Page 91 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“I did not want this to happen,” he finally barked, breaking out of his stunned stupor. “No one wants these things to happen,capisci? Who am I, simple Otto, to stand between those men and what they want, huh?”

“What did they give you for your silence? A grand, two?” Ric interjected, his words like gunshots.

One by one, they found their way into Ottavio’s round chest. He jerked at the impact and placed his hands over his heart as if to protect it.

“You areestraneo, an outsider. You know nothing,” he practically spat at Ric.

“But I do,” I told him, shifting into Italian, leaning forward to tap the horrible photo of Cosima. “I know the horrors of the Camorra because I lived them while I was a girl in Naples.”

“Ah,si, then you know,” he said, almost eagerly, yearning to alleviate his guilt. “You know to talk is to die.”

Continuing in Italian because I didn’t exactly want Ricardo to know how far I was taking things, I said, “I know that good people die every day because they don’t stand up for the things they know are wrong. An innocent man is being accused of murdering Giuseppe di Carlo and his thug because no one will say a word. Is that just?”

“It’s not my problem,” he beseeched me, opening his hands to the sky on a shrug, more expressive with his gestures than he was with his words.

“I think it is,” I argued. “I know you are afraid of the di Carlos, but they are fractured from Giuseppe’s death. Do you know who is being accused of killing him?”

“I stay out of this,” he reminded me angrily.

“Dante Salvatore,” I said, unfazed by his returned belligerence. “Have you heard of him, Ottavio? They call him the mafia lord, the Devil of New York City.”

“Don Salvatore,” he whispered, moving to clutch the small gold-plated cross he wore at his throat. “Yes, I know him.”

“He is a very scary man,” I agreed with his unspoken fear. “Have you seen his hands?” I held my own up and fisted it. “Each one is the size of a man’s head.”

Ottavio scowled at me, reading exactly what I was trying to do.

Illustrate just how much he was screwed if he did and screwed if he didn’t.

I smiled kindly at him, leaning forward on that creaking plastic to pat his hand comfortingly. “The way I see it, Signore Petretti, you could side with a fractured family, one that has much better things to focus on right now, or you could hitch your cart to the Salvatores. Earn their protection and admiration.”

“They’ll kill me,” he insisted, eyes darting to Ric for support even though the investigator couldn’t understand Italian.

“Maybe,” I agreed with a nonchalant shrug. “I suppose it’s a gamble. With whom are your odds of survival better?”

We stared at each other for a long moment, unblinking. A woman trundled down the hall to the mouth of the living room, her hair big and bouffant, her body thick and soft with curves.

“Who is this?” she asked her husband in Italian.

He waved his hand at her wearily, dismissively.

“Signore Petretti,” I said, moving in for the kill as I smiled at his wife. “How would you feel about a trip to your ancestral home? Where is your family from?”

“Pomigliano d’Arco,” he muttered.

“Well, when this is all said and done, I think you and the missus deserve a vacation. On us,” I offered.

Us.

Fields, Harding & Griffith.

Yara Ghorbani.

Don Dante Salvatore.

Me.

I’d used slightly unscrupulous tactics before. To be a lawyer was to know how to twist words and actions into the results you needed for victory.