Page 13 of The Mastermind (Mafia Rivals #1)

CESARE

‘The latest upgrades seem to have made the improvements we need.’

‘ Seem to have?’ I echoed, my voice projecting what I really thought of the bullshit assessment. The team meeting had barely started and my gut was already churning.

Brazzo, my chief engineer, curled into himself and darted a furtive glance at me.

He was an engineering nerd, plucked from the research bowels of a luxury sports car manufacturing company and onto the frontlines of a dynamic racing team.

The man had zero charisma and was terrified of his own shadow.

But he was highly intelligent, when he wasn’t cowering beneath my gaze.

Usually, I left Bibi to deal with him, but the stakes were too high to coddle the fragile sensibilities of my engineer.

I felt Bibi’s glare. I glared back. What?

Cut it out , hers replied.

I sighed. ‘Go on,’ I encouraged Brazzo, despite sensing I wouldn’t like what he said next.

Free Practice One had been a little above uneventful. Sure, the new parts we’d brought had made the car sing. But that song was just above mediocre at best. An overture when I wanted the aria.

‘It tallies with what the wind tunnel predicted. We saw a total benefit of three-tenths of a second at four different corners of the circuit. The specifics are on the printout in front of you.’

Renzo picked up the sheet, eager to devour the raw data, while I ignored it. ‘I drove the car for the better part of an hour this morning. I know exactly what it feels like. What I want to know is why didn’t the upgrades bring us closer to the Mancinelli car?’

The other engineering crew fidgeted in their seats, none of them eager to leap up with an answer. But I knew.

‘Let me guess. Because they brought the exact same upgrades we did and have seen greater gains?’ My buzzing phone had appraised me of those facts long before the dedicated pit lane reporters had creamed themselves in announcing it to the world.

‘So the goddamn janitors around this place know more about what our competitors are doing than you fucking lot?’ I seethed.

Bibi sighed, her sharp gaze imploring me to cool it.

Fuck that.

If I was staring down the barrel of another shitty race weekend, I was most definitely going to spread the hurt around. I barely felt the sting from the hands I slammed down on the table.

I took a little selfish comfort in the flinches that rolled around the table, though.

‘I’m done fucking around with this bullshit, so I’ll lay it all out there.

We have a mole feeding vital information to our competitor.

From our work in the wind tunnels, to what upgrades we have in the pipeline, to our race strategy, to what everyone on this table is having for breakfast tomorrow. ’

Shocked gasps rippled around the room. I watched everyone carefully, but dammit, either the culprit was very good or I was barking up the wrong tree in the wrong forest.

Bibiana’s jaw dropped right before cold fury billowed from her eyes like an avalanche. Her expression promised endless retribution.

‘If the mole is in this room right now, know that I’ve known what you’ve been up to for weeks now. My advice to you – turn yourself in. I might just let you—’ Bibi loudly clearing her throat pulled me back from making a publicly incriminating threat.

Don’t get caught.

I clenched my fists on the table. ‘You might think you have a credible reason for taking this path. You do not. You’re just making things worse by making me hunt you down. So the ball is in your fucking court.’

Stunned silence followed the ultimatum I hoped came as a bombshell to all but one or two people.

I knew it would spread like wildfire through the crew in minutes, so I texted Rafaelle to watch out for suspicious behaviour.

When I tossed my phone onto the table, Renzo was staring at me, his raised eyebrows lost in the sweeping hair slanting across his forehead.

I shrugged.

‘Right, meeting’s over. Let’s start prepping for FP Two, everyone,’ Bibi said through barely clenched teeth. ‘You too, Renzo,’ she said when he remained sitting while everyone hightailed it out the door to get out of firing squad range.

The moment he shut the door behind him, she rounded on me. ‘What the fuck, Cesare! Why would you blurt that out there without speaking to me first?’

‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ I replied with zero regret. ‘At the very least it should shake things up a bit.’

‘Shake things up? You’re going to have people out there walking on eggshells and afraid to do their jobs in case you point a finger at them.’

‘Unless they’re a bunch of pussies, and I don’t think I managed to build a team from scratch and win two championships on the back of pussies, they have nothing to worry about unless they’ve done something wrong.’

She surged out of her seat and paced to the door before spinning back around, anger bristling through her tall frame.

‘Jesus, even you’re not na?ve enough to think that just because you tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of, they’ll automatically stop shitting themselves?

You strike the fear of God into them just by walking down the damn corridor. ’

‘Good. I should. I’d like to think they joined this crew because they wanted to be part of something exciting,’ I countered.

‘And how fucking excited do you think they are about being called snitches?’

‘At the risk of repeating myself, if they’ve done nothing wrong then they don’t need to worry, sì ?’

She pinched the bridge of her nose and I felt almost sorry for her. Almost. She wasn’t the one headed home to face Orazio’s wrath, wondering which bone he would break this time in his rage.

‘Rafa said you were making progress in locating the mole. How is that going?’

I raised my brows. ‘How do you think?’

She shook her head. ‘It still doesn’t justify you scaring the bejesus out of them. Most of them are good, talented people.’

‘A little fear goes a long way in reconsidering a bad idea. Tell me you didn’t think twice about rebelling because you knew the old man would skin you alive if you were found out?

’ At her crossed arms and pursed lips, I continued.

‘Tell me the only reason you haven’t gotten around to telling him and Orazio to fuck off with the plans they’re cooking up for you even as we speak isn’t out of fear? ’

She paled and, yeah, I hated myself a little bit for pulling that card.

As the only female offspring of my generation of Salvatores, she had it three times as hard.

Her astonishing IQ had earned her a seat at the table but not a voice the older generation liked to hear.

And since the not-so-small incident of a shot-to-death-multiple-times-under-mysterious-circumstances husband had left a huge question mark over her head, she was even more ignored than the wives and girlfriends.

Back in New York she was treated worse than a sidepiece. She was a near pariah. She’d found a place within my racing team and earned the respect sorely due to her.

‘You dare to bring that up? Throw it in my face?’ she muttered, her voice tight with the strain of unspoken trauma and deadly secrets.

I sighed and rounded the table, approaching her with caution.

Like me, she had the vicious Salvatore temper. Raising my hands, I tried to look conciliatory. ‘Sorry, Bibi. That was below the belt.’

She didn’t immediately throat-punch me when I reached touching distance, so I pushed my luck and pulled her into my arms. She remained stiff and unyielding for a full minute before her arms dropped.

Sliding them around my waist, she sniffed into my shoulder. ‘What the fuck, Cesare,’ she repeated.

I hugged her tighter. ‘I know. I’m a fuckwit.’

She waited a beat. ‘And?’

I sighed again. ‘And I’m in a shitty mood because I’ve been summoned.’

She pulled back to look into my face, her eyes shadowed with past ghosts having risen to the surface with my unthinking comment. ‘Orazio?’

I nodded. ‘And since it looks like the top podium isn’t going to happen this weekend either…’ I left the rest unsaid.

She grimaced. ‘He’s going to tear you a shiny new one if we don’t get him this championship.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘I think Brazzo is erring on the side of not wanting to overpromise and underdeliver. There’s at least another tenth to be shaved off at Turns Five and Six, and Eleven and Twelve.

I might get you close enough to secure third place in Quali tomorrow.

And we might get lucky and those two idiots will take each other out at Turn One. ’

My teeth clenched so tight my jaw cracked. ‘How the hell are we discussing third place like it’s the golden pinnacle of our achievements?’

She stepped back from my fury, frustration clear in her own face. ‘Until you find the mole or get to the bottom of whatever the hell is going on, we have to work with what we have. I’ll strategise the hell out of the race plan tomorrow and give you as much advantage as I can.’

I gathered her close again and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘ Grazii . I know you will.’

She held my gaze for another few beats before she nodded. Watching her walk stiffly away, I felt another pang of regret for dredging up memories she’d probably buried deep.

About to follow her out, I paused when my phone pinged.

My heartbeat stuttered for a split second before I remembered I hadn’t given Maddelena my phone number so she wouldn’t contact me this way. The only other person I wanted to hear from was Rafa, telling me that miraculously, my outburst had worked and he’d collared the traitor.

That hope was dashed too, because it wasn’t a text alert.

I frowned, staring at the app I didn’t recognise. What the fuck?

I was meticulous about what I downloaded onto my phone.

As a rule I didn’t keep incriminating shit on my device that could come back and bite me in the ass, especially since the feds had had a hard-on for the Salvatores since Orazio stepped foot on Ellis Island.

With the passage of time, they’d only gotten more desperate to pin something on us to put the brakes on the obscene wealth we were amassing.

So far only a handful of careless soldiers had been caught in their snares. Because most of us knew better than to open sketchy-looking apps.

I squinted at the pulsing logo on my screen.

The picture was of an… owl? Black with shiny feathers and soft glowing yellow eyes. Wracking my brain, I came up short on what it meant.

About to delete it unopened, I stopped when Rafaelle walked in.

‘You sure set the cat amongst the pigeons, eh, frate ?’ The king of deadly mayhem grinned as he crossed to the buffet spread out on the far wall and helped himself to a Sicilian ham stuffed bagel. ‘I’m sorry I missed it.’

‘I take it nothing’s shaken out of the tree?’

‘Not so far,’ he replied, taking a huge bite.

I beckoned him. ‘Get over here, take a look at this.’

I tilted my screen towards him when he reached me. He stared unblinking at the app. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Fuck if I know. It just appeared on my phone two minutes ago.’

‘You think someone’s fucking with you?’ His grin disappeared, replaced by deadly focus.

I stared at the app for a long moment. ‘It’ll be the height of ballsiness to send me something like this and assume I’ll be stupid enough to just open it, no?’

He nodded after a brief hesitation, then set his plate down and tugged the phone from my hand. ‘It’s almost time for FP2. You need to get ready. I’ll take a picture of the logo and run it past our tech guys. See if anything pops up.’

I headed for the door. ‘If it doesn’t, delete it. I don’t want it on my phone any longer than it needs to be.’

‘Sure thing.’