Page 257 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

I grasped on to her tighter, my chest tightening even more. It all made perfect fucking sense. I saw it now … all of it. Mom always used to hide me in the back room when Dad did business or had business partners over. She’d tell me not to make a sound and play with me until they left.

She had known.

Mom knew about this, and she had to have been trying to stop it. She wouldn’t let something like this happen.

And they killed her.

They’d fucking killed her for it.

And I would kill them. Every last one of them until this business was mine and I could be the one to stop this terror.

37

chiara

We needed a plan. Not a good plan, but a great one. We couldn’t walk into Dad’s house and demand they let Alessandro go because they wouldn’t. We would be gunned down the moment we stepped onto the property, especially once they figured out we had killed all of the men that they’d sent after us.

I paced around the room.

Think, Chiara. Think. What would Dad do in this situation?

Because if I wanted to beat the don, I had to think like him.

“Get out.” I tossed her the keys to Alessandro’s apartment and slid into the driver’s seat. “Find everything you can. Guns. Bullets. Weapons. Anything we can use against them. He has a female friend from Italy who’s here. Find her. I’ll be back.”

She looked into the car, brows furrowed, and shook her head. “Where are you going?”

“I have some business I have to take care of,” I said, starting the car. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

And then I took off down the empty streets toward the police station to find William. He might’ve been compromised, but I could get him back. I knew I could. All I needed was some information to give him about the mafia, and he’d take them down in the biggest case of the entire decade.

He had been trying to get them for years now. Maybe he had gotten paid off last time, but I knew he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to put the Mafia away. He’d shoot to the top of his department if he did.

I pulled up to the station, checked to see if he was in, then drove to his house when I realized he wasn’t. I didn’t knock on the door; I barged right into the house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom. I turned the bedroom lights on to blind him and shoved him awake.

“Get up, William. I have information for you.”

William blinked his eyes open and sat up in the bed. “Chiara, it’s almost four in the morning. What’s going on? What do you want?”

“I’ll give you whatever you need to take down the mafia,” I said, knowing that Alessandro and I had absolutely no way of doing this all by ourselves. If we had cops with us, they could distract some of Dad’s guards in the crossfire while I snuck Alessandro out of there.

“What kind of information?” he asked, pulling on a robe.

And so I told him everything, knowing that it might bite me in the ass one day. I swore I would testify. I swore I would get all the evidence that they needed. Pictures, signatures, anything.

William shook his head. “And you expect me to trust you blindly?”

I furrowed my brows at him for a moment, wondering why he wasn’t jumping on the offer.

After sighing, he shook his head. “I’ll let the station know. My shift doesn’t start for another three hours.”

“I don’t give a fuck when your shift starts. I need this now.”

“Chiara, please. It’ll take a while anyway to get everyone organized.”

I clenched my jaw. “Well, call them now and organize it.”

He stared at me for a few moments, then picked up his phone. But as he was about to call his partner, Dad’s number popped up on his phone. I pulled the gun out of my waistband, stuck it to his head, and flared my nostrils.

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