Page 23 of Stone

“You found Britta’s mom,” I muttered. “What else is there?”

“Well, unless you were intending for them to go into hiding again, I figured you’d want to know the identity of the boss.”

Fox and I gaped at him.

“We’ll need King’s leak to confirm it, but yeah, I found him, too.”

10

STONE

“Well?” I snapped when Deviant didn’t immediately give us the name.

“Tommaso Barone.”

“What the fuck?” Fox and I exclaimed at the same time.

“But…”

Deviant gestured to the computer screen. “The boss hides in plain sight. It gives him the edge because people will tell him things that they wouldn’t tell ‘the boss.’”

“That explains why they would be holding Marylin for him,” I observed, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I kept wondering why the boss would care enough to keep a hostage until Tommaso was released. Especially when he didn’t report directly to the boss.”

Deviant nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his hip on the desk. “It’s under his orders, although no one knows that.”

“How did you find this out?” Fox asked, his brow furrowed as he took in this shocking news.

“I followed the paperwork trail and noticed Portia’s name on most everything, but a few documents had Tommaso’s name. Atfirst, I thought it was because Portia was delegating, but then Grey pointed out that during the four months that Tommaso was incarcerated, another name replaced Tommaso’s. Elio Barone.”

My eyebrows rose. “His son?”

“Yeah. That got me curious about the car from Portia’s parking lot. It’s registered to Elio.”

I rubbed the back of my head and exhaled slowly as I sifted through all the pieces in my head. “I get that Elio is keeping Britta’s mom for his dad, but why has he been visiting the house so much?”

Deviant tried to keep his expression neutral, but I caught his slight wince and narrowed my eyes.

“I talked to King this morning. He finally brought the mole in for questioning.” Deviant pursed his lips together, then muttered, “Maybe he should tell you the rest.”

“You do realize that I’m seconds away from killing, right?” I seethed, my jaw clenched tight.

Deviant pulled his phone from his pocket and hit a button, then put it on speaker.

“King,” he answered.

“Tell Fox and Stone what you found out,” Deviant demanded.

King sighed. “You left the dirty work for me, didn’t you, asshole?”

Deviant snorted. “You’re not within shooting distance.”

“For fuck’s sake!” I shouted. “Somebody tell me what the fuck i going on!”

“We’ve been interrogating Tom—the prospect who gave up the girls—since last night. He admitted to sleeping with Portia and giving her details that gave away the location of Britta and her mom. He swore that was it and things were over, but he was obviously hiding something. Apparently, she’d ghosted Tom for a week, then suddenly showed up in…well, she seduced him, and he gave in.”

“They’d found Britta and taken Marylin,” Fox pointed out. “What else did she want from him?”

King was silent for a minute then muttered, “Britta.”

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