Page 38 of Tammaro DeLuca

DETECTIVE WALTER SHIELDS

Fired.

I threw all my stuff into a box as quickly as possible, but it still seemed to take forever. People stared. I was no longer one of the men in blue, and that shit stung. They’d taken my badge, gun, and my retirement. I was lucky they didn’t prosecute me for half the shit that they found on me.

Sure, I was obsessed with the DeLucas, but I wasn’t the first in history to take down the entire empire. Tammaro warned me that people were watching and this time, they’d caught me trailing the little girl, Amina. I guess I was getting too close to things, and somebody had to make an example out of me.

Well, I wasn’t finished. Now that I had the names of every DeLuca in Miami, I was going to tear their so-called dynasty to shreds. Starting with that fucking Tammaro. I’d worked hard to build up my retirement so that I could leave the force early and enjoy the rewards while I was young. I didn’t want to wait until I was nine hundred years old before I could travel out of this shitty city and know half the life that crooks like the DeLucas lived every day.

Getting to the car, I got in and put the box beside me in the seat. Since he had climbed into my car, I don’t leave the front seat empty any more. The motherfucker was huge, and I didn’t need that kind of fear in my life daily. Sure, I wanted to take them down, but that didn’t involve having them next to me. I wasn’t a fool to think that any of them were dangerous. I also knew that whenever they fell, it was going to take an entire army to take them in cuffs.

There was a knock at my window, and I damn jumped out of my skin.

“Sorry. You should look at this,” Lias said.

I rolled down the window to see a cop friend of mine holding a post-it with numbers on it.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked him.

“Your golden ticket. Somebody just got on a flight to go back to where they came from.”

And just like that, an idea formed. Since I wasn’t a cop anymore, I didn’t have to play it by the book. If he left the nest, that meant that there was trouble in paradise. It was back to the plan with…

“Stay close to your phone.” I instructed him.

“Will do.” He disappeared back inside, and I took off to go to that big ass mansion he lived in. It was time to find everything that I needed, and I knew it was in that house.

I pulled up to find that no one was home. I’d snuck in around the side where the neighbor’s house connected to theirs. Coming inside was too easy, and it made me think I was being set up. There wasn’t a camera in sight, and no staff inside. I walked around like I owned it and there was nobody to witness this shit.

How did people live like this? Expensive shit in their houses because it was Thursday. Maybe it was a side effect of not having anything growing up that made me value things more. Some of these rooms didn’t appear to even have been used. What was wrong with these people? Remembering why I was here, I made my way upstairs to the top floor where the bedrooms were located. The first two were empty. The next one looked like somebody had moved out in a hurry. Then there was the little girl’s room. I knew better than to search here. Most kids didn’t know that their parents were fucking criminals.

However, the main suite was up the hall. Inside I found only women’s clothing. There wasn’t a safe or an obvious hiding spot for important things. I found her panties. I knew lots of women kept important stuff in their underwear drawer. It was almost too neat to search, but the white envelope stuffed on the side was like a flag dangled in front of a bull. I opened it without regret and was surprised to find an annulment signed by Tammaro. The other side was blank but marked for Yolanda to sign.

Why hadn’t she? What was she waiting for?

The more important question was why was she hanging on to this? Was she blackmailing him? I put it back, but more questions formed as I searched her things.

Why hadn’t they slept in the same room? If he’d left, and the room down the hall was where he slept, that meant that there was a lot more going on than I knew. I didn’t like that shit.

You always had to be two steps ahead of them, fucking DeLucas, or you’d end up dead. Walking back into the hall, there was one room left over here. It was an office and across the hall from the master. The door was locked, but after jamming it, it opened like a can of confetti ready to party.

Papers were on the desk, thrown this way and that. Properties, estimates, and notes about remodeling. Everything here looked legit. Bank statements included deposits from renters and billables. There were no cash deposits or large withdrawals. A picture of Tammaro’s little brat was on the corner of the desk, and I put the picture down so I didn’t have to see the face of a little girl who would have to learn to lie to cover up her father’s secrets.

I searched the drawers and found typical office shit. Pens, blank paper, highlighters, paperclips, index cards, whiteout, and even thumb tacks. None of them had false bottoms or hidden boxes. Was he really running a legit business from here? I stood up in the center of the room, looking for something out of place. None of the pictures moved to reveal safes. There were no bookshelves or hiding places to store things. I tested the floorboards and found not one of them that moved.

Feeling crazy, I tried to move everything in here and nothing was revealed to me. What was I missing? I walked out of the office, needing to find something in this fucking place.

“Ma, I’ll be in and out. Cruz is downstairs waiting for me.”

I darted back into the office, closing the door enough where I could peek out and not be seen. His little brat was home, and she seemed to be alone. She entered her room and after she was all the way inside, I made my move. I went in and closed the door. She gasped, and I smacked her ass to the ground. This little bitch was the reason I’d lost my job. If her father wouldn’t have filed the restraining order, the higher ups wouldn’t have known that I was following the kids. She opened her mouth to scream, and I backhanded her. It’s not like she was the typical child who needed to be coddled. She was a spoiled brat whose father killed people for a living. She’d be fine.

“Where’s your father?” I asked her.

“You’re that cop from school and the salon.” She whimpered.

“Answer the fucking question.” I unbuckled my belt and pulled it from my jeans. “Tell me what I want to know or I’m going to give you the ass whooping you should have had growing up.”

“I don’t know where he is. He left and didn’t tell us anything.”

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