Chapter 6
Rocco spent the next three days reconstructing Grant’s movements.
Not through intimidation.
Through people who had finally realized they were allowed to answer honestly.
The private-club bartender remembered Bianca entertaining men Rocco had never approved as members.
A receptionist remembered Grant waiving guest-sign-in rules.
A valet remembered sealed envelopes changing hands beside expensive cars.
An equipment manager had once found twenty thousand dollars in cash inside a tennis bag Grant told him not to touch.
The employee had assumed it belonged to Rocco.
Everything came back to the same assumption.
If Grant did it, Rocco wanted it done.
Rocco began to understand how dangerous his silence had become.
At home, Mia refused to enter elevators.
She would take the stairs even when her legs hurt.
One evening Rocco found her sitting halfway between the second and third floors.
“You tired?”
She nodded.
“Want me to carry you?”
Mia thought about it before raising her arms.
Rocco carried her upstairs.
At her bedroom door she whispered:
“I wasn’t trying to make Bianca mad.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted my bunny.”
Rocco stopped.
“What bunny?”
“The one I dropped downstairs.”
She explained that before Bianca discovered her near the storage room, Mia had been carrying a small stuffed rabbit.
It slipped through the partly open door.
Mia followed it inside.
Rocco’s pulse slowed.
“What did you see?”
“Bianca and Uncle Grant.”
“Doing what?”
Mia struggled for words.
“They were making people promise.”
“What promise?”
“I don’t know.”
Then she added something that made Rocco very still.
“Bianca said, ‘Rocco never has to know.’”
There was no reason for a three-year-old to invent that sentence.
Rocco tucked Mia into bed.
Downstairs, he called Michael.
“Find every employee who was working the nights those SUVs came in.”
Michael hesitated.
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
May you like
Rocco looked toward the ceiling.
“And this time, nobody tells Grant who we’re talking to.”
