Page 1 of The Italian Reckoning (A New York Criminal Empire #3)

SARAH

I love dancing.

It’s eleven o’clock at night, relatively cool for the middle of April, and across the street, three floors down, an elderly couple embraces one another with a hold perfected over the decades they’ve been together.

They rock and sway in each other’s arms, shuffling back and forth across their balcony to music that carries on the breeze above the hum of the traffic even further below.

They dance in their own world, blocking out the sounds of the city and focusing only on each other.

The beautiful sight makes the rest of the city fade into the background. The hum of traffic becomes an undercurrent to the music and the mingling scents of exhaust fumes, restaurants, and city life get carried away in the next gust of wind.

The way the elderly man gazes down at his partner with complete adoration in his eyes makes my heart ache.

I love dancing.

I miss it.

Having someone hold me like that and dance with me any time, any place, without a care in the world, would be the dream. Sadly, my only company is half a glass of box wine and some dusty scraps fallen from the beak of a passing bird.

The roof of my apartment building is where I come to think, usually spending hours unpacking the ins and outs of a case I’m stuck on or trying to unravel the thought process of the latest scumbag I’ve got in lockup.

Although in this city, they don’t stay there for very long.

I might have a badge and a gun on my hip, but the police aren’t the real power in New York.

I learned that not long after I arrived here from Montana.

The Mafia run the show.

Each criminal I drag into the precinct on air-tight charges usually walks within twenty-four hours.

I ask for names, dates of birth, and place of residence while my colleagues ask what family they’re from so they know whom to call.

When the Mafia line the fat pockets of the corrupt cops walking the street, is there any real justice to be had in this fucking city?

The wine doesn’t taste as good as it did twenty minutes ago when my glass was full, souring my mood further.

Life was simpler when all I wanted to do was dance with someone, buy a little house somewhere, and focus on helping people.

Now, I’m carrying scars from the city’s yearly gala after it was blown to smithereens by the very man I was trying to arrest. If the Irish aren’t tearing the city apart looking for a murderer, the Russians are blowing it up trying to kill each other.

In any other city, the site of the explosion would still be a smoldering wreck for at least another two years, but the Russians moved in almost as soon as the fire was put out and got that shit rebuilt.

I was still in hospital recovering from burns when I got an invitation to the grand reopening of the hotel. It felt like an insult last year and still feels like one now.

I refuse to be bought, so I’m toyed with instead.

I didn’t move from Montana, leaving behind a whole host of deserving criminals, just to end up in the fat pocket of whatever Mafia scumbag wants to pay me the most.

Although on nights like these when my mind is quiet and the city hums with the music of companionship and dancing, I’m tempted.

What a life I could have with dirty money.

My reality is different. My only company these days is my wine and my cat.

“Meow?” On cue, Iris hops up onto the roof’s edge alongside me and wraps her thick, fluffy tail around her body, staring up at me with eyes as big as the moon above.

“Iris, you’re not supposed to be out here.” Her thick fur is warm to the touch, and as soon as she starts purring deeply, my soul settles.

I’ve spent six months trying to figure out how she sneaks out of my apartment and gets up here, but it seems I’m not a very good detective because I have no clue. Luckily, she’s far too lazy to parkour across the rooftops and only ever comes up here to see me.

Iris stretches, briefly displaying the lithe body hidden under all that thick fur, then crawls onto my lap and immediately alerts me to how cold I’ve become while sitting up here, staring wistfully at the couple across the street.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Her purr deepens as I scratch behind her ear. My attention drifts to the sparkling city below, a sea of noise and chaos that never sleeps.

Initially, I’d been against my forced transfer here, but it’s become the perfect place for me to hide. In some ways, I’m thankful that I’ve become another faceless detective struggling against the waves of criminals more likely to face justice at the hands of the Mafia than inside a courtroom.

It won’t stop me from trying, though. Eventually, I’ll get one of the big fish and I won’t let them go until the cell doors slam closed behind them. I’ve had my fill of criminals getting away with it.

The buzz of my cell suddenly overshadows the thrum of Iris’s purr. I answer in two rings. “Hello?”

“Detective Gogs?”

“Speaking.”

“We’ve got a body.”

Being on call sucks.

“Walk me through it.”

The crumbling building illuminates with the repetitive flash of blue and red from the patrol cars parked out front, streaking in through several broken windows.

That same breeze from my apartment rooftop follows me here, rustling through discarded plastic on the ground and sending an empty can rolling across the ground.

The echo of the noise is enough to make my skin jump, so I focus on dragging protective gloves over my hands.

“Dog walker let his dog off the leash,” explains the patrolman walking beside me.

“His dog bolted into this abandoned building chasing something, likely a rat. He follows and manages to get his dog back on the leash when he finds this in its mouth.” He holds a plastic baggie up to his face as if checking it’s the right one and then passes it to me.

“It’s in such good condition that he thought his dog had stumbled onto some sort of stash, so he asked his dog to fetch and it brought him right to the body. ”

Inside the bag is a shining silver bracelet with the name Belle engraved in gold on a long pink bead. “This looks expensive.” I pass the baggie back. “We’re working on the assumption it belongs to our victim?”

“Or she snatched it off the killer.” He shrugs, leading me across the wide empty floor and through an alcove at the other end. “Once the prints come back on her, we’ll know for sure.”

“Hey, Sarah.” Amelia, the coroner, groans as she climbs to her feet and flashes me a smile. “It’s a late one.”

“Always is when I’m on call.” My attention drifts to the body of the young girl lying dead on the ground, discarded over a pile of crumbling bricks and dirt. “Shit. She can’t be any older than twenty-one.”

“That’s my guess,” Amelia sighs. “I’m not ruling anything out until I get her back to my lab, but my initial diagnosis is that she died by asphyxiation.

There are a lot of defensive wounds on her hands and forearms, but some of them look a couple of days old at most. She also has restraint marks around her wrists and ankles and a contusion on the back of her skull. ”

I drink in every detail of Amelia’s investigation while studying the body, my heart thumping hard in my chest. No matter how many dead bodies I’ve seen over the years, I can’t get used to it.

That body was once a whole entire person who was talking and laughing and crying.

How can someone just snuff that out and dump her here like trash?

My chest tightens as anger warms underneath my skin. “How long has she been here?”

“Liver temp was low so twelve hours, give or take.” Amelia rubs at the back of her neck and groans softly. “Like I said, I’ll know more when I get her back to my lab.”

“Twelve hours,” I murmur. “Plus the restraints and the…” Dropping to my haunches next to the body, I study every inch of her for some kind of clue that will jump out at me.

She’s slender and fully dressed, apart from no shoes.

The bruises on her forearms appear faint under the lights set up by those first on the scene, but her broken and torn fingernails tell a clear story.

She fought for her life.

The ligature marks around her wrists and ankles are deep, suggesting she was bound for quite some time. Other than that, she appears untouched except for the smearing of her heavy makeup.

That gives me pause.

The uncomfortable familiarity of her smeared heavy lipstick, loose eyelashes resting on her cheek, streaked eyeliner, and the heavy blush on her sickly pale skin… I’ve seen this before.

My stomach twists and I abruptly stand, creating distance between myself and the body. The painful familiarity is surely a coincidence, but just the thought of it makes my blood run cold.

“You good?” Amelia tilts her head as she looks me up and down.

“Fine. It’s late, y’know?” Turning my back, I lock eyes with the patrolman.

“Run her fingerprints through the missing persons database first. She’s young but dressed up like she was partying, and since it’s only Thursday, I can’t imagine where she should have been.

But the ligature marks suggest she was bound, so maybe we’re looking at a kidnapping gone wrong? ”

“Understood.” He scribbles quickly into his notebook. “Although you know how it goes. Something like this is probably family revenge or a grudge to work out.”

There it is. Underneath his casual words is the truth. Every single person who walked in here probably took one look at her and thought the same thing.

This is Mafia business.

“I don’t care,” I snap, unable to stop myself.

I latch onto that annoyance and flood it with every drop of anxiety that buzzes beneath my skin.

“Mafia or not, this woman died and she certainly didn’t deserve to.

So we’re going to do everything we can to find out who she was and who put her here.

And then we’re going to put them behind bars. ”

The patrolman scoffs and finally looks up from his notes. “You don’t seriously believe that, do you? You know how this city works.”

My frustration swells like a wave and it takes all my restraint not to slap that notebook out of his hand. I don’t care how things work or how we should follow the unspoken, unwritten rules of the Mafia.

“The law is the law,” I bite out. “Or do I need to find someone more competent to run a search through the missing persons database?”

“No, Ma’am.” The officer starts to roll his eyes, then thinks better of it as he hurries away from me. Without his presence, the air feels lighter and I breathe deeply and instantly regret it when my lungs fill with the stink of dirt, dust, and old piss.

“You sure you’re good?” Amelia asks from where she’s back on her knees next to the body.

“I’m fine.”

“He’s right, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

“Sarah.” She gives me a pointed look over her shoulder. “Rocking the boat doesn’t do anyone any good. Look what happened at the gala. If ever there were a display of who is really in charge of this city, it’s that. If this turns out to be Mafia related?—”

“Then I don’t care!” Amelia, unfortunately, becomes the new target of my frustration. “Whoever this is, she deserves me doing everything I can to find out who did this to her. She deserves my best, and no Mafia family will stop that.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your job.” Amelia turns back to the body. “But you know where this path leads. If this has even a drop of Mafia presence, we won’t be the ones handing out justice.”

I hate that she’s right. I hate that I’ve found myself in a world where the criminals call the shots and I, an officer for over nine years, am made to look like I’m the unreasonable one for following the law.

I pace away from the body, scanning the environment for anything that looks out of place while the rest of the forensic team mill around finishing up their investigation.

This poor girl has been taken, murdered, and dumped like waste on the edge of the city. There’s barely any civilization out here since most of these buildings are condemned or already crumbling.

I guess none of these strong families have land out this way, or it would surely be a thriving area with how quickly they rebuilt that hotel.

“Ma’am!” A voice from across the room calls to me. “I think we’ve found something.”

“What is it?” I step over discarded bricks, old rubbish bags, and shredded ancient newspapers to reach the forensic investigator taking several pictures of something discarded near the far wall just below a broken window looking out toward the rest of New York.

“Hard to tell,” she says, snapping a few more pictures. “But I think we’ve found our murder weapon. What is that… Saran wrap or something?”

My ankle weakens and I stumble to a stop next to her, my blood turning to ice. “What?”

“Right there, look.” She kneels, pulling an evidence bag out of her kit and freeing up my eyeline to her discovery.

A foot away from us sits some carefully placed Saran wrap on top of a wooden plank. Saran wrap that’s covered in makeup.

Oh, no .