I didn’t get the reason for her call at first. People in our line of work died all the time. A side effect of mafia life. Hearing about Mateo’s death, though, had been a little like when I’d heard my brother Sergio had been killed. It made me pause.
There was more. Isabella said the killer had intended for the body to be found. It had been meant to send a message. Castellano had been worked over, which didn’t surprise me, then shot execution-style: bullet to the back of the head. But there was one more thing. Two more things, actually.
His tongue had been cut out. He was a snitch.
I had told her callously that I wasn’t totally surprised, considering he’d snitched before when he’d saved my ass. But she’d told me to shut up and listen. There’d been a mark on him. A brand. It was in the middle of his chest. She’d seen a picture of it. How she’d gotten her hands on a photo like that, I had no idea, although she was incredibly resourceful. Never underestimate Isabella DeMarco. Hadn’t I learned that yet?
She thought the mark would be of interest to me. It was to Salvatore, apparently. The brand was a larger version of the Benedetti family crest, a generations-old symbol of power in our world, at least in southern Italy and the northeastern United States. It was an exact copy of the one I held in my hand. Mateo Castellano had been branded before his death, and someone wanted to get two messages out: one, that he was a snitch, and snitches were dealt with mercilessly. Two, that it was a Benedetti who’d done the dealing.
But this wasn’t how Roman operated. It wasn’t his MO. I wouldn’t put it past Franco, but he had a different sort of cruelty. He was just as brutal but not medieval in his torture. I didn’t suspect Salvatore for a second.
That’s why I’d given Gia the pills.
Mateo was my age, or close to it. He had a kid sister. I’d met her once, a long time ago. I think I’d been seventeen or eighteen. It was at a party, which my father had attended, where a secret meeting had been held. He’d brought me along. When they’d gone to talk, I’d wandered around the property, bored, annoyed at not being invited into the meeting. A little ways from the house, I’d come across a little girl backed against a tree by two boys about twelve, I’d say. They were apparently trying to take something from her, and she’d been putting up a hell of a fight, but she couldn’t have been more than seven. I’d told the boys to piss off and leave the kid alone. She’d given me a look. It wasn’t a “thanks for saving me” or anything like that. It’d been a glare. She’d been just as pissed at me as she’d been at those boys. I remembered I’d laughed when Mateo had found us there and told her to get back to the house and help their mother with something. She’d spoken to him in Italian and thrown a sideways glance my way before running back house, the flash of her angry green eyes from beneath those thick dark bangs now unsettlingly familiar.
I didn’t know Mateo’s sister’s name. I’d never asked.
And I had a suspicion I wanted gone.
I needed to check the mark on Gia’s hip.
She’d be the right age. That party had been seventeen, almost eighteen years ago. If I was right about the little girl being seven, that’d make her twenty-four now.
Did I have Mateo Castellano’s sister trapped in that room? If so, who the fuck had sent her to me? Did they know they were sending her to me? And why the Benedetti brand? I knew all the workings Franco had his dirty hands in, and human trafficking wasn’t part of any of it. He did some bad shit, but he didn’t sell stolen women.
That was why I needed her knocked out when I first saw the mark. I couldn’t give anything away. She knew who had taken her, and it was personal. I’d never bothered to ask more, because I didn’t give a fuck, and I didn’t want to know. But now, having heard about the brand on Mateo Castellano, I needed to know.
After putting the ring away, I made myself something to eat, wanting to be sure she was out before I went back in there. After waiting over an hour, I took the key out of my pocket and unlocked the door. Light from the room I was in shone on her motionless form on the bed, tucked tight beneath the blanket. I made my way to the bed to make sure she was out. She was. From the locked chest, I took out a lightbulb and screwed it into the ceiling from where I’d removed it before Gia’s arrival. I then switched on the light, not too bright but bright enough. Gia didn’t stir.