Page 103 of Pietro

"Could you come with me?"This time he asks.

"To confront Tony?"

"To keep me from killing him on sight."

She nods once, grabbing her coat eventually.

The drive to Gino's takes twenty minutes. I drive myself, needing the control, the action of shifting gears and navigating traffic. Nora sits quiet beside me.

Gino's is a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop on the South Side, the kind of place that's been here fifty years and will be here fifty more. Tony's Lincoln sits in the side lot.

"He's here." I kill the engine.

"How do you want to handle this?"

"Carefully." I check the Glock in my shoulder holster. "He might run."

"He might be armed."

"Tony's always armed." I meet her eyes. "Stay behind me."

"I'm not helpless."

"I know. But if bullets fly, you're my priority."

She nods and presses her lips on mine.

Just one kiss and I’m ready to back off from whatever else.

This time though, I have to face whatever comes. We move.

The bell above Gino's door chimes our arrival. The place smells like decades of coffee and fried food. Tony sits in a back booth, hunched over an espresso, looking older than his sixty-three years. He glances up, sees me, and his coffee cup rattles against the saucer.

"Pietro." His voice cracks. "Didn't expect to see you here."

I slide into the booth across from him. Nora takes the seat beside me, and I feel Tony track the movement, calculating.

"We need to talk, Tony."

"About?" But his eyes give him away—darting to the door, the window, anywhere but my face.

"About the shipping schedules you've been sharing."

The blood drains from his face. His hand moves toward his hip, but I'm faster, my Glock appearing on the table between us, my hand casual on the grip.

"Don't."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Nora pulls out her tablet, showing him the access logs. "Every hit, Tony. You accessed the files hours before."

His shoulders collapse. The fight goes out of him like air from a punctured tire. "How long have you known?"

"About an hour." I keep my voice level, but inside I'm screaming. "Why?"

Tony's eyes fill with tears. The man who helped raise me, who stood at my father's right hand, starts to cry into his coffee.

"They have Michael."