Consumed by the Mafia (De Salvo Family #5)

12. Innocence Lost

twelve

Innocence Lost

Ryōma listened quietly while Abby called her boss. She called directly to the office of Newark’s Special Agent in Charge, which gave him an idea of the weight the feds had put on her shoulders. It was good they had decided to go with handing over a different group. We just have to get the fuckers first.

“I see,” Albert said after Abby had spun her tale. Having the man’s voice in his ear was incredibly disconcerting. “I can understand your cause for concern, Agent Fitzgerald, but that is a heavy accusation to be making.”

“I’m aware of that, sir,” Abby said calmly. “If I had concrete proof, I’d be bringing it to you in person. Regardless, I thought the suspicion was valid enough to make known, considering the situation.”

Albert was silent for a moment.

Ryōma tapped his fingers restlessly over his elbow, having earlier folded his arms across his chest to hold himself still.

“Continue working as you would,” Albert finally said. “Report only what you need to report to Agent Mercer. Keep receipts for your personal lodging expenses and once this is settled, we’ll reimburse you. I’ll look into records on my end to make sure our systems weren’t compromised. But remember, suspicion without proof is not cause for action or persecution. There could be an entirely separate explanation we aren’t seeing yet.”

“Of course, sir.” Abby waited until the line clicked before closing her end of the call, severing the connection to Ryōma’s earpiece simultaneously. Her eyes flicked up, locking with his, and it was as if no space existed between them at all. “I don’t suppose one of your tech geniuses can backdate a digital trail to make it look like I booked myself into a hotel yesterday? It probably won’t be long before they double-check that story.”

Ryōma slipped his phone from his pocket. “Something like that’s probably child’s play for those nerds.” He typed out the request, with a quick explanation, and sent it off. “Any particular account you want it attached to?”

Abby rattled off a number without hesitation, as if it wasn’t information he or the family by extension could use to seriously hurt her .

He sent a second text with those details and let the phone rest in his lap while they waited for a response.

In the stretch of silence that followed, Abby sighed and slumped back into her chair. “So, are you ready for a long and boring day of searching for ghosts?”

Ryōma chuckled and straightened, stepping toward her. “Baby girl, you don’t have to restrict yourself to your old methods anymore. You have me.”

She arched a brow. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you all been searching for Brendan Coughlan for months? And wasn’t I the first one to get you even a recent photo?”

He only shrugged. “You’re not wrong. But now that we do have the knowledge of what he looks like, it’ll be a hell of a lot harder for him to hide from us. Besides—” Ryōma held out a hand, waiting until she settled her palm over his to haul her swiftly to her feet. “With the Irish floodin’ into town, it’s bound to be easier to round them up. All we really need is one or two bodies to put the squeeze on.”

Abby scoffed and pushed him out of her personal space before turning toward the door. “I prefer interrogation to squeezing.”

He grinned shamelessly, easily catching up to her stride. “Then we might need three or four. That way when your way fails, we still have bodies left over for mine.”

“I don’t think I appreciate your assumption there.”

“Not personal,” he said as his phone buzzed with an incoming text. “It’s just a safe bet that these guys won’t be so willing to talk when they’re asked . We got our hands on one a few months back who was pretty tight-lipped.” He dropped his gaze to the screen long enough to read Mikey’s confirmation, pretending he didn’t know Abby was giving him another dubious look. “Hotel issue is handled.” He sent one more message, this time requesting transportation, before finally looking up again.

Abby arched a brow, her forward progress halted at the edge of the foyer. “Do I want to know what happened to that guy you were just talking about?”

Ryōma met her stare. “Probably not.”

She blew out a breath and rolled her head toward the door. “Are we just supposed to start walking? Do we call a cab?”

“Patience, baby girl,” he teased. “I’m sorting that out for us.” His phone buzzed again and he opened the latest text.

Mikey: Car’s on its way. Five minutes.

Ryōma grinned, sent his gratitude, and let himself lean back against the wall to face his companion. “We’ve got a couple minutes to kill. Tell me how a girl barely into her teens becomes obsessed enough with ‘justice’ to decide to join the FBI.”

Abby’s eyes went wide, as if the question caught her off-guard. “That’s—I don’t—”

“C’mon,” he said, “you know how I got hooked into a life of crime. I’m only curious what pulled you the other direction. That’s not a conviction most kids have that early.” He shrugged. “Was it a family thing for you, too? Your parents work for the government? Or maybe they were cops, soldiers, something like that?”

Her blue eyes dulled and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “No,” she said, quieter. “My parents were just two good, hard-working people who minded their own business.” She licked her lips. “And then one Sunday, when I was eight, they became two completely innocent victims of senseless violence.”

Abigail saw Ryōma shift his stance in her peripheral vision, but it was like a backdrop to the memory suddenly playing through her mind.

The gunfire she hadn’t understood blared in her ears. The fear that had frozen her in place in her room that morning whispered through her veins once more. The squealing tires she hadn’t even consciously heard until a deep hypnotherapy session two years later that she hadn’t been able to unhear since reverberated through her bones. All of it merely a terrifying build-up to the moment she finally walked herself out of her room, down the short hall, to find her loving parents slumped over and still bleeding—one of them still dying—in the tatters of the living room.

No child should ever see a sight so horrible.

“Abby,” Ryōma said, his voice a strange combination of muddled and distant yet closer than before. One of his hands settled on her shoulder, and he used the other to tip her chin up with a gentle touch. His brow creased. “Shit. Abby, I’m sorry.”

She swallowed hard against the turbulent emotions and visualized shoving them down with as much strength as she could muster. “It was a drive-by,” she said, hearing the crack in her own voice. “Mom died instantly, one of the bullets went through her face and into her brain. Dad held on for three minutes and sixteen seconds. I only survived because it was the one day I was allowed to sleep in.”

He muttered a curse and swept both thumbs up, over her cheeks, deftly avoiding the area of her makeup covered bruise. Then he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and asked gruffly, “Did they get the fucker?”

Abigail let out a harsh laugh. “That’s the actual answer to your question,” she said. “I put all my faith in the detectives. I was a kid, and when the adults said they would catch the bad guys, I trusted them. But … they didn’t. Not for years, and ultimately not because they were trying .”

Ryōma eased back, still scowling.

She dragged in a shaky breath. “About three years after the shooting, two men confessed. They’d been arrested and charged in unrelated crimes and were looking to reduce their sentence by rolling on some other people they used to run with, which I didn’t understand back then. As a result, they were sentenced to five years, including time served.” She paused, needing to steady herself as the weight of that unforgettable disappointment threatened yet again.

Her grandparents hadn’t allowed her to go to the trial, insisting there was no reason she needed to relive that horrible day or hear anyone else talk about it. Probably they had been right, though she’d been angry about it for a long time. But she had been glad they had relented, at least, to take her with them on the day of the verdict. And again to hear the sentencing. When the verdict had come out as guilty for both men, Abigail had taken for granted that would mean they would do real time. Her grandparents had, too.

Instead, the men who’d accidentally murdered her parents and sped away for three years after were handed a five year—minus eight months—slap on the wrist.

Old, familiar outrage threatened to overtake her, and it was the out-of-place sound of buzzing from Ryōma’s pocket that drew Abigail back to the moment. She pulled in another deep, semi-cleansing breath, and when he made no move to extract his phone, she continued her story. “I thought it was a slap in the face. I wrote letters to a bunch of people, demanding ‘real justice’, and eventually I was told to ‘stop harassing the department and the hardworking detectives.’ No one seemed to give a damn that the little girl whose parents had died—by admitted mistaken identity, no less—was still a goddamn minor when the murderers were let free again. That was considered acceptable, because another killer—one other man—was put away.”

Ryōma’s nostrils flared and his chest heaved as he drew a deep breath of his own. Anger darkened his eyes.

Abigail rested her fingers on his chest. Her heart ached, sadness blending with the rage as it always did, with that series of devastating memories. “At first, I had thought I wanted to be a cop, so I could be a hero to little kids like me. So I could bring them justice, maybe even save them. But when time started passing and I realized the detectives I knew weren’t my heroes, I realized I needed to be something else if I wanted to be those things. I still thought I did, so I started searching. And when I heard the men responsible worked for some cartel or something, that it wasn’t just random crime but a criminal group, I looked into what organization deals with those. That’s how I decided to become an FBI agent.”

She had buried herself in so many books. Books about law, books about crime and the mindset of criminals, books about addicts, books about victims. Her grandparents had tried to get her to go out and play in the sun, to make friends she actually spent time with. Her teachers had expressed concern on numerous occasions. Any friends she’d had in grade school had long abandoned her by high school. She’d even once thought about becoming a lawyer, but her limited experience with those turned her off the notion. Even the so-called good ones had been supportive of the idea that had set her parents’ murderers free by the time she was sixteen.

It had been a difficult, emotional, and indisputably obsessive childhood. Abigail knew the life she’d lived hadn’t exactly been the one her parents would have wanted. But for her there had been no going back. Those men hadn’t just killed her innocent parents, they’d killed her in a sense, too.

Ryōma pulled her into his chest in a startling, tight embrace. “I wish I’d been there for you back then, baby girl.”

Her lips lifted at his ridiculous words. “You were, what, twelve when I lost my parents? You had your own things going on I imagine.” She pressed her face into the groove of his throat. “And I hear the group you were running with was throwing people in front of trains. Scary.”

He rumbled with a chuckle. “I probably could’ve asked some guys to scoop those assholes up and dump ‘em on a track. ”

She definitely should not have smiled at that. Even if it was an abstract conversation. “I bet you could.” Abigail took a beat to try and lock up the wild emotions that always inside her when she let herself reflect on her childhood and her loss. Her grandparents had put her in therapy almost immediately, and kept her in until she’d graduated high school, but that only did so much. She eased back. “For what it’s worth, one of them’s dead now, anyway. The trigger man murdered again four years later, go figure, and for that he was sentenced to life. He got himself shanked maybe five years into his time. Didn’t survive.” She was hard-pressed to feel bad about that.

Ryōma arched a brow. “Sweet, good-girl Abby, did you stalk them?”

“I did.” She wasn’t even ashamed of it. “The courts refused to allow me a restraining order after they were released, even though I was sixteen and they knew I had pushed for life for both of them. That I had kept pushing after their trial. So I figured cyberstalking and self-awareness was just proactive self-defense.”

He grinned, pride shining down at her.

She poked him in the chest. “You should really check your phone.”

He blinked. “Oh, fuck.” He dug his phone out, glanced at the screen, then dropped it back into the pocket. “Ride’s out front. Let’s walk and talk. So trigger man’s dead. Good riddance. Where’s the driver?”

Abigail let him lead the way outside and tried to keep the shock off her face when he took her hand as they started up the drive toward the property’s main gate. He hadn’t locked up, but there really was no need considering they were using a guest house. She cleared her throat and thought over what she knew of the surviving murderer, Corey Wells. The man responsible for having messed up the identity of their intended targets that fateful morning. “I lost track of him after I was transferred to Arkansas. Work kept me too busy.”

Ryōma gave her hand a squeeze. “But he was still free?”

“He had a tendency to bounce in and out, so he could be rotting in a cell or a ditch right now for all I know,” she said.

“Abigail Fitzgerald. Don’t talk that way about another human being!” Her grandmother’s sharp reprimand never did fail to make her wince.

“Well, my vote’s for the ditch.” Ryōma tipped his head closer as they neared the gate. “I’ll persuade you to give me his name later and we’ll see if we can dig him up. No sense in you wondering.”

She bumped his arm. “Or you can help me learn to leave the past behind.”

“Who says it can’t be both?”

The personal portion of the gate rolled back, parting for them, and Ryōma angled ahead of her without releasing her hand. As soon as she was past, the gate rolled shut again, leaving them standing on the streetside of the driveway in front of an idling black SUV and a scowling man she assumed to be its driver.

The scowling man straightened from where he’d been leaning against the vehicle. “Mr. De Salvo said I’m to take you where you want to go, but don’t make a habit of keeping me fucking waiting like this, yakuza.” He pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped in without another word or a single glance in Abigail’s direction.

Ryōma opened the nearest back door and motioned for her to climb in first.

Abigail slid to the far side, making room for him, and reached for her seatbelt.

As he settled into his own seat, Ryōma said, “I’m super sorry that your job is asking something inconvenient of you today, Gerardo. Maybe you should’ve declined if you weren’t up for the task.”

Abigail could see just enough of Gerardo’s profile to see the way the man’s lips curled in a brief sneer.

“Fuck you. You’re not as special as you think you are,” Gerardo shot back as he threw the SUV into reverse.

Ryōma seemed to find the response funny, because he chuckled before rolling his head to the side and drawing Abigail’s gaze back to him on some wordless command. “Should we try things your way first?”

Abigail blinked at him for a single second before her brain kicked in. Right. Searching for bodies to press. The conversation about her past had thrown her mind off-track for a beat. She rolled the question over, thinking about places she’d previously observed and trying to compare the list to what she remembered of things Peter Marchesi had told her. If she factored in the apparent certainty that he was actually working with the Irish, then every single word he’d said to her had been skewed. Not to mention she was coming from behind.

Well, she’d thrown everything else out the window, why not her methods ?

Abigail smiled across the small middle seat at Ryōma. “How about you take the lead on the where , and keep your promise on letting me take lead later?”

Ryōma opened his mouth, his eyes crinkling with amusement and something much more dangerous, but Gerardo spoke over him.

Voice gruff with disdain, Gerardo said, “We’re taking orders from a motherfucking fed now? What kind o’ operation is this?”

Abigail frowned in Gerardo’s direction. It wasn’t like she’d expected any of the De Salvo men to like her, but she was agreeing to help them solve a problem that had apparently been plaguing them for some time. To her mind, he ought to at least be choking back that displeasure.

Ryōma glared forward and gave a hard kick to the back of the driver’s seat. “She’s literally doin’ what the boss told her to do, dickhead. You got an issue with that, take it up with him. Otherwise, keep your fuckin’ mouth shut.”

“Yeah?” Gerardo accelerated aggressively as he transitioned onto a major road. “Maybe I just tell the boss you were too busy lickin’ that government pussy to pay attention.”

Abigail dipped her hand into her pocket, pulled out her new phone, and swept over to the recording app. She calmly set the device down and spoke over Ryōma’s building response. “Gerardo, was it? I don’t give a damn if you like me or not, but let’s get two things straight. First, whatever your problem with law enforcement, I am a human being and I will neither tolerate nor accept being treated or spoken to in that manner. That includes the way you speak about me when you know I can hear every word. Second, as Ryōma already said, I’m here because I’ve agreed to work in alliance with your boss. If this is the way you treat your allies, you’re more disgusting than I could possibly have thought. But that isn’t the impression I had of Mr. De Salvo, and something tells me you don’t want to sully his image with your foul behavior.” She let her words hang in the air, watching carefully as Gerardo’s grip tightened over the steering wheel.

After a beat of silence, Gerardo growled, “Put a gag on your bitch, yakuza.”

“I’m about to put a gag on you ,” Ryōma said, speaking so low Abigail wasn’t entirely sure the words would carry.

Abigail scowled. “You know what? I have a third thing.”

“Of-fucking-course you do,” Gerardo said.

“I have no interest in tolerating your hatred, either. This man is not some walking embodiment of all yakuza. His name is Ryōma .”

Gerardo snorted. “No it ain’t.”

Ryōma shifted in his seat. “You motherfucker.”

Abigail’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Excuse me?”

“What? Your little lover boy couldn’t be bothered to tell you?”

“Shut the fucking hell up, Gerardo, or I’ll climb over this seat and shove you out the door,” Ryōma snapped.

Gerardo raised his voice. “Cristiano brought himself home a stray that didn’t even have a goddamn nametag. So, bein’ the good cousin he is, the boss gave the stray a name. That’s the mutt you call Ryōma .”

Abigail’s jaw dropped and she snapped her gaze back in time to see Ryōma release his seatbelt and make for the open space between the front seats. She threw herself forward, the seatbelt biting into her in protest, and grabbed hold of him as best she could. “Don’t! You can rough him up when we get wherever he’s obviously decided to take us, don’t throw him out of a moving vehicle!”

Ryōma went still. He didn’t feel like he’d chosen to agree, only that he was considering her perspective.

“Shame, though,” Gerardo said, as if he had no care in the world. “Guy with your skill, gettin’ sucked in by a fed bitch. You’re gonna make a laughing stock outta the whole fucking family, yakuza.”

Ryōma lowered to a knee behind the center console. It was an awkward position, probably, but he wedged himself in between the seats easily. “Where have you decided to take us, Gerardo?”

“We’re going for a nice scenic drive,” Gerardo replied. “I know a place, just outside town. Great view of the Passaic. And you, fuck up, get a chance to start makin’ this right. Because no way in hell are we actually workin’ with a fed.”

The breath caught in Abigail’s chest. Gerardo was taking them somewhere isolated, with the intent to kill her. Maybe both of them. She was a fool for not having seen that coming.