Page 22 of Curse

Alexandra inserts the flash drive into her computer. “The police let you keep this?”

“Not exactly,” I admit.

She glances over her shoulder at me, raising an eyebrow before clicking on the file. “Not admissible in court unless you’d like a tampering with evidence charge. Unless, of course, you found it at her house instead of… anywhere else?”

I hesitate. “I—“

“Think about it,” she says firmly, giving me a pointed look. “Maybe you were mistaken.”

The video loads, and together we watch the horrifying footage: a man tied to a chair, a gunshot ringing out, and the killer’s face caught briefly on camera. Alexandra rewinds and replays it twice more, pausing to zoom in on the shooter’s face.

“Hmm.” She taps the screen with a manicured nail. “So, we’ve got evidence of a murder implicating this man here,” another tap, “and a suspected murder that killed at least two people—your sister and her husband. Correct?”

I nod. The details, boiled down so clinically, still hit me like a punch to the gut. I don’t mention Matti. So far, it doesn’t seem relevant, and I can barely stomach talking about Emily without adding that emotional tornado of complications.

“How do you know it was a bomb?” she asks, her eyes on the screen again, rewatching the video.

“I was on the phone with her when… when it happened.”

She turns to me intently. “You heard an explosion?”

I nod.

“May or may not have been a bomb. May have been an engine malfunction that you heard. Not saying it wasn’t a murder. Just that we don’t know the details for sure.”

I guess that’s possible. Anything could have caused the explosion. I just assumed it was a bomb. But Emily herself told me that people were trying to kill Mikey, and the flash drive says to me that it was a murder, no matter what the method of execution. She and Mikey had this flash drive, and someone wanted it. Or wanted to make sure they didn’t give it to the authorities. Matti’s presence at the wreck and then atOne Pearl Park Plaza is proof of that. But I keep my mouth shut.

“This man,” Alexandra says, pointing to the man holding the gun on the screen, “do you recognize him?”

“I don’t.”

“I do.” She frowns. “That’s Aurelio Demonio. He runs one of the most powerful organized crime syndicates in New York, the Demonio family. He’s elbow deep in every single illicit moneymaking industry in the city. Murder, bribery, extortion—he’s ruthless.

“I’m telling you this because you need to be aware of what kind of man you are up against. Murdering people is standard practice for him, and let me tell you, he does not discriminate. He’ll take out a cop’s wife just to get rid of a speeding ticket. He’ll murder a witness to keep them from testifying. Or bringing a case.”

I swallow hard, nodding. “I hear you,” I whisper.

Alexandra pauses, watching me, then leans in, lowering her voice. “It is my guess that he ordered the deaths of your sister and her husband in order to get rid of this evidence. If he’d do that to one of his own guys, I doubt seriously that he would bat an eye at doing the same to you for the same purpose.”

I feel like I missed something because I don’t know who she means when she says “one of his own guys,” but I nod again, anyway. I get what she’s trying to say: if Matti is Satan’s spawn, then this Aurelio Demonio is the devil himself.

Alexandra leans back in her chair and taps the screen again, this time pointing to the dead guy in the chair. “And him? That’s John Lumina, heir to Luminous & Co. Ever heard of them?”

I nod vaguely. They sound familiar, and I remember seeingtheir name on the sign inside One Pearl Park Plaza.

“They design one-of-a-kind luxury jewelry for the ultra-wealthy. It was an open secret that Aurelio worked closely with John’s father for years, but evidently, the son didn’t follow the same playbook when he took over after his dad died. John was found dead in a dumpster outside his office about a decade or so ago. Case went cold.”

My stomach lurches, and my mind flashes back to yesterday, to Matti dragging me behind the dumpsters in the alley. The ones outside the building that housed the Luminous & Co. office.

Alexandra pulls up the building blueprints for One Pearl Park Plaza, scrutinizing them with a frown. “Nothing obvious here, but it might connect to something.” She removes the flash drive and leans across the desk, her sharp eyes locking onto mine.

“These people are no joke, Siena. The FBI has been after Aurelio for years, but every time they get close, something goes wrong—people die, evidence vanishes. This could be a game-changer for them. Handing this over to them could save countless lives.”

But it wouldn’t save Emily. And if everything Alexandra says about him is true, then it wouldn’t help bring him to justice for her murder, either.

I shake my head. “I don’t want the FBI. I want you. I don’t want this to disappear into the abyss, get caught up in some decades-long case. Can’t we file a civil case?”

Alexandra sighs, leaning back. “We have no evidence connecting Aurelio to your sister and her husband’s deaths, even though this was found in their belongings, so the case would just be about the murder on this video. The murder of a man towhom you have no connection.”

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