“Whatever,” my father says. “Just be more mindful of your actions.”
He doesn’t believe me. Typical.
Just then, I hear a knock on the door. A moment later, the nurse comes in with a tray.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says. “But it’s time for your medicine, Mr. Ursini. Afterwards, you’ll have your therapy session just as you requested.”
“Right.” My father sits up. “I’m sick and tired of this bed. The sooner I get out of it, the faster I’ll recover.”
I stand up. “In that case, I’ll go. I have stuff to take care of, too.”
I would have wanted to ask him more about Bart, but I guess I’ll just dig around on my own. My father is still recovering, after all. No need to burden his mind unless I have more information.
“I’m sure you do,” my father says. “Vito tells me you’ve been doing great work at the company. Keep it up.”
Well, that compliment was unexpected. I give him a nod and a slight smile before leaving the room. As I walk down the hall, I straighten my shoulders and grip the edges of my jacket.
Yup, I’ve got work to do. And not just regarding the family business.
I have to find out what really happened to Bart Nicholson.
~
“You’re right, boss,” Dino, one of my trusted men, tells me over the phone. “I accessed Bart’s phone records, and the night he died, he got a call from an unknown number.”
I almost pump my fist. So I was right. Someone asked Bart to go out that night. Someone so important Bart couldn’t refuse him. A judge? A politician? An old friend? Or maybe Bart couldn’t refuse because the person threatened him? Whoever it was, he must have asked Bart to come alone. That was why Bart gave Mario those sleeping pills. Mario wasn’t just his driver, after all. He was also Bart’s bodyguard. He was a light sleeper and yet he didn’t notice Bart leave the house. Also, he always has a cup of coffee with Bart after dinner, which means Bart had the perfect opportunity to drug him.
Now I know why Bart left the house. The question is: Who did he go to meet?
“Were you able to trace that number?” I ask Dino.
“Sorry, boss,” Dino answers. “It was a burner phone.”
All the more reason for me to believe the person he met murdered him. I just have to figure out how.
“That’s fine,” I tell him. “You did good work. Thanks.”
I end the call and then walk towards the other man whose skills I’ve commissioned for my investigation, Sam. I pulled him from one of our car factories. Right now, he’s looking under the hood of Bart’s car, a Maserati Levante, which finally turned up in a garage after mysteriously disappearing from the scene of the accident.
What am I hoping he’ll find? Frankly, nothing. If this car was somehow tampered with, then it’s an important piece of evidence and therefore should have been destroyed. The fact that it’s here means it’s useless. Unless someone screwed up and couldn’t stand to destroy such a beautiful car, especially when he could make a load of money.
“Well?” I ask.
Sam pops out of the hood. “No doubt about it. The brakes have been tampered with.”
My eyebrows go up. Well, what do you know? Today is my lucky day.
I still don’t know who’s behind all this, but I’m sure now that Bart was killed. He was called out, made to drive by himself in a car that had already been set up to fail.
I have to tell my father. He’ll be upset and angry for sure, but he has to know.
And he’s not the only one.
As much as I hate to admit it, I know there’s someone else I have to break this horrible news to.
Jodie.
Well, she can’t possibly hate me more than she already does, can she?
Chapter Three
Jodie
Creepy. Disgusting. Vile.
Those are just some of the words that appear as a caption to Leo’s image whenever he stubbornly pops up in my head, which unfortunately has been happening more often in the past few days, like right now.
I release a deep sigh as I rest my head on the edge of the bathtub. The warm water dances around me before settling beneath a fleece of froth.
Leonardo Ursini. What did I ever do to warrant his malicious mischief?
I still remember the first prank he played on me – a plastic frog inside my boot. Harmless, really, but at the time I was so scared of frogs that I bawled for minutes. I was clutching my foot, too, so Antonio and Leo’s mom thought I had sprained my ankle. She was about to bring me to the hospital when Leo told her what happened. She brought me home instead and I fell asleep in the car. The next day, she brought Leo to my house to apologize but I started crying as soon as I saw him. It took me a while before I could stand to be near him again, and I never could bring myself to like him, especially when he kept teasing me. I started hanging out more with Antonio and we became best friends. I guess it was around that time I fell in love with him, too.