Page 96 of Bad Blood

I answer, ready to lay into RJ for giving me radio silence all day when he cuts me off before I can say a word. “Come to the control room. There’s something you need to see.”

* * *

I stare at the black and white screen, every instinct of mine straining to put a bullet through it.

“You told me the security footage was hacked and erased.”

“It was.” RJ pauses the video. “But Legado’s previous owner installed backup servers. It took us a day to hack, and we weren’t able to recover all of it, but I think this is enough to determine we have a problem.”

“Play it again.”

He starts the surveillance footage from the beginning. We watch as a large man, dressed in similar black fatigues to the bastards who destroyed my casino, enters the basement. A beat later, he’s firing two bullets at mysicariosthat they never saw coming. Stepping over one body, he grabs the corpse’s wrist and wrenches it upward, pressing the dead man’s thumb against the access pad.

This wasn’t an accident.

This was intel.

I remain silent as the man approaches Bardi, sitting slumped and bound to the chair. He keeps his back to the camera, but the look on Bardi’s face when he sees him tells me all I need to know.

Recognition.

I watch the relief washing over that bastard’s face. “Is there sound on this?”

RJ shakes his head. “Just images.”

From there, it’s the same flurry of motion as during the last two times I’ve watched it. The man pulls a knife from his pocket, slices through Bardi’s restraints, and then the two of them exit the camera’s line of vision.

“Here, take a look at this.” RJ backs the tape up to the moment right before the man pulls out a switchblade to free Bardi. “There,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Look familiar?”

I lean closer. The image is grainy, but those harsh black outlines cut through the static. The tattoo on the side of his neck is blazing—black and ugly—like a beacon.

“Is that an ax?”

We exchange glances.

RJ grits his teeth. “The New York Italian mafia insignia.”

“Ricci.” The name burns as it passes my lips. “That’s an unwelcome blast from the past.”

Twenty years ago, Don Ricci ran New York’s cocaine distribution—a billion-dollar baton handed over by Rick Sanders when he stepped into the political arena.

Don Ricci. The same man who turned state’s witness against his own Syndicate, inciting civil war and leaving New York ripe for the taking—a territory both my father and Dante Santiago were determined to control.

What the hell is a dead man doing back in the fucking picture?

Thalia was right.This isn’t just an East Coast rivalry anymore. There are more seats at this table than we thought.

“Find out who that man is, and how he got into my casino.”

RJ scrubs a hand across his unshaven face and nods.

“Until you have an ID on whoever has picked up Ricci’s reins, and then find the intel on how Bardi’s involved, we keep this between us.Comprendes?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Fucking Ricci.Even from the grave, he’s still waging war against us.

I’m pulling out my phone as I exit the control room. “Rocco, it’s me. Are you still tailing them?”