Page 93 of Freed
“Time is of the essence.”
My voice is hard. I don’t bother softening it. Because upstairs there is a woman sleeping under my roof who is pregnant with another man’s child.
Cesaro unclasps the briefcase and begins pulling out folders. “This is what I was able to find on short notice. So far, everything points to Russo being the one who got Miss Miller out of the States… and your home…”
The words hit like a match to gasoline, and a slow, poisonous rage uncoils in my chest. I drag the first file toward me and skim it, eyes moving fast over the pages. Financial transfers. Known associates. Travel gaps. Contact points. Nothing definitive yet, but enough to paint the outline of something ugly.
“How did he get her out of the apartment?” I ask.
Cesaro hesitates and I look up.
“What?”
His expression tightens. “It seems… they may have been in contact before she disappeared.”
Every muscle in my body goes still.
“Before?” I ask quietly.
Cesaro nods once. “Since the night at the nightclub.”
For a moment, the room ceases to exist.
The same night Sienna died.
The same night blood slicked the pavement and the world tilted on its axis.
The same night I thought Elizabeth had been another victim of chaos, of timing, of bad luck and worse men.
A vicious heat floods my bloodstream. Have I truly been this blind? Have I spent all this time hunting shadows while she was speaking and sleeping with my enemy behind my back? Was I the only fool in the room?
“Boss?”
Cesaro’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. I blink once and realize I’ve crushed the edge of the file in my hand.
“Go on.”
“From what we can tell,” he says carefully, “Russo gave her a burner phone. That’s how they were communicating.”
He reaches back into the briefcase and pulls out a plastic evidence bag. Inside is a cheap phone. For one second, I don’t move. Because suddenly I don’t know which possibility I hate more—that she was manipulated, or that she chose it.
Then I take the bag from him.
“There wasn’t a code?” I ask.
“No, sir.”
Of course there wasn’t. I slide the phone out and unlock it. The screen lights beneath my thumb, dull and ordinary and completely capable of detonating the little restraint I still possess. I scroll, seeing just how often they were in contact. Each line drives the anger under my skin into something hotter. Meaner. More personal.
Fuck.
She was texting him all along. Not once and not even under duress, as far as I can tell. Formonths. The realization lands like a blade under my ribs and twists.
And it gets worse.
Buried in the thread is enough implication to make my vision sharpen: hints, evasions, careful wording that says far too much. Dante all but suggests he had a hand in the shooting atthe apartment. Not directly—not in the way only an idiot would confess—but enough for a man like me to read the truth in the spaces between the words.
And I fell for it.
