Valentino rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t pretend to understand the first thing about what he does, but if he needs help, maybe we should try to find someone to help him.”
“I thought of that. Asking him to find someone means we have to trust him entirely, and we can’t have that person report directly to us anything Bernado might be doing wrong,” Dario said. “And we don’t have the expertise to find someone with his kind of genius. Nor can we indebt someone to us unless I maneuver that situation.”
Val sighed. He knew what that meant. The Saldi family, under his father’s regime, had resorted to that kind of manipulation on more than one occasion. Giuseppi had always claimed to be fair with his men. Yet, when he needed a certain person with a skill set completely loyal to him and felt there was no other option open to him, he’d taught Val and Dario that “saving” that person’s life and family after first sacrificing a few family members in a bloodbath would give him the required devotion. That had never sat well with Valentino. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to resort to that type of false rescue. He truly had helped Bernado, as well as a few others.
He met Dario’s gaze steadily. “You would do that?”
Dario sighed. “No. I can do a lot of things, Val, but that’s not one of them. I don’t kill innocents, not even for you, at least I never have. Who the hell knows what I’m capable of? I don’t, these days. Now that Emme is on board, I could go a lot further than I thought I could to protect her.”
Valentino couldn’t help the smirk. “She got to you.”
“She gets to everyone. Yeah. She got to me a long time ago. I wanted to beat you to a bloody pulp for laying a finger on that girl. On the other hand, I knew what it would do for you. For us. She’s different. She’s no coward, Val. She’ll be fierce when it comes to protecting your children.”
Valentino nodded.
“And you,” Dario added.
Val studied his cousin’s dark features for a long time before he decided to give him the truth. “And you as well. You’re family to her, Dario. She regards you as a sibling. She’ll protect you just as fiercely.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I wanted to slice Marge into a million little pieces for trying to make Emme doubt you and herself. She did it deliberately. She wanted to hurt you and hurt Emmanuelle. Everything Marge does is calculated, even when she’s scared out of her mind. She thought Emme might turn on you and fight for her.”
Valentino nodded. “I was aware of that. Marge figured if Emmanuelle switched sides, her family would follow suit, that she could manipulate the situation in her favor. I just hoped Emme would be aware of it as well. That damn mother of hers undermined her confidence in herself as a woman so much, and I didn’t help with what I said to Marge that night Emme overheard. I was terrified she might just walk out on me right there. I knew she wouldn’t help Marge. Emme had already seen the women in cages below the dungeon club, and she knew Marge was part of that. She wants us to stop the trafficking. But …”
“But she might believe what Marge said about you using her to firm up your position with the other families.”
Valentino glanced down at his watch. They were only two minutes out now. “Because part of it was true. That was the beauty of what Marge said. A mixture of the truth and lies. Mariko bought into it. I did benefit from marrying Emme. I did form the alliance with the Ferraro family that every other one of the families wanted. I married the princess. I even call her ‘Princess.’” He looked out the window. Shit. She still hadn’t reached out to him.
The car pulled to the curb. Stopped. The unassuming offices of Farsighted Logistics looked as if they comprised a very small business. Behind the suite of offices was a larger garage housing a fleet of trucks and vans. The company had started out small, handling the details of transporting their customers’ freight and merchandise, booking all the details and tracking them across the United States. Eventually, the company grew so large and made so much money they began to acquire their own trucks along with those first smaller vans until they had a presence in nearly every major city. What wasn’t known was that Miceli transported more than his customers’ freight in his vans and trucks. This was just one of many of the businesses that would be destroyed before the day was over.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They had raided seven of Miceli’s businesses in a single day, taking several men and Marge from the first four. After that, there was no one they thought could give them information needed to find the children or the teens held for sale. Nor were they any closer to moving on the pipeline itself.