Page 60 of Consumed By the Mafia

Silva shifted his glare to her. “Don’t pretend you’re anything more than some cleaned-up street whore. I bet you made that stupid badge with one of those 3D printers.”

She choked on a laugh. “Seriously?”

Ryoma sat back. “No one accused him of earning his position because of his cunning intellect.”

“You filthy—”

Abigail smacked her palm on the table to cut off the crap spewing from Silva’s mouth. “You know what? You can believe my credentials or not. That doesn’t matter.” She reached behind her and pulled out her gun, setting it with the barrelaimed in Silva’s direction on the table. Well out of his reach, of course. It wasn’t a tactic she’d ever have employed in an official interrogation, but since this wasn’t one, that hardly mattered. “I bet you believethis.”

Silva’s eyes widened and he stared at the gun for a long second before forcing a scoff. “You expect me to believe you went to all this trouble just to shoot me?”

“No,” Abigail said. She left the gun to rest at her elbow and threaded her fingers together. “I hauled you in so we could have a nice, long chat. You have information that both mine and Ryoma’s employers are highly interested in, and you’re going to cough it up. That’s the only way you get themercyof jail time. Am I clear?”

“You—” Silva’s eyes snapped between the two of them wildly, as if he couldn’t hold on to a thought long enough to settle. Several seconds passed and he swallowed heavily. His fingers curled again into tight fists and the chain of his cuffs rattled. “De Salvo has fuckingfederalconnections?”

Ryoma cocked his head. “You assumed we didn’t?”

Abigail bit back her smile. He said the words so smoothly she almost wondered if they hadn’t exaggerated their lack of inroads in the FBI. It ought to have been concerning.

“I thought you were just fucking her,” Silva said, lips curling again in distaste.

“Yes,” Abigail said tightly, “you’ve made that abundantly clear. What you fail to grasp is that this has nothing to do with who I may or may not be sleeping with, or my sexual preferences at all. This conversation has everything to do withyour bad choices. We wouldn’t be here if you’d been loyal.”Or even a better actor.

Silva’s eyes blew wide and he lurched forward. “Mybad choices? What fucking bad—”

“Coughlan,” Ryoma said firmly. “We know you’re in league with him, you disloyal little fucking rat, and you’re going to tell us everything. Including where and how to find him.”

Silva dropped back into his seat and furrowed his brow. Sweat reflected off his forehead. “I don’t recognize the name.”

Ryoma drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Don’t play that game with me.”

Abigail watched Silva’s chest rise with a deeply drawn breath and a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face. She watched another denial build in his eyes. She pulled out her phone and opened the picture Mikey had previously forwarded back to her at her request. “Let’s skip that bullshit, shall we?” She tapped the screen, emphasizing the man who’d put hands on her. The man Silva had been meeting with outside the bakery the morning all this had gone off the rails. “You and I both know you were meeting with this man that day, andyouwere the one who called him by name. So let’s not play stupid.”

Silva’s eyes dropped to the photo and he paled. “I didn’t,” he said, almost in a whisper. “I definitely didn’t….”

“‘Bren,’” Abigail repeated. “As in Brenden Coughlan. Not a hard leap to make.”

Silva’s Adam’s apple bobbed in a moment of heavy silence. “Brent! His name is Brent.”

Ryoma scoffed. “Right. An abusive, bastardIrishman with no fear of the law and a name that starts with ‘Bren’, who alsohas mob-like affiliates and is taking action in De Salvo territory. But we’re supposed to believe it’s not Brenden Coughlan.” He leaned forward and his tone dropped, darkening. “You threw in with the wrong family, Rod. This is your last chance to save yourself.”

The anger returned to Silva’s eyes and he glared right back at Ryoma. “Like I’m supposed to believe you’d let me live at this point, no matter what I say.”

Abigail looked up even as Silva spoke, realizing she’d heard the door open, and her eyes widened at the sight of the one De Salvo she hadn’t yet come face-to-face with stepping into the room. This was a curveball she hadn’t anticipated.

Romeo De Salvo narrowed his eyes at her briefly but quickly swept his glare out toward their captive. “You’re not seeing the big picture, Rodrigo,” he said, drawing everyone else’s attention.

Silva’s head snapped up, his eyes again going wide and his face draining of all regained color.

Ryoma also straightened, flattened his hand on the table, and pushed to his feet. He stepped aside and pulled his vacated chair out in offering, moving to stand centered behind the table. The position looked like unity and subservience, but somehow it felt like a different kind of statement to Abigail. Like he was keeping himself close to her.

Instead of sitting directly at her side, Romeo dragged the chair toward the far side of the table before lowering into it. He sat at an angle, leaned an elbow on the table, and coldly, “It’s not about whether you live or die. We all know that. It’s about how much blood you owe.” He stared across the table with ahard frown. “This isn’t the sort of betrayal we can ignore. It’s not a betrayal that’s settled with your measly little death. If you don’t put some effort into making things right, we might have to wipe a few more Silvas off this earth. You don’t want that. We don’t really want that.”

Abigail felt something in her chest constrict.Is this what working with the mafia looks like?Coming at the men who did the crime was one thing. She was learning she could live with that. But innocent associates? She flashed back to Mrs. Silva running toward them, saying something that looked like ‘lawyer.’ Maybe the wife was aware of some things, had some degree of knowledge, but did that warrant including her in the vengeance and torture? And how far did Romeo mean to take it?

Silva twisted his hands for a single second, visibly sweating. “I-I have a son—”

“Yes,” Romeo said, his voice still unreadable. “We’re aware your youngest boy is in high school. He’s fifteen now. That’s old enough to be a complication if he put his mind to it, but fortunately for you we have a very strict policy against laying hands on minors. He would be relocated, unharmed.”

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