Page 16 of Beautiful Evidence

I don't bother with a glass. I pour the last inch of scotch down my throat in one gulp and sit at the kitchen table, staring at the grains of the wood. My eyes trace each line, following the swirling pattern like a maze. My fingers drum against the base of the bottle in a slow, steady pattern, a metronome for my thoughts.

My phone buzzes with an encrypted number—one I’ve memorized but never saved, though I’ve always known it would come back. It's the only tie left, but I can't bear to break it even though I know what it means. The sound cuts through the room, and a jolt runs through me like a spark of static, making me jump.

"Hello?" I answer. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. I brace myself against the table with one hand, the other gripping the phone like I might drop it. These calls always scare the fuck out of me, and it's not even that I fear him. I am not afraid of my father at all. I'm afraid of what my future means if he's in it.

My father’s voice comes through, tight and low. "Alessia,Tesoro. Stop digging,figlia mia." The way he says my name makes my throat constrict. I hear the emotion in his tone, the way he cares for me. I've never doubted he loves me. But there’s a rasp there I haven’t heard before.

I sit up straighter. "Where are you?" I stand without realizing it, pacing now with short, sharp steps. The walls feel like they're leaning inward at me, trying to collapse the life I've built for myself, and all he had to do was call to make it happen.

"It doesn’t matter, Lessi. The more you know, the worse this gets. I tried to keep you out of this." There’s frustration behind his words and a tiredness that feels like he's weighing how muchto tell me. Like maybe he's depending on me in ways he knows I can't offer him.

Leaning on the bar, I rub my forehead and sigh. "Then why send Vincenzo? Why pretend you're protecting me?" My voice cracks at the edges and I wish I hadn't drunk all of that scotch.

"I didn’t send him. That was Emilio,figlia mia. You weren’t supposed to get this close. I swear I told him to stay out of it." He exhales heavily, like the admission costs him something, and each word drips with resignation.

"Close to what? To the truth? To what you did to Vescari?" I straighten and stare at the dark window, seeing nothing. The city’s lights blur behind my reflection, but I know he's out there somewhere, hiding away in some hole he dug to avoid being responsible and doing the right thing.

He digs his heels in with an attitude I know well. "Not everything is what it seems. Let it go." His words slap me the way they used to when I was younger. He never had to lay a hand on me because I knew not to anger him. He's already decided that I'm going to play along with him and this is some sort of warning shot.

I pause, listening. There’s noise in the background—horns, traffic, someone yelling in a dialect that isn’t Roman. Footsteps echo off stone.

"You’re not in Rome. Where are you?" I press the phone tighter to my ear, straining for any detail. My heart kicks once, hard.

He doesn’t answer.

"Papà—" I barely get the word out before the click ends the call. It slices the air—and my heart—like a blade.

The line goes dead. My hand stays frozen at my ear, phone pressed tight like I can will the connection back into existence. But he's long gone like a ghost in darkness, and I have more questions than answers now. He knows I'll find things, and he's scared I will use them.

I stand there for a long time with the phone still in my hand. The air in my apartment feels thicker and harder to breathe in, but it's all in my head. I know Vincenzo is sitting outside in his van watching—him or one of his men—and no one is getting at me without his seeing it. And I know my father won't hurt me, but that doesn't mean others won't try.

When I finally breathe, it comes out shallow. I dig through my cupboards in hopes to find any bottle of wine or whiskey and come up empty, so I resign myself to the fact that sleep will come hard tonight.

Then I lock every door, double-check the windows, and sit on the edge of the bed with the lights still on. My spine doesn’t relax, even when I try.

It’s not my father's warning that scares me. It’s that he called at all. And that he’s running too.

10

VINCENZO

The man waiting in the alley keeps checking his watch like he's late for something. He's wiry and jumpy, with eyes that never stop scanning the space around him. Informants like this don’t last long—not because someone gets to them, but because they always think someone will. Fear turns your brain to mush over time, and this one looks particularly susceptible to it.

I light a cigarette and lean against the wall across from him. Let him come to me. I have time—not all day, but I'm not in a rush or anything. The information I need is more important than rushing it out of him and getting lies or fear-laced facts that are half-baked and unhelpful.

He walks over to me after a minute. His eyes still flick nervously up the alley, but he's making his move at least. "It wasn’t sanctioned," he says, shifting from foot to foot like he’s afraid the ground might open up beneath him. He's terrified of me, and he's right to be. If he lies to me, I'll kill him.

"Vescari?" I keep my voice level, but my eyes lock on his as I take a drag of my cigarette. When Emilio told me someone called tosay they had information for me, I thought I'd be meeting some dark figure. This half-wit is probably a hired hand, someone still in training for whatever position they're seeking, and by the looks of it, he's failing.

He nods, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt higher like he thinks it'll hide his face. "They moved him to a secondary location. It wasn’t the police, and it wasn’t his family." He rubs the back of his neck, glancing over his shoulder like he’s being followed. He's telling me shit I already know, except for the secondary location bit. That's new.

"Drugs?" I narrow my eyes and take a step closer, watching for the twitch in his answer as I flick ash from my burning cigarette.

"Probably—there aren't a lot of details, man." His voice dips, and he hunches his shoulders, turning to check the alley again. He's too jumpy. He'll never make it out here.

I grind the cash under my boot. "And you don’t know who did it." I take another drag and eye him, skeptical that he's even sober. He seems to be tweaking or something.

"I know nothin', dude. Vescari was moved. That's all I'm saying." He glances at me, then away, like he regrets opening his mouth at all. Then he leans in. "If I had to guess—off the record—it wasn’t a hit. And it sure as hell wasn’t Bianchi-sanctioned. I'd say it was a crime of passion. Someone fucked him up bad and then tried to make it look like it wasn't them." His voice drops to a whisper, and he inches back into the shadow of the wall.

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