Chapter 5 - BLOOD IN THE FAMILY

For a long moment, I forgot how to breathe.

Luca was twenty-six. Reckless. Soft where he pretended to be hard. He liked fast cars, louder women, and being called Romano without earning the weight of the name.

But he was my brother.

My mother’s last living son besides me.

Tony looked from the photo to my face. “Boss…”

“Where was this taken?” I asked.

Mara answered, “Two weeks ago. Maspeth storage yard.”

“What was Luca doing there?”

“That’s what I came to ask you.”

I picked up the photo.

Luca was smiling.

Marco was not.

Marco looked like a man already trapped.

That scared me more.

My phone rang before anyone could speak.

Luca.

I answered slowly.

“Dante?” His voice cracked. “I need help.”

“Where are you?”

“I didn’t know, okay? I swear I didn’t know what they were moving.”

“Where are you, Luca?”

“They said it was stolen electronics. Marco said easy money. Then I saw—” He choked. “I saw people in the truck.”

Tony moved closer, listening.

Luca whispered, “Marco has the ledger. Harlan wants it. He’s going to kill everyone whose name is inside.”

“Where are you?”

“Old ferry terminal. Hunters Point.”

“Stay there.”

“No. There’s more.” His breathing sharpened. “Elena wasn’t supposed to survive. A doctor named Bell signed the death transfer. Harlan paid him. But someone else checked her pulse and got scared.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. A nurse maybe. She hid something in Elena’s bunny.”

I turned toward the horse drawing wall.

The stuffed bunny.

Still at the funeral home? Or taken with Elena?

Before I could ask, Luca screamed.

Not loudly.

Briefly.

Like a sound cut off by a hand.

Then another voice came on the line.

Harlan.

“Family makes men stupid,” he said.

I gripped the phone until my knuckles burned.

“Touch him and I take your city apart.”

“He touched himself when he stepped into my business. Bring me Marco’s ledger by midnight. Or I send your brother back in pieces.”

The call ended.

Tony’s eyes were hard. “We move now.”

Mara blocked the door. “You charge in, Luca dies.”

“You have a better idea, Detective?”

She looked at the drawing of Bruno with a cape.

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Then at me.

“Yes,” she said. “We find the bunny first.”