Arcadia Burns Read Online Free PDF Page B

knock heroff balance like this. It meant that Trevini was right about her. “I’ll manage here on my own. Maybe I ought to just drop that business about my father and TABULA.” They both knew she wouldn’t. Not after her promise to Zoe when her sister was dying. “It’s odd to be back here. New York is…kind of different.”
    “Of course it’s odd. You’re different now yourself.”
    “Once I wouldn’t have lost control like this.”
    “You haven’t lost control. You’re annoyed. Of course.” He cleared his throat, and she imagined him rubbing his nose as he sometimes did when he was thinking. “Who sent you this video?”
    “Trevini.”
    “The bastard.”
    “He says—” she began, but she swallowed the rest of the sentence: He says he has further material in his possession . More evidence? Of what? “He didn’t tell me where he got it. But you can bet he will.”
    “He’s the same as the others. They all hate that we—”
    “I can ignore the others. But not Trevini. He’s the only one who knows absolutely everything about the way the Alcantaras earn their money.”
    “He doesn’t like an eighteen-year-old girl having the authority to give him orders.”
    “You can’t really blame him.”
    “Did he say anything else?”
    “He wants me to go and see him.”
    “Maybe you’d better not.”
    “He can’t do anything to me. It would be stupid of him to. My managers don’t trust him—none of them like him knowing so much. If he tried murdering me, he wouldn’t survive very long himself. The rest of them think I’m naive and out of my depth, but they believe that sooner or later they’ll be able to guide me in a direction that suits them. Trevini could never be capo ; no one would accept him. Thirty or forty years of working for the Alcantaras still doesn’t make him one of us.”
    “All the same, don’t go to see him. He’s planning something. Why else would he have sent you the video?”
    She was beginning to calm down. “Does the name Cristina di Santis mean anything to you? Contessa di Santis?”
    “Who’s she?”
    “Trevini’s new colleague, he says. He wants me to meet her. It may not be important.”
    “With the jet, I could be with you in ten hours.”
    “No, you have to make sure your own people aren’t about to stab you in the back. I can deal with Trevini. And my mother, too.”
    His long silence showed that he wasn’t convinced. “Who filmed this video?”
    “A friend of mine…at least, she was at the time. Valerie Paige. She was the one who dragged me to the party.” She sensed that he was about to say something, but she kept talking. “It wasn’t the first time. She waited tables in a club; she was always getting invited somewhere, and sometimes I went with her.”
    “And she filmed me?”
    “Not just you. A whole crowd of people who were there. Later on someone froze the picture on your face. I assume that was Trevini’s doing.”
    “How does a lawyer stuck in a wheelchair in Sicily come by a cell phone belonging to a New York waitress?”
    “FedEx?”
    “I mean it, Rosa.”
    “I have no idea. And I don’t care. But it’s helped to talk to you about it…and Alessandro? I’m sorry that I…you know what I mean, right?”
    “I care about you a lot,” he said gently.
    “I care about you too. And I can’t wait to see you again. But not here in New York. I’ll be home in a few days. This is something I have to do on my own.” She hesitated for a moment. “And don’t get any ideas about speaking to Trevini yourself. This is my business. Okay?”
    “But it’s just as much—”
    “Please, Alessandro. They’ll never take me seriously if as soon as things get tricky I send a Carnevare, of all people, ahead of me. Anyway, you have enough trouble of your own.”
    He didn’t contradict her. She wished she could kiss him for that.
    “Call me every day, okay?”
    “I will.”
    They said good-bye. Rosa put her cell phone away and listened to the