Page 97 of Secrets of the Brother
Longo puffed out his chest. “Are you threatening an officer of the law?”
“You’re goddamn right I am. The rules don’t apply to me, remember?”
Longo pointed his finger at us both as he seemed to vibrate with righteous anger. “You Cavalieris don’t scare me! I will have you both placed incustodia cautelare!”
I placed a restraining hand on Cesare’s chest. “I’d be very careful about threatening us with preventive custody, Longo. You and I both know you don’t have the standing to declare us a danger to society or a flight risk. Our family’s roots go back to before Italy was a country.”
Cesare smirked. “Not to mention the obscene amounts of money we would donate to the judge’s favorite charity to get your requestreconsidered.”
Longo sputtered. “Your money won’t save you from several eyewitness statements. They all state you left the hospital on the night in question and did not return for several hours and when you did”— he checked his notes— “you were in an agitated state with mud on your shoes.”
I exchanged a look with Cesare. I turned back to Longo. “What about the security cameras?”
“What about them?”
I sighed. This meeting was getting tiresome. “There must be security footage of him leaving then returning to the hospital?”
Longo yanked up his pants again. “The security footage seems to be missing from that night.”
Cesare cracked his knuckles. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
Longo wiped his mouth again. “What are you implying?”
Cesare’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’timplyingit.”
Longo flipped through the pages of his notebook as he turned his focus on me. “And you have no alibi. In fact, we have several statements that you stormed out of the hospital in an agitated state deliberately in search of your wife.”
“That’s true.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cesare cast me a concerned look.
I wasn’t planning on falling on my sword for her murder unless Cesare continued to be implicated. It was clear whoever was setting us up had enough money and power to tamper with evidence and buy off witnesses.
I would be damned if I let Cesare go down with me or for me.
“So you admit you killed her?”
Cesare stepped forward. “He said nothing of the sort.”
Longo put his notebook away. “He doesn’t have too. This was just a courtesy visit. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that you beat your wife to death. She tricked you into marriage by claiming she was pregnant. When you found out there was no baby, you took your fists to her. You then threw her body off a cliff to make it look like an accident and paid off the local cops to look the other way.”
I widened my stance as I stared him down. “I’m hearing a super creepy bedtime story, but no evidence.”
“In the days after your wife went missing, you were photographed with bruised and cut knuckles.”
“It was harvest time. It’s a well-known fact we are hands-on winery owners. I think you’d find that half the men in this village had bruised and cut hands that week. Next.”
Of course, their injuries would be from the vines. Mine were from punching a wall.
“Why did your cottage burn?”
“What?”
“The cottage where you and your wife were staying at the vineyard. The night she disappeared. The cottage burned under mysterious circumstances.”
Fuck.
I let out a frustrated breath. Since there was really no other excuse, I went with the truth. “I burned it down.”
