Page 26 of The Voicemail

Luca finds me a name just before midnight. Dario Vale. He’s the cousin of a courier Bianchi uses when he wants distance from a delivery without using anyone skilled enough to be worth protecting.

My men bring him to me in the back room of a closed butcher shop in Queens. This isn’t the kind of business I handle in Manhattan. Besides, the butcher owes me money. He doesn’t ask why I need his space after hours, and he won’t ask why the floor smells like bleach in the morning.

Dario is tied to a metal chair under a buzzing fluorescent light, sweating through his shirt. One eye is swollen, but that isn’t from me. Luca’s men picked him up outside a card room, and Dario tried to run. He didn’t get far.

I stand in front of him with my sleeves rolled to my elbows and the image of Elena’s ruined apartment still fresh in my mind.

“I already told you,” Dario says desperately. “I don’t know anything.”

“You told us you don’t know who ordered the flowers,” Luca says. “Then you told us you don’t know who paid for the phones. Then you told us you don’t know why three deliveries went through your cousin’s courier service. Funny how you keep remembering things when we add a little pressure.”

Dario looks at me. I don’t move. Luca opens the folder, pulls out a photo of Elena’s apartment, and holds up the wreckage from this afternoon. Slashed pillows. Open drawers. Clothes on the floor. Her life torn apart by hands that had no right to touch any of it.

Dario looks away.

“Look at it,” I tell him, my voice deathly calm.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

“Look at it,” I repeat through clenched teeth.

This time, he does. His mouth tightens.

“Tomaso got inside after I had men on that building,” I say. “That’s a problem.”

Dario swallows. “I don’t know nothing, I swear.” His voice breaks.

Luca takes Dario’s right hand and pins it flat to the table beside the chair. Dario starts struggling immediately.

“Wait. Wait, hold on,” he begs as I pick up the small knife from the table.

It’s clean and sharp, meant for trimming meat, technically. Tonight, it’ll do whatever I need it to do.

“Why did Bianchi send Tomaso after Elena?” I ask calmly.

“I can’t say.”

“Then you know why,” I say.

His breathing turns ragged. Luca holds his wrist still.

Dario’s voice cracks. “You don’t understand. Tomaso’s crazy.”

I lean down until he has no choice but to look at me.

“Are you more afraid of him or me?” I ask coldly.

“He’ll kill me,” he pleads.

“You think I won’t?” It’s a warning.

The knife touches the table beside his smallest finger. Dario goes very still, and I let the silence stretch. Fear of pain gets men talking more than the pain itself.

“She took something from him,” he says finally, tears streaming down his face.

Luca looks at me. I keep my eyes on Dario.

“I’m going to need more than that,” I say, inching the knife closer.