Page 19 of Brutal Legacy

She had Georgia walking to the supermarket and returning home with heavy bags. Georgia checking the prices of every single item she bought. Georgia taking the bus. Georgia waitingfor the bus. Georgia in a coffee shop, sketching on a pad, lost in her own thoughts. Georgia and her friend leaving a bar late at night.

I forgot my coffee and the crowd as I stared at her. The footage wasn’t perfect, but it was clear enough to make out the strong line of her jaw and the same sharp little chin I remembered so well. It had fit in my grip just right.

With a discipline honed over nearly two decades, I closed the photos and scanned the information.

Widowed, employed at a dressmaking atelier, her address. No hobbies listed. She didn’t seem to leave her apartment much except for going to work. No mention of any family other than her recently deceased husband.

Good.

It would be just me and Georgia, alone… Just like old times.

When I arrived in LA,I went straight to her apartment. Breaking in was child’s play. She was out, as I’d expected her to be at that time in the morning. A momentary fiddling with the door admitted me to her private space.

The apartment wasn’t what I was expecting, not at all.

When I’d known Georgia, she’d been the over-indulged, spoiled little princess of one of the most well-known men in town. Her boyfriend, Tommaso Conti, who she went on to marry, had been the son of a local millionaire.

Fourteen years later, and his widow was living in a tiny apartment that didn’t have air-conditioning for the LA heat, peeling paint, and the sound of a loud argument from the upstairs neighbors. How the mighty had fallen.

I glanced around her kitchen, finding only instant noodles and one cucumber to eat, and then moved through the tiny space. I didn’t touch anything. Georgia was my virus, after all, and even curiosity about her situation was unacceptable.

Instead of poking around, I set up small cameras, one in the corner of each room. I needed eyes on her, and anyone who might be looking for her, like the Ravellis. I was also pretty sure that her father had sent his collateral to his only daughter. He had no one else he could trust. When you’d fucked over as many people as Prosecutor Bellisario had, allies were few and far between.

He’d sent the collateral to Georgia, or instructions on how to access it. I was sure.

If I could find that… this whole ordeal and the arranged marriage was unnecessary. We could just have the good prosecutor killed in prison, before he sang on Salvatore. Easy, mess-free.

If she had the evidence, there would be some sign of it, and considering how often she stayed in, I was betting the cameras in her house would be very illuminating.

She’d lead me to my collateral sooner or later, and I’d be waiting…

And watching.

6

GEORGIA

“Hey, did you finish those alterations over the weekend?” Eddie was my manager at the dressmaking shop I worked at, and a sweetheart.

I nodded and pointed to the pile at the end of my desk.

He blew out a long breath. “Thank God. There’s some actress demanding that we got her dates wrong, and she needs it today.”

“It’s done. I hope she doesn’t need anything further, though, and that I got it right,” I worried.

Eddie patted my shoulder. “You always nail it, don’t worry.”

He answered his furiously ringing cell and wandered away. I sat back and stretched this way and that, feeling my spine decompress. God, I felt old lately. I knew I wasn’t old, not really, but I felt it.

I reached for the moisturizer I kept on my desk. My hands were sore, my knuckles swollen from hours and hours of careful needlework. I’d have arthritis in them before I hit thirty-five, Iwas sure of it. Maybe I already had it. I wouldn’t know. Me and health insurance had parted ways many years ago.

I looked up at the small slit of a window that ran along the top of one side of the dressmaking studio. Upstairs was a luxurious showroom, offering high-end tailoring of the most expensive designer clothes money could buy. That’s where we did the fittings. The work part, grueling hours spent hunched over a desk, was down in the basement. Don’t get me wrong, it was clean and safe, and brightly lit. There were far worse places to work, and I was well aware of that… but it would be nice to see the sun now and again.

“Georgia!” Eddie called, hurrying back over to me. “Update on the dress for the actress. We need to take it to her. You want to go? I could call a courier or…”

I couldn’t have shot up faster. “Or I could go for a walk and get some fresh air on the clock?”

Eddie smiled. “Enjoy it. Take your lunch while you’re over there. She’s at some hotel charity benefit, and there’s always free food up for grabs. Just make sure to get the dress taken up to her suite for her later. I’ll send her assistant’s number to you in case you have trouble.”

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