Page 70 of Gin & Trouble

Mia went quiet. Too quiet. I couldn’t tell if the call had dropped or if she’d muted me. Either way, I hung up. I didn’t have enough battery left to waste another second.

Shoving the envelope in my pocket, I exited the opposite side of the building to catch the streetcar to the French Quarter. I needed to have a difficult conversation with my newly discovered sibling.

Once onboard, I pulled out my phone to double check my call log, but an alert caught my attention. I’d programmed my AI security software to notify me anytime it detected an abnormality.

I clicked on the link and pulled up the footage the computer had deemed “questionable.” The timestamp told me whatever had triggered the alert had happened a couple of hours earlier.

Better late than never, I guess.

The footage loaded, and I watched as Enzo opened the back door of his restaurant and spoke to a blonde woman. Two seconds later, the side of her head exploded.

Oh my God!

While he didn’t appear injured, he seemed stunned. So stunned, he’d knelt to help her instead of ducking for cover.

I knew the shooting had happened earlier in the day, but I found myself mentally pleading with Enzo to get inside.

Fears, questions, too many emotions to even begin to process, flooded me and short-circuited my brain.

A second alert popped up on my screen. The new footage came from a different camera angle. It showed Pasquale Puglisi, one of my brother’s attack dogs, walking away from the scene.

How is that possible? How many men does Tommaso have left in the city?

Was Dante there? They were supposed to go Christmas shopping. Is he okay?

Sooner or later, Pasquale would realize he’d missed and go back to finish the job. Try as I might, I couldn’t slow my thoughts, but I managed to settle on one singular goal—to get to the restaurant.

I dialed Dante’s number, but the screen went dark.

Shit.

More and more people crowded into the trolley at each subsequent stop until I found myself pressed against the cold glass windows. Christmastime in New Orleans should have been wonderful, but I barely noticed the decorations outside. All I could think about was Enzo. The article hadn’t named a victim or given many details other than one person had been killed and the restaurant was closed while authorities conducted the investigation.

I’d just found out I had a half-brother. I wasn’t prepared to lose him.

I exited the streetcar at Canal and Royal Streets and followed a couple dozen tourists into the French Quarter. When I thought of traffic, I generally thought of cars clogging roadways. While there were plenty of vehicles, there were four times as many people on the sidewalks.

What would have taken five minutes at a brisk walk had taken me twenty minutes of ducking and weaving through locals and tourists. I rounded the corner on Chatres and choked back a sob. Emergency vehicles lined the street, but that didn’t mean there were fewer people. If anything, the flashing lights had brought out spectators.

“Excuse me.” I wove around an elderly woman carrying an enormous shopping bag.

A big guy with a tiny dog elbowed me. “Hey, watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry!” Stepping out onto the street, I jogged past two New Orleans police vehicles.

An officer blew his whistle and waved his arm at me. “Ma’am. I need you to get out of the roadway.”

I moved back to the sidewalk and merged into the river of pedestrians without making eye contact with anyone.

To my left, a man whispered in what sounded like Italian. Not the standard, formal variety—He’d spoken in a mash-up of a Neapolitan dialect and Sicilian.

Every nerve ending in my body went on alert. I’d gone past the fight or flight response into utter shock. I glanced toward the sound of the voice without moving my head and risking making eye contact.

Pasquale Puglisi. Until the video popped up on my phone, I hadn’t seen him since my father’s funeral. A second man I didn’t recognized leaned in, whispered something to Pasquale, and nodded toward an alley.

What are they doing here? If Enzo’s injured, or worse, they would be headed in the other direction.

I dropped back to put some distance between me and the men. They slipped down the narrow passage between two buildings, but I waited to make sure they weren’t coming back out.

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