Page 38 of A Game So Reckless

But good little mafia girls like Valentina can’t just fly away whenever they want to. Their wings are clipped the second that they’re fucking born.

So what, then? Her da? Pretty sure if Vincenzo Titone knew how much contact I’d had with his daughter he wouldn’t just be whisking her to some safe house somewhere. He’d be putting a bullet in my brain.

I dig my teeth into the wound on my lip, tasting the blood and remembering what it was like when it was her teeth there.

But she’s still not here. And I am wasting my fucking time.

I leave the property, and as soon as I’m driving away, I get Rowan on the phone. It takes a few rings for him to answer, because, unlike me, he was actually asleep.

“I need you to find someone for me,” I snap by way of greeting.

“You got it.” There’s creaking, like he’s hoisting his mountain of a body out of a bed that can barely support him. “Who’s the guy?”

“Girl,” I correct him, taking a turn just a little too fast, wheels spinning. “Valentina Titone.”

Dead silence.

Then, slow and stunned, “TheValentina Titone?”

“There another Valentina Titone in this town I need to worry about?”

“Not that I know of…”

“Good. So you know what to do, then.”

“Boss…”

“Just do it,” I command through clenched teeth. “Don’t fucking show your face in front of me again until you’ve found her.”

* * *

Rowan shows his face the next afternoon. He comes to me in my office in the basement of my pubThe Briar and Boar.In his big hands he holds a file.

“She’s in Meaford,” he says as he tosses the file down onto my desk. “Or, just outside of it. In a house on Georgian Bay.”

I open the file, pulling out papers. My eyes fall to an image on the first page and stay there.

It’s Valentina, looking beautiful and bored in some kind of lineup at a fast-food coffee place.

“Rest stop on Highway 400. Barrie area. She’s with her mother, Carlotta Titone.”

He fishes out another page and points to a security video’s still of Valentina and her mother getting into a big, plain SUV. The popular, generic kind of vehicle you see two hundred of on the road before it’s even eight in the morning.

“That’s Thornbury. They stopped for supplies there, then continued through Meaford. I did some digging and found out that one of Vincenzo Titone’s corporations owns a property on the water. I sent Tommy up that way this morning.”

Now, he shows me his phone, swiping through images Tommy sent. Photographs of a giant white and blue house on rocky shores. There’s a dock jutting out towards the water.

And on that dock is a small figure with very big sunglasses and very dark hair.

“This is from today?”

“Yup,” Rowan confirms. “Tommy rented a boat and went by. That’s the address.” He jabs a thick finger at line of text on one of his file’s pages.

“What else do we know?” My voice is harsh. I sound insane. But I’ve never really cared about looking or sounding insane before and I’m not about to start now, especially when I’m on day four of no real sleep. “Who are the neighbours? Italian?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Rowan says. “The closest property on the right is owned by a couple with Polish names. Looks like it’s an investment property that they use as a short-term rental. There’s a group of five adults renting it currently.”

“Five women?”

---