Page 72 of Lie to Me

“She at work, and thank you,” I say reluctantly, though I am grateful for whatever she said to Sloane to get her to come around to the idea of us.

“Can we get back to the point of this meeting?” Dad asks and all joking fades, an air of seriousness filling the room.

Izzy opens her laptop and taps away at the keyboard.

“Okay, so I found our guy. His name is Dario Costa and he’s some finance CEO based in Chicago. I actually remember him from when I had to attend events with my father, but he was there as one of the more… legitimate attendees. I’ve looked into him, and as far as I can tell, he’s been completely on the up and up. So I decided to look a bit further and things got interesting. It turns out that years ago, before your family—”

“Ourfamily,” Luca interrupts.

She rolls her eyes. “Beforeourfamily took control over the entire Italian organization here in New York, it was ruled by the five families.”

“That’s right,” Dad says. “Back in my grandfather’s day, it was the Romanos, the Morettis, the Rizzos, the Mancinellis and the Costas.” He nods as he mentions the last family. “That was before they engaged in an all-out turf war and my grandfather ended up coming out on top, taking full reign of theCosa Nostra.”

Izzy nods in agreement. “Yeah, and when I looked into it, it turned out that there was a son who broke off from the Costa family and went legit. Guess who is a descendant of our missing son?”

“Dario Costa,” I mutter. “So we think he’s after what he thinks is rightfully his? He lives his entire life on the straight and narrow and suddenly wants to take back what once belonged to his ancestors?”

“I don’t know,” Izzy mutters. “But it’s the only connection I’ve managed to find so far.”

“That doesn’t matter right at this moment,” Luca chimes in. “What matters is that this is the guy who’s had it out for us and the O’Brien’s. We can look into his reasoning behind everything later, but we need to go after him now before he escalates. So far, everything he’s tried to do has failed. He’s going to be gearing up for a bigger attack, and the longer we leave it, the higher the chance of one of us coming home in a body bag.”

Images of Aria Calín—the woman I watched Sloane’s father torture and kill all those years ago—spring to mind. The thought of the same thing happening to Sloane has bile crawling up my throat.

“We need to go to Chicago. Today.”

Luca nods in agreement. “I agree. Me and you will head there with a handful of men and put an end to him.”

“What about me?” Enzo asks, slightly offended.

“What about your six-month pregnant wife?” Luca retorts. Enzo’s gaze goes towards the door.

“You’re right. Have a nice trip,” he says before heading out the door, not sparing us another glance.

I turn my attention back to Luca. “What about Finn?”

He shakes his head. “That’s why we were late. I called Finn and gave him a run-down on the situation, but he’s dealing with someone else and is leaving the fun to us.”

Finn seems to be dealing with a lot lately, and whenever Sloane mentions him, she suddenly clams up straight afterwards, so I definitely think there’s something going on there. I know Finn would never cross us, so I can only assume that whatever he has going on is something personal, and I tend to stay the fuck away from people’s personal business.

I nod to Luca. “Get everything ready, we’re heading to Chicago.”

Ifucking hated leaving Sloane to come to another state. After leaving my father’s estate, I stopped by the hospital to let her know I’d be gone before heading home, packing a bag, and meeting Luca at the airport.

Izzy opted to stay in New York rather than coming along, and will be staying in contact with us along the way in case we need her to do anything from her end. How the hell Luca managed to find the country’s best hacker in an arranged marriage, I’ll never know.

The trip here seemed to last forever, but we’re finally settled in the penthouse suite of the hotel we’re staying in. Since we don’t make the trip to Chicago often, our family doesn’t have a place here. We called the Rossi brothers from the jet and explained the situation, and they arranged for us to stay here in their hotel. The brothers recently took over the Chicago outfit after my dad killed the old Don—Izzy’s father.

We’ve gone over a few different ideas of when best to approach Costa and settled on breaking into his home when we know he’ll be there. He doesn’t have a family living with him, and for a guy making such big moves, he doesn’t have much security. Izzy looked into it and he only has a home security system. The amateur doesn’t even have a damn bodyguard.

“So am I doing all of the heavy lifting, or are you going to have a go this time?” Luca asks as he hangs up the phone call with Izzy.

“Meaning?” I ask with a raised brow.

He chuckles. “I’ve never understood how you could come so far in this life and still not take at least a little enjoyment torturing some asshole.”

He’s referring to the fact that whenever it comes to getting information out of someone, I usually defer to him, Enzo, or someone else.

It’s not that I’m squeamish or anything like that. It’s the fact that every time I’m in that position, images of that night with Cormac O’Brien pop into my mind and I automatically picture Sloane. How the fuck am I supposed to gut someone when images of her being hurt and tortured are at the forefront of my mind?

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