stellino on the exact night Rico brought his son there.”
“I don't know what you mean,” Clara breathed, her voice shaking.
Dante reached into his pocket and threw a cheap, plastic burner phone onto the reception desk. It clattered against the emerald necklace.
“Fourteen months ago, Elena found out I was hiding my burned son here,” Dante said to Rico, his eyes filled with a desperate, tragic honesty. “She didn't blackmail me, Rico. She wanted to help. But when she accessed your father’s accounts to get the money, she found something worse. Your father wasn't just killing bastards. He was selling out the entire syndicate to the Feds to buy himself a comfortable prison sentence.”
Rico’s face tightened. “My father wouldn't deal with the FBI.”
“He did,” Dante insisted. “Elena found the contact number. She reached out to the FBI handler to try and negotiate immunity for you, Rico. To save you. But the old man caught her. He ordered the car bomb.”
Dante pointed to the burner phone on the desk. “I didn't kill your wife, brother. I tried to save her. I pulled Leo out of the car right before the old man’s detonator went off. I’ve been paying this clinic, yes. But I’ve also been holding onto that phone, waiting for the right time to expose your father.”
Rico looked at the phone, then back at Dante. “If that’s true, why burn my house down tonight? Why try to kill me?”
“Because of her!” Dante yelled, pointing the gun squarely at Clara. “I checked the call logs on that burner phone yesterday. The FBI agent Elena was talking to? His name was Marcus Vance. He died in a shootout six months ago. Clara Vance is his little sister.”
Rico turned slowly toward Clara. The shattered-ice eyes were back, but now they were aimed at her.
“Is that true?” Rico asked softly.
Clara felt a tear slip down her cheek. She looked at Rico, the man who had jumped out of a window for his son, the man who had trusted her.
“Marcus was my older brother,” Clara whispered, her voice breaking. “We grew up in foster care together. He joined the FBI to get us out. Six months ago, he was killed on a raid. The Bureau told me it was a random gang shootout.”
“She’s lying,” Dante spat. “The FBI sent her to Il Stellino to get close to you, Rico. She’s wearing a wire. She orchestrated the whole thing tonight to find the safety deposit box key.”
“I didn't!” Clara cried, taking a step toward Rico. “I swear to God, Rico, I didn't know the connection! I didn't know your father killed Marcus. The manager at the restaurant moved me to your section because the other waitress called out sick. I just wanted to help Leo!”
Rico stared at her. The betrayal in the room was suffocating. Every instinct he had built as a mob boss told him to shoot her. She was a fed’s sister. She was a liability.
“She’s playing you, Rico,” Dante urged. “Shoot her. We get the key, we expose the old man, and we take the empire back.”
Clara didn't beg. She didn't cower. She reached down, slowly, and pulled up the leg of her cheap black uniform pants.
Strapped tightly around her ankle wasn't a wire.
It was a man’s silver wristwatch. The glass was shattered, the metal stained with dried, six-month-old blood.
“When the police gave me my brother’s effects,” Clara said, her voice dropping to a fierce, unwavering whisper, “the watch was stopped at 11:42 PM. The exact time he died. I wear it every day because he was the only family I had left.”
She looked Dante dead in the eye.
“If I was working for the FBI, Dante, I wouldn't be living in a roach-infested apartment, eight days late on rent. And I wouldn't have thrown myself out of a second-story window to save a mob boss’s son.”
Rico looked at the bloody watch. He looked at the girl who had held his screaming son in a ruined dress.
May you like
He made his choice.
Rico raised his gun and fired.
