Chapter 15
The Price Of Silence
Enzo wanted to meet at the old Rizzano restaurant, where Alessandro had eaten his first birthday cake and learned to count cash in the back office. Grace advised against going. Ortiz arranged an interview instead, with counsel present and the conversation recorded.
Enzo arrived wearing the same navy coat he'd worn to Sofia's funeral. He looked offended to see a detective at the table.
“I raised you in this business,” he told Alessandro.
“You worked for my father,” Alessandro replied. “Those aren't the same thing.”
Enzo slid a folder forward. It held records of off-the-books payments Alessandro had once approved to stop rival crews from threatening dock workers. They were ugly, legally dangerous, and real.
“If I fall,” Enzo said, “you won't stay clean.”
Alessandro didn't defend himself. “Then put them on the record.”
Grace looked at him sharply. He nodded. The old way—destroy the evidence, scare the witness, make a call—had helped put his daughter in danger. He would answer for whatever he'd done.
Enzo leaned back, losing the smile. “All this for a girl who won't remember her haircut in a year?”
“She's going to remember whether I believed her.”
Ortiz placed a sealed evidence photograph on the table. It showed a second vehicle close behind Sofia's car on the access road. Its license plate was partly obscured, but the distinctive rear light matched a vehicle registered to Enzo's office.
Enzo glanced at it once. Then he asked for his attorney.
May you like
The interview ended. Outside, Grace's phone rang. Harbor House had been broken into; someone had taken the clinic's backup computer. And Rosalie, who had gone to deliver fresh bedding there, wasn't answering her phone.
