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I jerked my head to Elio, who dragged the length of rope, pulling Reynolds near the edge of the roof.
“She’s fine, though! She’s alive.”
“This was going to be your outcome from the second you decided that she and her sister could be used in your small-minded games. Even if all she’d lost was a single eyelash, you’d still die just like this.” I flicked my hand at mysottocapo.
Elio pushed Reynolds over the edge. He screamed and then jerked. The cinder block dragged closer to the edge but held.
Reynolds cried with fear now, pleading for his life, no doubt shitting himself with panic. I should have recorded it. He was wriggling like a worm on a hook, thirteen flights up.
Instead, I took my lighter from my pocket and held the flame to the rope. It went up quickly, roaring into a blaze as it traveled along the rope, right toward the man dangling headfirst over the precipice. His screams were music to my ears. I savored them for a long moment before turning to my second.
“Let’s go. I want to be home when Charlotte gets back from class.”
I nodded to the security camera in the corner. Giada was already on it, splicing out the footage, the master of her digital domain.
41
CHARLIE
“So, Commissioner Reynolds was deliberately encouraging Whitely’s and Vane’s underhand techniques, just to make things difficult for you?” I wondered. We were sitting in his office in a large, leather wingback chair. Technically, Renato was sitting in the chair, and I was cradled in his lap.
“Mm-hmm. They didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, pushing you to spy for them, trying to arrest Lucy and then you. Lucy’s ridiculous arrest was simply a chance to get her out of Casa Nera. Reynolds needed the Castillo Cartel to clean up his mess, and they just wanted a shot at me, and revenge, of course, for what happened to the kid. The one who started all of this.”
“How did they know Lucy would sneak out?”
“They didn’t. I guess that was just a bonus. They probably planned on ‘holding up’ Vane and Whitely and stealing her from them. Her wandering out alone, and then you following, was too good to be true.”
I shivered. “What happens now?”
“With Judge Ellens going to jail, and Commissioner Reynolds’ unfortunate suicide?”
I snorted. “He set himself on fire and jumped off the roof to commit suicide?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
He grinned. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but when the cops investigate, they are going to find very concerning images on his computer. It only makes sense that he killed himself before it was found.”
“Images?” I thought of the way Giada had been cackling all afternoon. “Does the resident IT guy have anything to do with this?”
Renato smirked and cut his eyes to the potted plant on the corner of his desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. De Sanctis,” he said in a raised voice, as if acting up for the bug. “All charges against you and your sister have been dropped. All records of anything connected to you have disappeared. You have a clean slate, and Lucy as well.”
I let out a long breath. “She wants to go to culinary school, you know, maybe.”
Renato nodded. “I know. Carmella has been making a case for it. I wonder how she’d like Florence in the springtime. Or Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. Paris in March is lovely. We could tour the museums when we visit.” He thought for a moment. “Switzerland is respectable, too.”
I twisted in my chair and kissed him hard. “Thank you,” I murmured against his lips.
“For?”
“For the first time I’m my life, I’m not alone,” I admitted quietly.
Sure, I’d always had Lucy, but it was a different kind of feeling when you were caring for someone else. You could still feel alone, burdened by responsibilities that were growing too heavy to share.
“Then I should thank you, too, little nurse.” Renato smiled and pushed my hair back from my face.
He leaned in and kissed my neck, his lips pressing against the pulse point that he’d first licked back at the charity benefit. The first time someone had rattled the walls of shame and repressed desire I’d built around myself.
