Page 107 of The Woman at the Funeral

“Where?”

What followed was a wild goose chase across the city. From Danny’s dingy, dark, dirty apartment to one of the aunt’s jobs that featured an old fallout shelter, to Ronny’s previous work that had walk-in freezers.

All for nothing.

“What about the husband?” Leo asked on the speaker as we drove back from yet another frustratingly empty room. It was getting dark. Blair had been gone for hours, possibly in pain, definitely scared, for hours. And I was nowhere close to finding her.

Tom, the patriarch of the Ferraro family, was one of the meekest, brow-beaten husbands I’d ever seen. He wasn’t someone I believed would actively be a part of this grand conspiracy to bring down the Costa Family. But if Ronny said she needed something from him, he would do whatever she asked of him. That was just their dynamic.

“Where does he work?” Leo asked.

And then it clicked.

“Turn around,” I told Gav. “We have to go to the Manhattan port.”

“The port?” Leo asked. “You mean the cruise ship port?”

“Tom has worked there his whole adult life. There’s an indoor parking garage.”

There was clicking on the line with Zeno. Then, “Yeah, that’s the perfect place to bring her. But only temporarily. There’s a cruise leaving tomorrow morning. Tom would know that, so Ronny would too. So they won’t be there in the morning.”

Which meant we just had a few hours to get there, to get to Blair, to secure her, then figure out what the fuck to do about the Ferraro family.

Because while I wouldn’t hesitate to pick off Danny and maybe even Tom, I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to kill the women, even if they were the true masterminds.

Suddenly, I understood why bosses like those of the Lombardi and Esposito Families decided to pepper female capos into their ranks. Women who wouldn’t pause about putting the bullet in another woman if she deserved it.

Something to bring up at the next Family meeting.

After Blair was safe.

After she was healed from the trauma of being taken and enduring whatever it was she was suffering through while I tore across the city looking for her.

It wasn’t a long drive to the port, but we needed to park pretty far off to make sure we weren’t seen. As we were climbing out, more cars were pulling up, along with a moving truck.

There was a second of grief. Not so much for the people whose bodies might end up in that truck, but for the younger version of me who once loved them all, who trusted them, who believed they loved me back.

Then I nodded at Brio as he climbed out and walked toward the cruise terminal.

It was an unusual construction with several “piers” that were only about four hundred feet wide and eleven hundred feet long. Some featured offices of some sort. Others were simple strips where passengers would line up to climb onto their ships. But there was one that was dominated by a long, two-story parking garage.

The windows were only on the top floor, and it was completely darkened. I didn’t know if that was the usual. Or if the lights were off to try to disorient or scare Blair.

The whole strip was dark.

Which hid our approach but also made it almost impossible to see who might be lying in wait.

My gaze was pinned on the garage, my ears straining to hear her cries or screams.

But it was pure silence, save for the quiet crash of the waves.

Which was why when the gunshot rang out, it caught me so off-guard that I ducked.

I recovered quickly, though, seeing Leo just a few feet to my side, gun still raised, gaze on the man who was now screaming on the ground.

“Go,” he said, giving me a nod. “Get your girl.”

I didn’t stop to think after that.

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