Page 57 of Little Rabbit

“Maybe he kept them as insurance to use in case someone got scared and wanted to blab? Or to keep in touch with the families?” Alonzo suggests.

“What about the housekeeper?” I ask. “Anything odd there, or maybe taken?”

“The husband and a sister of hers that lived with them, were tied up in the kitchen and left to burn alive,” Dante replies tightly.

“That’s a message if I’ve ever heard one,” Lazaro remarks. “Could be the sister and husband were involved. This kind of thing, you need a network of people.”

Something clicks in my mind at that. The conversation I overheard Sienna and her parents have in the cabin in Scotland before I let them know we were there. “Wait, Sienna’s parents, they said they were connected via Sienna’s mother’s half-sister. The sister hated Sienna’s mother, but she knew they wanted a child so she arranged this for them. We need to find the half-sister and figure out how she plays into this. If we can get in touch with her, we might be able to find out some more information before anyone gets a hold of her.”

“It’ll take our men time to get that information,” Dante replies.

Lazaro pulls out his phone. After a moment, Aurelio’s voice fills the room. “Son, your timing is shit,” Aurelio grumbles.

We hear a soft giggle in the background and I can’t help but smirk. Lazaro and Alonzo roll their eyes. “You can get back to jerking off your old cock later,” Lazaro tells him drily. “We both know that no woman wants to be anywhere near that thing.” The woman on the other end laughs while Aurelio curses. “We need information, and we need it as fast as you can get it.”

We hear rustling. “Spit it out,” Aurelio orders.

“We need the name of Sienna’s aunt, her mother’s half-sister,” I tell him. “She’s the one who got Sienna to them in the first place, and it looks like Leonardo found the ring leaders. Killed them and their families.”

“And you think they’re going to go after anyone else that helped them,” Aurelio summarizes, and we can hear a door shut and keys clicking. “Got her.” Then he curses. “But so did someone else. Priscilla Mulder was found dead in her apartment, strangled, raped, and beaten. Place was ransacked but because she lived alone, police didn’t know if anything was stolen. From the looks of things they concluded that nothing was taken.”

“Fuck,” I hiss. I pull out my own phone and make a call to my men watching Sienna’s parents. “Get them to a safe location,” I order the head guard as soon as he answers. “There’s a good possibility they’ve been found out and someone is heading their way.”

“On it,” he promises. “I’ll let you know our location once we get there.” He hangs up, and I fight back the urge to run up and check on Sienna. This whole situation is a fucking mess.

“Do you think it’s safe to say she probably gave up all the information she had?” Dante asks. “And do we think she handled all the babies, if there are more, or just the one?”

“The smart move would be to have more than one person,” Alonzo suggests. “Less chance of being discovered if it’s different people each time. Could also explain why they had four different people involved in this.”

“That we know of. There’s no way that they didn’t have help from someone on the medical side. Someone who would have pronounced the baby dead and wrote out a death certificate or something so that no one would suspect anything,” Dante agrees.

“The De Luca’s regular doctor died of a stroke ten years ago,” Nico interjects. “So if it was him, he'd be of no use. And I doubt he would have kept records of what he did, other than maybe fake certificates.”

“Would Gia have ever heard mention of another child dying, or another baby girl?” Lazaro wonders. “Even in passing.”

“No,” a sleepy voice says from the doorway, and we all turn to see Gia standing there, looking exhausted but concerned.

“Topolina, what are you doing up?” Nico scolds gently, getting to his feet immediately and walking over to her. He scoops her up into his arms, and then carries her back over to his desk, sitting her on his lap once he sits back down.

“I woke up and you weren’t there, so I figured I should come and find you,” she says tiredly. “Probably good I did. Maybe I can help with this stuff.”

“Topolina, this isn’t something you need to worry about,” Nico tells her with a frown. “You should be sleeping. You don’t need to wear yourself out.”

“I’m fine, Nico,” she says dismissively, then looks at Lazaro, who’s grinning at her. “To answer your question, there was never a discussion about other daughters or other babies. And honestly, if it was all girls, I don’t think they would anyway. Girls aren’t important to them.”

“But they would be for marriages,” Alonzo reasons. “And wouldn’t a couple of babies dying be suspicious?”

Gia frowns thoughtfully. I don’t miss the angry glare that Nico shoots Alonzo and Lazaro, but they both ignore it. If Gia can help us and help us figure out answers faster, I’m all for it. Finally, she says slowly, “You’re right, and I do remember when I was younger my mother being very cross at times, or him calling her worthless for being unable to give him more sons after Matteo. But I think that’s because she was secretly taking birth control. When I was five, not long before she died, I found her taking a pill in the bathroom, and she screamed at me to get out, but then I saw through the crack in the door that she hid it in a box of tampons, which my father and brothers definitely wouldn’t have looked twice at.”

“And she never seemingly got pregnant when you were younger that you can remember?” I ask her carefully, ignoring the fuming glare that Nico now aims my way.

“No. I always remember her being slender, so something like that would have been noticeable. I can remember her from the time I was about four on, but can’t say anything about before that.”

“Okay, so probably a good chance that there are no more babies on her side. But when this first came up, Aurelio, you said that there were possibly four names. We found Sienna, so that leaves three, right?”

“Yes, but on further examination, one of the names looks to be unrelated, so we’re down to two,” Aurelio calls out.

“Okay, so two more. That would leave Giovanni’s wife, right?” Alonzo asks.

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