Flight 12: A Sloane Monroe Thriller (Flight 12 Begins Series Book 4) (4 page)

“Get that ridiculous grin off your face,” I said. “None of this is funny. I thought I was being led to some abandoned forest somewhere where I’d be raped, murdered, left for dead, buried. Do you have any idea what that feels like? What it does to your mind?”

I talked and simultaneously texted Maddie at the same time, telling her I was all right, urging her to go to the hotel. I’d meet her there later, explain everything.

“It was never my intention for you to get hurt. They were rushed. They didn’t understand my instructions. I apologize for the way you were treated,
cara mia
.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

He leaned against the wall, pushing the tips of his fingers into his pockets.  

“Why did you send those two jerks to pick me up in the first place?” I continued. “And why not have them tell me who they were and avoid all the confusion?”

“If they told you the truth, would you have come here, willingly, without question?”

He was right. I wouldn’t have.

“How did you know I was here, where I was staying?”

He took his time before answering. “Why is it all roads lead right back to you?”

If he believed there was any road, anywhere on earth that would repair the damage of the past and put the two of us back together again, he was mistaken. “Answer the question.”

“What are you doing here—in New York City—with Madison?”

My turn to play coy. “It’s none of your business.”

“You just spoke to the police, which makes it my business.”

“Is Rachel, or whatever her name is, your business too? Was it you? Did you have her killed?”

“Is that how you see me, as some kind of killer?”

Round and round we go.

“Aren’t you?”

He moved behind a desk, sat in a brown leather chair, laced his fingers together. “I never lied to you about who I was.” 

“That’s right. You don’t lie. You hide things. And then you convince yourself there’s a difference between the two.”

“Even after all this time, you’re still upset.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve been fine for a while now.”

“Is that why you ran to Wyoming, into the arms of the country lawman?”

I closed my eyes, felt a staggered breath escape my lips. “Leave Cade out of this.”

“Who’s hiding things now?”

“The life I lead doesn’t involve you anymore.”

“If that’s how you truly feel, I’ll respect your wishes. Now you must respect mine. I need you and Madison to leave New York City immediately.”

“Tell me why,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”  

“I can’t.”

I spread my fingers, raised my hands in front of me. “Then I can’t leave.”

He slammed a fist down on the desk. “You must. It’s for your own safety. Don’t test me.”

He wasn’t getting what he wanted. A rarity.  

“Did you kill Rachel?” I asked. Again.

“I did not.”

I realized the question itself was open to interpretation. Maybe I needed to ask it in a different way.

“Did you have her killed?”

He shook his head.  

“Who did? Rocco?”

He raised a brow, surprised I spoke his name so freely. “I’ll ask you once more to leave the city. If you don’t, I’ll put the two of you on a plane myself.”

“And I’ll come right back. I’m not leaving here without answers.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t get them.”

“Do what you have to do,” I countered. “I
will
find out who she is, and I
will
find out what she was doing at that hotel tonight.”  

A bookcase on the left side of the room opened, and Daniela stepped out from behind. “The girl in the hotel. She worked for me. For us. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.”

Giovanni aimed a finger at Daniela. “Not another word.”

“
Not another word?
” she responded. “This concerns me too. You can’t keep me quiet like you can everyone else, Gio. This is our family we’re talking about. Our life. My life. Yours. Our future. Our children’s future.”

Children
? Did Giovanni have kids?  

“Sloane doesn’t need to be caught up in this. It’s not her affair.”

“Why are you discussing me like my choices are
your
decision? When you made the decision to bring me here, your problem became mine.” I turned to Daniela. “I’ve seen three dead bodies in the last several hours. What’s going on?”

Giovanni and Daniela faced one another, engaging in some kind of silent stare-off to determine whether the truth was about to be unraveled or not.

Daniela spoke first. Of the two, she’d always been more outspoken. “I’m telling her.”

Giovanni exhaled a long, unsatisfied breath. He turned toward me. “If we tell you, will you leave New York City?”

“I’ll consider it.”

The words “I’ll consider it” carried the same kind of weight a mother’s did when responding to a child asking the same question for the twentieth time. Translation? No.

My answer didn’t please him.

I didn’t care.  

Daniela motioned to a pair of chairs perfectly aligned next to one another in front of Giovanni’s desk. “Sit down, Sloane. Please.”

I sat. She did too. Giovanni fidgeted, tapped his thumb and pointer finger on the desk. He was used to control, used to having it, always remaining in charge. I wondered how it must have felt for him to be spiraling out of it.

“About six months ago, our father was shaken down by the feds,” Daniela started. “Since our brother Carlo died, we don’t have anyone on the inside. We’ve lost our FBI connection. Our family is unprotected, vulnerable.”

“What do you mean
shaken down
?”

“The feds can prove our family is tied to online sports gambling.”

Sports gambling? Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned murder? Seasons change, decades change. It was possible their organization had changed, evolved with the times. In their father’s lifetime, I couldn’t fathom the amount of dead bodies he must have racked up over the years, whether by his own hand or by ordering someone else to do it for him. Recently, their father had even threatened my own life, alluding to what would happen if I didn’t steer clear of Giovanni. I was a disruption, a distraction, the one woman who’d almost managed to convince Giovanni to give it up, run away from it all.
Almost
. “Sports gambling doesn’t seem so bad. What’s the punishment?”

“Worse than you think.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The truth is, they don’t want to put him away at all. At his age, he’s a small blip on their radar compared to what he used to be. It would almost be a waste of time.”

“Why are they pressing him? What do they want?”

“To make a deal,” Daniela said.   

“For?” 

“Rocco.”

It made sense. Why go after aged meat when fresher is better?

“So they approached your father—what did he say?”  

“He said no,” Daniela said. “He’s never squealed on anyone a day in his life. He’s not about to start now.”

“How did that go over?”

“They arrested him just to give him a taste of how serious they were. Dad’s free now. We got him out, moved him somewhere safe while we sort everything out. But his freedom won’t last. We’re running out of time.”

I thought about their father, a dominating tormentor who had an air about him like he was untouchable. The thought of him wasting away in a cell suited me just fine. The thought of Daniela and Giovanni suffering because of it stirred what little feelings for Giovanni I still had left.  

“Why did they come to you, instead of asking someone else? Why your family?”

For this answer, Daniela turned to Giovanni. He released another hefty breath. For a minute, I thought he wouldn’t answer the question at all. Then he said, “For the most part, the businesses we operate are legitimate, clean. This keeps the focus off of us and transfers it to families the government would rather invest the time and money in to take down.”

“Rocco’s running heroin,” Daniela stated. “And not just any heroin—heroin spiked with lethal amounts of fentanyl.”

“Excuse my ignorance,” I said. “I’m not familiar.”  

“Fentanyl is an opiate. It’s eighty percent stronger than morphine. Even the smallest dose can be fatal. We were told the supply Rocco is dealing is half fentanyl, half heroin. Users shoot up, never knowing how much of the opiate has been mixed with what they assume to be straight heroin. Most have no idea about the risk they’re taking.”  

“Shouldn’t this be a DEA issue, not an FBI one?”

“People are dying,” Daniela said. “And not just a handful. Several handfuls. The FBI and the DEA are working together. That’s how bad they want it stopped.”

“If they know Rocco’s distributing the drugs, why not arrest him?”

“Rocco only acts as distributor,” Daniela said. “They want to identify the source, find out where the drugs are coming from, how they’re being smuggled into the states. Arresting Rocco might stop one man, but it won’t stop the entire operation. Head of the Romano family or not, if Rocco goes down for this, someone else in his family will step up to the plate. He’ll be replaced. They’ll lose a day, maybe a few days, and then the drugs will find their way to the street again through someone else.”

Daniela had hired Misty Coulter, a.k.a. Rachel, several months back. She’d known Misty for a couple years. They’d taken spin class together at a local gym downtown. Several months earlier, Misty confided she’d lost her job. She joked to Daniela, saying she’d do “just about anything” to make ends meet. If she didn’t, bankruptcy was her only way out. Too bad she didn’t realize her end would meet a lot sooner than she planned. 

The idea of becoming Rocco’s mistress for a large sum of money upfront appealed to Misty. The way she explained it to Daniela, her own marriage had grown stale, her husband preferring to sit in his favorite recliner, cracking open several cold ones while watching copious amounts of
Seinfeld
reruns on TV. In her hum-drum marriage, Misty had become an afterthought. And since they didn’t have any kids, it wasn’t long before she’d grown tired of the same mundane life, night after night.

Misty wanted spice.

Action.

Attention.

And for a while, that’s exactly what Rocco provided.  

Before Misty was given the go-ahead to mingle with Rocco’s dark side, Giovanni requested an interview, a sit down, one on one. He wanted to see Misty for himself, wanted to be sure they could trust her, wanted to make sure she knew what would happen should that trust be broken. The Luciana and Romano families weren’t the best of friends, but they’d always shared mutual respect, something Giovanni wanted to preserve. Misty’s undercover operation was to be kept quiet, under the radar of Giovanni’s father.

After deeming her worthy to get the information they needed, Misty was given cash and a BMW to drive until the part-time gig was up. Further money was to be expended after successfully completing each of the following hurdles:

Meet Rocco. Check.

Become his mistress. Check.

Gain his trust. Check, followed by uncheck.

Find out who supplied the drugs, where they came from, and how they made it into the United States. Epic fail.

It had me asking: now what?

“How did Misty gain Rocco’s trust in the first place?” I asked.

“I taught her how to be everything he liked,” Daniela replied.  

“So you know him well then?”

Daniela snickered. “Rocco’s younger brother Benny, who calls himself “The Hammer,” has had a hard-on for me ever since we played in the sandbox as kids. He was my shadow. Through the years I got to know what he liked, what Rocco liked, what turned them on, what didn’t.”

“Were you ever in a relationship with either of them?”

The question begged to be asked.

 “Never. Benny’s not my type. Too weak, too much of a follower, and too little of a leader.”

“And Rocco?”

“We had a date once. He’s handsome, I’ll give him that, but he’d sell out his own kin to make a quick buck.”

“If Benny likes you so much, why not try and get the information out of him yourself?” I asked.

“Too risky. Our families are fairly close, but we don’t meddle in each other’s business.”

Fairly close. Why did I get the feeling there was more to it?

“Everything you’ve done, everything you hoped to achieve has been compromised.”

“Maybe.”

“She’s dead,” I said. “Even though we don’t know what he found out exactly, it was enough for him to get her out of the way.”

“Rocco found out Misty wasn’t with him for the right reasons, yes. As to whether he knows who hired her and why, we can’t be sure. We took every precaution with Misty. We had to. There’s only a slim chance she could ever be traced back to us. I don’t think he knows. I think she slipped up somehow, sold herself out.”

Either way, they’d lost their prize hen.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Feel him out. I said before it’s risky, and it is. So be it. I have to save my father.”

Throughout the conversation, Giovanni had remained still, listening to the two of us go back and forth for as long as his patience would allow. That patience had come to an end. “You can’t question Rocco. If Dad goes down for this, he goes down. It was foolish of me to agree to work with the law in the first place.”

“If Dad goes
down
for this?” Daniela challenged. “Don’t sit there and act like you’re the innocent one. You’re not. I’m not. They’ll put Dad away, and we’ll be next.”

“They’ve never done it before.”

“This is … I don’t know … different somehow. I can feel it. I still think we can get the information we need, Gio.”

“How? Your first plan failed. It’s over. We have no other plays.”

“I don’t know, I’d say we still have
one
.” Daniela looked at me. “You’re smart, Sloane. You’ve done this kind of thing before. I need you. We need you. Will you help us?”

Giovanni’s fist hammered down on the desk for a second time. “Absolutely not!”

It was his insistence that I not do it that prompted me to respond. “I’ll help you.”