Page 125 of Bene

He probably hated her now.

She deserved it.

And no matter what, she would do everything to help Bene fix this mess she made. At the risk of her own life, she would do it.

Today wouldn’t be the first time.

Vanna settled on that.

What else could she do?

“All right,” Courtney said, tossing the wedding dress in its protective bag across the bed, “let’s get this on, and do a quick fitting. I suspect this will be the only one we’ll have to do, considering you’re quite trim, and haven’t changed in size since last month when you picked the dress.”

She hadn’t picked it.

Mario’s mother did.

Vanna didn’t correct the woman.

“Sure,” she said, turning away from the mirror.

“And be quick about it,” came Mario’s order from the doorway. Vanna met his stare, and he raised an eyebrow right back at her. It didn’t seem like he was aware she knew his secret, or that she had been spying on him. “Because we have dinner at my parents with the rest of the clan in two hours, and I don’t want to be late.”

If the clan would be there, then business was happening.

Or talks of it.

Vanna wondered … what else she might be able to collect about the Detti Camorra? No doubt, a lot if she cared to try. She had focused on gathering damaging information on the Guzzi family, but tides changed all the time.

Right?

Vanna smiled at Mario. “Can’t wait.”

“Unless something happens to Constable Keefs,” Marcus said, “seeing as he’s acting as the verifying witness to the information that was provided by the … informant, and he’s the only one that can prove those documents came from your office seeing as how your name wasn’t actually on the contract for the farms well—”

“We can’t kill him,” Beni snapped. Still on his sabbatical from Chicago to help them out until their father was released, or otherwise, Bene’s twin had to state the obvious. Which only earned him a glare from Marcus. “I’m just saying, we can’t do that, but you posed the statement like it might be an option.”

“I didn’t pose anything,” Marcus replied heatedly.

“Relax,” Chris muttered, “both of you.”

In the corner of the room, standing in the only portion of shadows, Corrado scrubbed a hand down his face, his sigh echoing. “Marcus and Beni are both right. I mean, if you want to get technical, and Chris has a point—stop snapping at one another. It doesn’t help, and it gives me a fucking headache.”

“You,” their father said from behind the metal table where his hands rested on the top, wrists cuffed, and connected to a bitch link in the middle, so he couldn’t even stand from his position, “need to go back home to Ginevra, Les, and the baby.”

Corrado dead-stared their father, saying nothing. His lack of words said it all, anyway. He, like the rest of them, wasn’t going anywhere until this was said and done. Until they either got their father out of jail, and off these bullshit charges of wire fraud and attempted money laundering, or they figured something else out. Which so far, was proving impossible.

“As I said,” Corrado drawled slowly, turning his attention back to their brothers, “Marcus is right in that something has to be done about the detective. Constable Keefs is the star witness to all of this, it’ll be his word that seals the deal on the authenticity of the photos of the documents taken from Papa’s office. The only thing saving us right now is the fact that when they raided the house, all of those documents had already been destroyed. So, what they have is his word, and if they don’t even have that …”

Yes, because their father only kept something that showed illegal activity just long enough to look it over, do what he needed with it, and then he burned everything. Keefs was the only person, considering the informant—Vanna—was no longer cooperating with the investigation.

Apparently, for the protection of the anonymous witness, as the police had stated in their last media conference, they would not force her in to testifying when they had enough using the Constable on the stand for trail, should they make it that far.

“Except we can’t kill him,” Chris said to Corrado.

“No, and Beni was right on that, Marcus, so chill.”

Marcus, the only one of the five brothers sitting at the metal table with their father, considering there had only been two uncomfortably hard chairs placed in the private conference room at the jail for them to visit with their dad, scowled but stayed quiet. Because he knew Corrado and Beni were right, no doubt, but it still pissed him off a great deal.