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Leander’s voice came next, quiet and barely controlled. At first I didn’t even realize it was him speaking, he sounded so foreign. “Yes, I need to report a murder.”
My head snapped up. His phone was pressed to his ear, his eyes closed and his cheeks slick with silent tears.
“Yes,” he hissed into the phone. “I’m sure of it. He’s dead.”
Olivia wailed again and readjusted her grip on Cole’s hips.
I let her go and sat back, staring at Leander, unable to even comprehend the man in front of me.
Nevercall the cops. It was Rule Number One in the criminal code. And there he was, chatting away with dispatch, telling them what he knew.
Leander disconnected and exhaled audibly before opening his eyes and turning toward me. “The police are on their way.”
“Perfect.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples in small circles. “Just perfect.”
Leander’s voice was still sharp and alien. “We can’t cover this up, Bennett.”
Dropping my hands, I stared up at him. “With the police after them now, the murderers are going to go to ground. They’re professionals, which means we’ve just lost our fucking chance. They could take months or years to resurface,” I said, rising to my feet, holding his glare with one of my own.
Leander’s face twisted darkly, unfazed by the silent challenge presented by me standing. “They’ve been monitoring his phone this entire time. They know we’re looking for him, but there is no way they could know we found him this quickly.” He stalked over to Cole’s body and nudged his foot carefully with the tip of his shoe. It moved, but barely. “They’re only a few hours ahead of us.”
“You don’t think the police are going to have questions when they get here? Our friend was just kidnapped, driven four hours north, tortured for days, and fucking murdered in a warehouse with mob connections. And then we miraculously find him six hours after he’s been killed? You don’t think that’s going to set off some alarm bells?”
“Control the narrative,” he spat back. “Youtaught me that. We can spin this however we want and use the police to our advantage.”
Shaking my head, I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” Leander asked. More like demanded.
“We’re going to need a fucking lawyer. Acriminallawyer.”
Olivia’s muffled cries continued behind me as I gave Del the briefest rundown ever in the history of a client consult. Leander turned his attention to Olivia, but he had no more luck prying her away from Cole than I did. Once he gave up, he knelt next to her, rubbing her back gently.
“Neither of you say a goddamn word to anyone unless Del or I are with you. I don’t care if they have a badge, are a medic, or a fucking chaplain. Not asingleword.” I rubbed my face with both hands, trying to shake off my shock and get into lawyer mode. “For the record, I object to every part of this.”
“Noted, counselor,” Leander retorted.
While we waited for the police to arrive, I opened one of the shipping doors and made myself comfortable on edge of the concrete dock. At least I finally had an answer as to who kidnapped me — someone with a connection to Marchese. Even though he was good and dead, he was still a pain in my ass. Typical Giovanni.
But Sergei and his men killed all of the major players in the Marchese outfit. Anyone who was still alive was low-level and didn’t have the powerorthe money to pull off something like this. It could have been his cousin from New York, but in all the years I’d hung around Giovanni I never got a strong sense of family loyalty. I heard “Fuck those pricks” more than I heard any praise directed toward the east coast branch of the family biz.
So who the hell was settling the score for Giovanni?
No doubt whoever it was originally intended to useLeanderas leverage againstme, which was the exact fear I had the first time my interests ran counter to what the mafia wanted. When I escaped, they didn’t hesitate to try and kill me, which meant my death was authorized by whoever was footing the bill — as long as it wasthemthat got the pleasure of killing me and not the rednecks they hired. It was only a matter of time before they tried again. Cole was proof of that.
But Cole? He hadn’t done anything. Other than be a friend and employee of my husband’s company, he didn’t have any mob connections. If they were going to snatch the next closest person to me, it would have been Gavin. Or Del.
Cole was such a random choice, I couldn’t make sense of it. He was the strongest of the group, therefore the biggest physical threat? No... Even that explanation didn’t jive, considering how many bodies Leander and I dropped between us. Muscles weren’t everything when it came to murder. And it’s not like Elijah or Jake were wimps, either.
So, yeah. I got one answer out of this whole mess, and a fuck ton more questions.
29
Leander
Cole was dead.
No matter how many times I repeated it in my head, it never quite sank in. The mantra, combined with Olivia’s heartbroken sobs, circled in my head on a never-ending loop.
