Chapter 7 - THE TIES THAT CRACK
"Back away from the counter," Rico commanded, his voice so quiet, so devoid of warmth, that it sounded like dry leaves scraping over concrete.
Clara’s heart seized in pure panic. She pressed her back hard against the kitchen cabinets, her hands trembling as she looked between the cold steel of Dante’s raised weapon and the terrifying, dead eyes of Rico Moretti.
"Rico, please, listen to me—"
"You lied to me," Rico said, stepping forward. Every trace of the gentle man who had eaten apple slices beside her moments earlier had vanished. In his place stood a predator whose territory had been violated. "You walked into my restaurant. You knelt beside my son. You used my dead wife's memory to worm your way into my home."
"No! That's not true!" tears spilled over Clara’s eyelashes, burning hot against her cheeks. "I didn't know who you were! I didn't know who Leo was! I was running for my life!"
"Who sent you?" Rico snapped, towering over her, his hands curling into white-knuckled fists. "Did the Russians hire you to scout my perimeter? Did the Feds plant you to build a RICO case against my council?"
"Nobody sent me!" she cried out, her voice cracking under the sheer weight of her terror. "My father was an accountant for Mikhail Kozlov in Chicago! When Kozlov found out my father kept duplicate ledgers, he had my parents murdered in their own living room! They gave me this scar when I broke through a glass door to escape them!"
She grabbed the collar of her shirt and violently yanked it aside, exposing the full, gruesome length of the jagged scar that ran from her ear down past her collarbone.
"The Feds put me in protective custody," she sobbed, her chest heaving. "They gave me a new name, put me in a safehouse in Queens, and told me I was safe. Then my handler didn't show up for a drop. I found him in the alley behind my building with a bullet in his forehead. I ran! I took a job washing dishes and serving pasta at the first place that paid cash under the table! I didn't plan any of this!"
"Check her story," Rico ordered Dante, never breaking eye contact with Clara. "Call our contact at the precinct in Queens. Find out if an FBI field agent was dumped in an alley off Roosevelt Avenue two months ago."
"On it," Dante muttered, backing out of the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear, keeping his sidearm leveled until he cleared the doorway.
Clara slid down the front of the cabinet until she was sitting on the hardwood floor, her knees pulled tightly to her chest, weeping uncontrollably. The terror of the past year—the blood of her parents, the cold nights running from shadows, the terrifying realization that she had fallen for another dangerous man—crushed down on her all at once.
Above them, the kitchen door swung open again.
Small, hesitant footsteps padded across the floor. Leo stood in his footed pajamas, dragging his plush bear behind him. He looked at Clara crying on the floor, then looked at his father standing over her with clenched fists.
"Mama?" Leo whispered, his lower lip trembling.
The word shattered the tension like a bomb.
Leo ran forward, bypassing his father completely, and threw his small arms around Clara’s neck. He buried his face in her hair, turning his head to glare at Rico with fierce, defiant toddler fury. "No bad! Daddy no bad to Clara!"
Rico stared down at his son. The sight of the boy shielding the woman—just as she had shielded him from the sniper's bullets two weeks earlier—struck Rico like a physical blow to the sternum. He closed his eyes, drawing in a long, ragged breath through his teeth.
May you like
Dante re-entered the room, his phone lowered, his face pale.
"It checks out, Boss," Dante said quietly. "Agent Miller. Found dead in an alley six weeks ago. Cause of death: execution-style. The Kozlov family put a five-million-dollar bounty on Claire Van Der Bilt's head. And Boss... the Kozlovs just landed two private jets at Teterboro Airport an hour ago."
