Page 39 of Tease

“Listen, we’re not here to hurt you. This is Orsino’s youngest daughter, Rina. She has some questions for you.”

The man looked at me. For a moment, his expression was fearful and then it cleared.

“You look just like him.” He sighed and looked over at Arlo again. “What kind of questions?”

I fidgeted, and Arlo squeezed my hand.

“About the bombing.”

Vince aka Pietro looked away, his dark eyes clouding over. It made it obvious he knew what had happened. The police case files had given us some insight into the whole situation, but the reason the Green family had been targeted was still a mystery to us.

“You better come in.”

He opened the door wider, and we followed him into the house. Vince took us into his living room and offered us drinks. He left to make them after we accepted. Arlo made me sit down on the worn leather sofa next to him.

“Are you okay,mia preziosa?”

“Y-y-yeah. Just n-n-nervous.”

He put his hand over mine and squeezed it.

“I don’t think what he’s going to tell us will be easy to hear, but you want this, right?”

I nodded. The truth was important to me. It wouldn’t change how I saw my father. I didn’t think anything could. He’d been a good father to me, but I knew him being involved in the mafia in his younger years would mean he’d done dark things. It wasn’t something I could get away from. My boyfriend had done dark shit too. I wasn’t judging him for it, either.

When Vince came back in, he set a tray down on the coffee table in front of us and took a seat in an armchair to our right, taking his mug with him.

“Do we call you Vince or…?” Arlo asked.

“Vince is fine. No one has called me Pietro in years.”

His eyes went to me again. I didn’t know what to make of his scrutiny, only it made me uncomfortable to be watched as such. If it was Arlo doing it, I’d feel differently, but this man was a complete stranger.

“I heard about your father’s death… I’m sorry. He was a good man.”

I swallowed.

“Thank y-y-you.”

I didn’t think I could say another word. Arlo had told me he would do the talking for me, something I was grateful for. It was hard for me to express myself with people I didn’t know.

“We need to know what happened that day,” Arlo said, drawing Vince’s attention back to him. “I’m assuming you know considering Orsino helped you disappear.”

We’d found a clue to Vince’s whereabouts in my father’s papers. He’d scribbled a name and number down, noting they were a forger. It was merely a case of tracking them down and leaning on them. Arlo had sent his men to do it and they’d come back with the name a few hours later. From there, we only had to track down where Vince was living, which was easy enough for me to accomplish.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I told that woman.”

Arlo stiffened next to me.

“What woman?”

“This woman came looking for me about a year and a half ago, said she needed to know what I knew about the car bomb. Wouldn’t tell me her name, though.”

Arlo looked over at me. There had been two people who survived that day. The boy and his aunt. I’d not said anything, but there was a very strong possibility they were behind all of this.

“What did you tell her?”

Vince looked at the floor.

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