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“Let’s try a different approach.”

He presses call, hands the phone to the man standing against the wall.

The faint sound of the ring starts up on the far side of the room.

I lose everything I had held onto for the last forty seconds.

“Please.” My voice breaks on the word. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”

The man across from me smiles.

“Depends entirely on her, sweetheart.”

The ring continues.

8

Vincenzo

I sense that something is wrong before Sal has even opened the door.

I’m in my office at Vizio. Sunlight is streaming through the long windows at the back of the room. The club below is quiet. Daytime staff is prepping the bar and the kitchen for the Tuesday-night crowd. I have a laptop open in front of me and a glass of water on the desk, and a schedule for the next three weekends that I am supposed to be reviewing with the men who are coming in soon.

Instead, I’m sitting at my desk with my hand flat on the laptop and a cold feeling in my chest.

The door opens.

Sal stands in the doorway.

“Boss.”

“Where is she?”

“She left the house forty-two minutes ago, boss. Uber from the gardener’s gate. Went to a café in Silverlake. She hasn’t come out.”

“The Uber?”

“Dropped her and left. She was alone going in.”

I’m on my feet before he’s finished speaking.

“Everything in Silverlake. Every plate. Every face. I want it on my phone in two minutes.”

“Already on it.”

He stands aside. I march past him and down the corridor and am on the phone to my surveillance chief before I’ve reached the stairwell to the parking garage.

“Marco. Silverlake. Every camera. Every car that passed the café on Hyperion between ten and now. I want a plate on every SUV she might have gone into. I want it now.”

“Already pulling it, boss.”

“How.”

“Sal called me seven minutes ago.”

Of course, Sal called him. Sal is part of the reason I have been able to stay alive doing what I do for the last decade.

I take the stairs down to the garage three at a time.