Chapter 7 - The Unraveling of Bianca Rossi
Enzo drove through the slush-covered streets to the luxury high-rise condominium he had purchased for Bianca three weeks earlier.
He did not take the private elevator with his usual leisurely swagger.
He shoved past the doorman, ignoring the man’s greeting, and took the stairs two at a time to the tenth floor.
He used his master key and kicked the heavy oak door open until it slammed against the drywall.
Bianca was sitting on the white velvet sofa, wearing a silk robe and sipping champagne from a fluted glass.
Young Luca was sitting on the carpet playing with a remote-controlled car Enzo had bought him the day before.
When Bianca saw Enzo’s face, the glass slipped from her fingers and shattered onto the Persian rug.
She scrambled backward against the cushions, her eyes darting toward the hallway.
Enzo walked into the living room without taking off his leather gloves.
He grabbed the child by the shoulder and shoved him gently into the back bedroom, slamming the door shut.
He turned back to Bianca, his voice a low, terrifying growl.
He threw the Cicero surveillance photos onto her lap.
He asked her why she was standing beside Vincent Tatalia forty-eight hours before Carmela’s car was crushed.
Bianca’s breath came in ragged, uneven gasps.
She tried to smile, tried to reach her hand toward his cheek in that sweet, practiced way she always did.
She whispered that it was a misunderstanding, that Vincent had approached her to offer protection for Luca.
Enzo grabbed her wrist and twisted it until she fell to her knees on the broken glass.
He was not the doting benefactor anymore.
He was a cornered wolf whose entire pack had turned against him.
From the inner pocket of his coat, he pulled a second document he had picked up from an informant on the way over.
It was Luca’s original birth certificate, retrieved from a private hospital in southern Italy.
The father’s name was not blank, as Bianca had claimed for three months.
The father’s name was Vincent Tatalia.
The entire affair had been a five-month operation designed to place Enzo in the middle of a domestic scandal while the Tatalias moved in on the Romano ports.
She had targeted Enzo’s vanity, playing the helpless damsel who needed his strength to raise a boy.
And Enzo had fallen for it like an amateur, sacrificing his own flesh and blood for the spawn of his enemy.
Bianca began to weep, but there was no innocence left in her tears.
She screamed that Enzo had always been an arrogant fool who wanted to feel like a savior.
She told him he was never half the man Carmela’s father was, and that the Tatalias had promised her half the south side once he was dead.
Enzo stared down at her, his face completely devoid of expression.
The rage inside him had burned itself out, leaving only a cold, hollow expanse of ash.
He did not strike her.
He simply pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the city’s organized crime task force directly.
He gave them the address of the Cicero warehouse, the registration of the Lincoln Navigator, and the names of four Tatalia capos involved in federal racketeering.
He threw the phone down onto the sofa beside her.
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He told her she had ten minutes before the federal marshals arrived to arrest her as a co-conspirator in an attempted homicide.
Then he walked out of the apartment, leaving her screaming behind him.
