Together. It sure felt like that when we escaped through the tunnels, and since then everything I’ve ever known has morphed into something sinister.
I shake my head and back up, squirming away from him. “I’m scared, and I have no one to talk to.”
He looks genuinely hurt by that statement. His eyes are red and glassy as he holds his hands up to his heart. “You have me,” he breathes.
“Do I?” I whimper. “I need the truth. The whole truth and not what I’m allowed to hear or what you think I need to hear. If you’re truly with me, then I need you to prove it. If you want my trust, you have to give me yours as well. I need you to start by telling me why you weren’t there today, like you’d said you’d be.”
Pain and hesitation wage a war in his expression. His searing blue gaze burns a hole in mine as he fights my own determined stare. I will him to divulge his secrets. I know they won’t be pretty. The ugliest side to someone is the one you don’t show the world. I lift my chin and let him know I’m ready. I need to hear his story because if I don’t, there is no way I’ll ever be able to rely on him.
He opens his mouth to speak and then closes it. His eyes scrunch shut as he tilts his head and curses, furious with himself because he doesn’t want to have to talk. He doesn’t want to tell me his secrets.
I wait and find out if he’s angry about the words he won’t say or if, finally, I’m about to hear them for real.
“My name is Jesse Davenport. I’m an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assigned to get intel on Frank Evangelista and Raphael Sorrentino.”
The wind is taken out of me as his confession leaves me dumbstruck. My hands fly to my belly as I fight the feeling of being sick.
He sits on his heels and holds his arms open as he tells me, “Today, I was called away by my boss, the director of criminal investigations, for an urgent meeting. I swear, I would never have abandoned you otherwise.”
“You’ve been spying on my family?” I ask in disbelief.
He nods, poised yet wary of my reaction. “A year ago, I took an assignment to investigate the Evangelista Crime Family, including the mob-run sanitation business.”
“The sanitation business is not run by the mob. That’s an old wives’ tale. Assuming any Italian in the garbage game is in the Mafia is prejudice.”
“The New York Mafia has been ruling the commercial waste game for the last seventy years. Your father and Frank Evangelista are the majority owners of twenty-five trash companies that control eighty percent of the carting industry in New York City, parts of New Jersey and eastern Connecticut.”
I hate how steady his voice is. And how his eyes maintain focus with mine, never faltering.
“How so?”
“Money laundering, rigged contract bids, extorting from non-mob haulers and customers to quash competition and keep their prices high. They use money, intimidation, and violence to get the routes they want. It’s a multimillion-dollar industry.” He’s stern with his words as his eyes hold mine. “I got a job at Villa Russo to investigate from the inside. The last agent was a driver who received intel they were using the trucks to move drugs and weapons across the five boroughs. I was assigned to apply for a position at the club as a means of becoming a family insider at the place where decisions are made.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“Family business.”
“You mean my uncles. Vic, Joey, Enzo… they’re not in sanitation, and there’s no way my family is involved with drugs or guns.”
“Frank Evangelista is the boss of the crime family. Your father is the underboss. His consigliere. Villa Russo is their headquarters where all Evangelista Family business is run through. Six months ago, I started running errands for Frank while closing in on finding out the truth. He offered me a job not in the company, but within the family.”
I recall my uncle telling me that very information, making Jesse’s story pan out. “You’ve been playing secret agent for a year, and you haven’t been able to get evidence to prove they’re criminals? Wonder why. Oh, I’ll tell you. It’s because they’re not criminals!”
“I’ve been gathering the evidence I need for an indictment.”
My eyes widen at the word indictment. “You’re trying to put my father in jail!” I turn away in betrayal. “And you have the nerve to say we’re in this together. That you think that I should trust you.”
I stand up and walk away from him, pacing the living room as I play with the charm of my necklace.
He rises to his feet yet stands in place. “I was never supposed to get close to you.”
“It’s not your job to protect me. You’re supposed to be surveilling my father and uncle. You don’t know where they are, so I’m the next best thing.”
“I’m protecting you because I’m too attached. And you keep opening the door to me because you know what we have is real. We’re together, Amelia. From the first time you sat at that bar, we’ve been connected. I know you feel it too.”
He takes a step toward me, but I move away. I don’t want him near me, nor do I want his voice radiating through my body.
I put my hands over my ears. “I can’t listen to this.”
Jesse is an FBI agent, my father is in the mob, and a group of criminals want me to rig the lottery or else they’ll kill my family. What the hell one has to do with the other is beyond me. I’m afraid to find out. It’s too much for my head to process. Too much for my heart to handle.
I don’t want it to be true, and yet … the more Jesse talks, the more I learn, the more I admit
