Chapter 3
I placed the counterfeit medallion on the table between us.
Preston stared at it.
Veronica refused to.
That interested me.
Audrey had changed into dry clothes.
Sofia sat beside her eating strawberries from a small bowl.
She had decided Audrey needed protection now.
Three-year-olds are good at deciding things like that.
“Who made it?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
Veronica finally rolled her eyes.
“You own half the jewelers in the city.”
“Exactly.”
Her expression shifted.
She understood the problem.
My family's metalwork was distinctive.
So was Voss's.
Anyone who knew enough to copy the medallion badly had probably seen one.
Anyone who had access to people capable of making it quickly belonged close to one family or the other.
I looked at my consigliere, Gabriel Rizzo.
Fifty-four.
Gray hair.
Twenty-six years beside my father and me.
“Find where it came from.”
Gabriel picked it up.
His thumb rubbed across the false serpent.
“I'll handle it.”
Something about the way he said it bothered me.
Not enough.
Not yet.
I looked at Veronica.
“Why Voss?”
She laughed.
“I don't know.”
“Why did Preston say I would get angry when I saw the serpent?”
“He didn't.”
Sofia immediately looked at her.
“He did.”
Veronica's jaw tightened.
Children ruin sophisticated lies with embarrassing efficiency.
Preston stepped forward.
“You're seriously taking a toddler's memory over ours?”
“Yes.”
His mouth closed.
I turned toward Audrey.
“What else did you hear?”
“Not much.”
She looked embarrassed.
“I was trying to get Sofia away before they noticed her.”
“Anything.”
She thought.
“One sentence.”
“What sentence?”
She looked directly at Preston.
“He said, ‘Once Renato moves east, the house opens west.’”
I felt the room change.
That wasn't about murder.
Not directly.
It was movement.
Security.
Deployment.
Someone wanted me angry enough to move men.
Voss controlled the west side of the river.
If I believed he had harmed Sofia, I wouldn't send five men.
I would send fifty.
Maybe more.
Which meant my estate.
My clubs.
My warehouses.
My people.
Would all thin out at once.
I looked at Gabriel.
He understood.
“Diversion.”
“Yes.”
Veronica laughed softly.
“You're inventing a war out of a pool accident.”
I ignored her.
“Search the pool office.”
Preston moved again.
Tiny.
Toward his jacket.
One of my guards pulled his arm back.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
The guard reached into Preston's inside pocket.
And removed a black phone.
Not his regular one.
No case.
No contacts.
No personal photographs.
Only six messages.
The first five had been deleted badly enough that my people could still recover fragments.
The sixth was intact.
WAIT UNTIL HE SEES THE GIRL.
THEN GIVE HIM VOSS.
No signature.
I looked at Preston.
His face had lost its arrogance.
“Who sent this?”
He shrugged.
I stepped closer.
“Preston.”
Silence.
“You attacked me twelve minutes ago.”
His jaw tightened.
“You helped put my daughter in a cage.”
Nothing.
“You stood there while a woman drowned.”
“She's alive.”
Audrey's face went still.
That sentence did more damage to him than any confession.
I leaned closer.
“That's what Veronica said too.”
He looked toward his sister.
Another mistake.
I saw it.
She saw that I saw it.
Then Gabriel returned from the pool office.
He was carrying six black velvet pouches.
He placed them on the table.
Inside each was a forged Voss medallion.
Six.
Not one.
I looked at him.
“Where?”
“Behind the air-conditioning panel.”
Six fake symbols.
Six places to plant them.
Six incidents.
This hadn't been one staged attack.
It was a campaign.
Someone planned to keep giving me reasons to blame Adrian Voss until I finally did what they wanted.
I turned toward Veronica.
She wasn't looking at the medallions.
May you like
She was staring at Gabriel.
And Gabriel was staring back.
