Looks like two men, two rigs, on the catwalk at the top. They cut out a window. Shooters would have to be military-grade shots to make it at that distance, more than half a mile, and wind in the air.”
Nick assumed that each shot had been aimed at a head—one bullet to the brain, each thorn in Ettore Cuccia’s side removed. The wind must have disrupted the bullets’ paths.
Not him, but his daughter.
“I don’t give a fuck about their credentials. Did you get them?”
Tony squared his shoulders in the way he did when he was filling his spine with an extra measure of steel. “No, don, but we will. Calvin clocked them on camera heading out of town. No plates, but he’s chasing them down through the traffic cameras, and we’ve got three teams on the road, following his directions, ready to split off if he loses them. He also got a good capture of the driver’s face, and he’s running a facial recognition program to get a name. We will have them today. On my life, don. We will have them.”
Nick nodded. “Keep me informed.”
“I will.” Tony stood for a moment, as if unsure if he should say more. In the corner of his sight, Nick saw Donnie shake him off, and with a nod, Tony left.
Donnie stepped in front of Nick and waited for him to look him in the eye.
He looked exhausted and desolate. Nick wondered what he himself must look like and endeavored to push his rioting emotions back from his face.
“This is me speaking as your friend, Nick, not your second. You need to go to Bev. She needs you, and you need her. This”—he gestured at the shadowy, unused patient room as if it were a battleground—“We will take care of all this. We will get the guys who did it, we will figure out what happened, and we will render justice. I got your back. It’s my job and my life’s honor to have your back. But this will keep for now. Now, your wife and children need you.”
What Nick wanted to say to his best friend, what he needed desperately to say, was that he couldn’t go to Beverly. Maybe he could never again go to his wife. Because it was his fault she was in grief. He had done this.
Their daughter was dead because of him. He’d failed again to protect his family, and this time he’d failed in a way he could never make right. Elisa had been right to fear him.
Now he’d lost her forever.
How could he ever expect Beverly to forgive him? How could he expect anything other than fear and loathing from her now? Or from the children that remained to them?
He had promised her he’d keep their family apart from his world. He’d insisted upon it. And he had failed. If he went to Beverly now, he was afraid—he was fucking terrified—that she would turn from him. Without her, without his sun, what was left?
He could say none of that, not to anyone, not even Donnie. Not and keep any thread of sanity or strength. If he allowed himself to be a grieving father, allowed himself to feel the blow of his wife’s grief, and her blame, it would end him, and he couldn’t allow that to happen.
He was Don Pagano, and he had a war to win. Now more than ever.
So he said, “Let me know when you hear from Tony, or get word about Trey or Giada,” and walked out of the room, away from Donnie and away from the waiting room and the large cluster of his family, hunched together in sorrow and shock.
Away from his wife. Away from his children. Away.
~oOo~
As Nick approached the bank of elevators, Carlo, his cousin, Trey’s father, came around a corner, and they were face to face. Carlo’s face was pale and creased with worry and rage, and it twisted into a contemptuous sneer at the sight of Nick.
Nick stood silently and didn’t react. He wanted to apologize, but he could not. He wanted to share Carlo’s worry, and he did, but Carlo would reject any expression of it. He wanted, too, to defend himself, to say that Trey had made a choice to join him, a choice Nick had worked hard not to influence—in fact, he’d worked to dissuade Trey—but how could he defend himself when his own daughter lay on a slab below them?
Nick said nothing. Carlo said nothing. Eventually, the stalemate ended. Carlo simply