Page 57

Valentino

She's crying.

Not loudly. She's trying to hold it in.

My jaw locks. My hand tightens around the rosary until one of the beads digs into the pad of my thumb.

I want to break the door down. I want to sit beside the tub in silence, just so she isn't alone. Just so she knows someone is waiting on the other side.

I don't move.

I don't have the right.

She locked the door. She wanted to be alone in there, and the only thing I can give her right now is the thing she asked for.

So I stand in the hall, listen to her cry, and do nothing.

My phone buzzes.

Bruno.

I walk to the end of the hall first, far enough that she won't hear my voice, then answer.

"Tell me."

"Enzo doesn't know."

"Say that again."

"Enzo Basile does not know it was us. Not yet. He knows his son is dead, but he hasn't connected it to the Sartoris. He hasn't connected it to you."

I press my thumb against the spot where the bead dug in. The sharp pain helps me focus.

"That's not possible."

"That's what I'm telling you. It isn't possible. And yet. He hasn't made the call. Palermo is quiet. Our people inside his operation say he's raging. Tearing apart the palazzo. Screaming at everyone. He knows someone took his son from him, but he hasn't figured out who."

"The phone."

"That's the thing." Bruno's voice drops. "They don't have her phone."

I close my eyes.

"If they had her phone," Bruno says, "this conversation would be different."

I look back at the bathroom door. The water is still running. I can't hear her crying anymore.

Maybe she's stopped.

Maybe she's under the water.

"Vittoria's tracking the phone," Bruno says. "Every contact. Every tool we've got. The provider, the cloud, the last GPS ping before it went dark. She'll find it. If it's on, she'll find it fast. If it's off, we wait for somebody to turn it back on."

"And if somebody in that palazzo has it stuffed in a drawer?"

"Then it's in a drawer and nobody's looked through it yet. That's good for us. Right now, that's the only good thing."

I breathe out.