Shadow Rider (22 page)

“That's what he did. Cella would come home laughing and talking about him like he was Prince Charming. I was happy for her. She was certain she was falling in love. They dated often over the next six months, although little things she wasn't thrilled with began happening. First, he was introduced to me, and I didn't like him at all. Not. At. All.” She enunciated each word. “He was too charming and he would touch me all the time. Stand too close. Breathe on the back of my neck. More than that . . .” She broke off, frowning. How could she tell them without sounding insane? She was already going to have to combat insanity charges when she told them the entire story.

“Francesca.” Vittorio leaned toward her, evidently reading her reluctance. “
Cara
, we're all family here. Say whatever it is and let us decide. We hear truth. We told you that. We meant it, quite literally, so whatever you say can't be much more bizarre than that.”

Absently, beneath Stefano's palm, her fingers bunched the material of his immaculate pin-striped trousers into her fist, holding on for support. “I know how this sounds, but sometimes, when I'm standing a certain way and the light is just right, my shadow will connect with someone else's shadow. We're not physically touching. Just our shadows, on the wall, or floor. Wherever.” She bit at her lip and then took a slow sip of wine, taking her time putting the glass down.
She'd started. Now she had to finish. They were really going to think she was insane.

“Bambina,”
Stefano murmured, his mouth against her temple, lips brushing her skin. Breath teasing her hair. “No one is going to think you're lying.”

She sighed and forced her shoulders straight. “I don't know if that has anything to do with it, the part about shadows, but I just noticed that they were always touching when I would get this sensation. I could feel what the other person felt.”

The brothers exchanged another long look and she hastened to try to make her explanation sound better. “I can't explain it, only that sometimes, I just know what a person feels. He would have slept with me, but he didn't feel anything for either of us. Not me. Not Cella. Not in the way Cella thought. It was more like a cat playing with a mouse. He was playing her for his own amusement. He planned on humiliating her. Dumping her. That kind of thing makes him feel powerful.”

She waited for recriminations, but no one said anything. Ricco nodded at her assessment of Barry Anthon. That was the most she got from them. “I tried to tell her. It was the first time we ever had a big fight. She refused to believe me.” That had really hurt. She couldn't understand why her sister wouldn't believe her. She didn't lie. She never lied. They were close. It didn't make sense to her.

“After the fight we had, Cella noticed little things that upset her. Barry never took her out in public. He would attend fund-raisers and go to huge events where the media was all over, and he would take an actress or some celebrity. He'd tell Cella he had to, because it was important to get the maximum amount of coverage for the event as possible, but even at ball games he'd be photographed with other women. He would make little remarks to her, sneering at her clothes or shoes, or laugh because she didn't know which fork to use at his club. She made excuses for him, saying that she probably was looking for something to be upset about because of the way I felt about him.”

Ricco shook his head. “I've heard him do that, put his date down. Make fun of her. Say things to take away her self-esteem. He does it to just about all of the women he dates.”

Giovanni nodded. “I heard him talk to a friend of his once, about how you put a woman in her place and she'd do anything to be with you because she knew you were better than she was and she was damned lucky to have you. He believes that shit.”

“Fucking asshole,” Taviano muttered under his breath, and abruptly jumped up and paced across the floor to the bar to pour himself another drink. “I despise that fucker.”

She nearly smiled, more because she realized all the brothers were alike, even down to their colorful language. And they seemed to believe her. At least they knew Anthon and had observed his behavior so what she was telling them wasn't so far out of line they wouldn't hear her the way the police and judge had been with her.

“You aren't alone,” she told Taviano. Because, in spite of the language, if there was a person on earth who could be described with that one word, it would be Barry Anthon.

“Keep going,” Stefano instructed.

She took a deep breath, trying to keep the door in her mind from cracking open, the one where she relived finding her sister dying on the blood-slick floor of their apartment.

“She spent the night with Barry at his condo and she called me very late. She was upset because she said that he had talked to her about this multimillion-dollar fight that was huge, televised, a title fight that had been in the making for a couple of years. She wasn't into the fights at all and she was a little bored that he went on and on about it. That evening he bragged about how much money he made betting on the fight. He kept repeating how he knew how to pick them.”

“The Henessy and Morrison fight,” Giovanni guessed.

Francesca nodded. “Those were the names. He was called to the door and he went outside with a couple of his men, who seemed to be upset. He'd left the door to his office cracked open. Usually it was locked. That was the one room
in his home she'd never been in, so she peeked in to see what it was like. Cella told me she wandered around a little bit and then as she was going to leave, she was behind his desk and she saw a book open with names and numbers, and she recognized the name of the fighter who lost—the one Barry said everyone expected to win. It looked to her as if he had paid the fighter to lose. In case, she took pictures of the pages with her phone and then a video of the entries, and there were hundreds of them.”

“The book was just lying open on his desk?” Ricco asked, his voice disbelieving.

She bit her lip hard before she realized he wasn't disbelieving what she was telling him, more that Barry was an idiot for leaving such a thing out, maybe for even keeping records, although she suspected it was for blackmail purposes.

“Cella said that he was in his office working late. He was interrupted by a commotion at the door and several of his men took him out where she couldn't hear. She'd been in the kitchen cooking for him. He liked her to cook whenever she came over. Cella wasn't the best cook. She worked all the time, but because I usually did the cooking for us at the apartment, she took the opportunity at his condo. She went into the bedroom and called me and told me she wasn't going to spend the night. That she wanted me to call in a few minutes and say I was sick.”

Her voice faltered and she put her hand to her throat defensively. Already a lump was forming. Tears burned behind her eyes. She took another deep breath to keep from going to pieces. “I should have gone straight home right then. I needed to study and I was already at the library. It was so silly really, how important I thought it was to do research for a paper I was writing.” She shook her head and had to swallow several times. Her chest hurt, her lungs burning for air.

“Just tell us the rest,
dolce cuore
—say it fast and get it over with,” Stefano murmured, his mouth once again against her temple.

“I called about ten minutes later and told her I was sick with the flu. She made lots of sympathetic noises and made her excuses to Barry. She didn't realize he had a camera in his office and everything she did was recorded. When he found the door open, he looked at the feed and apparently saw her looking at the book. He went after her.” She tried desperately to separate herself from the rest of it, to be unemotional and recite the events as if they'd happened to someone else, but she couldn't. Her voice shook, betraying her. She sounded strangled, close to tears and no matter how many times she took a breath, she couldn't get enough air into her lungs.

“I came home late and the apartment was dark. The moment I tried to get in, I knew something was wrong because the door was cracked open. I could smell blood and I heard a mewing noise, like a wounded animal in terrible pain. The lamp was closest and I turned it on. Blood was everywhere. All over the walls, the furniture and the floor. Cella lay close to the couch, in a pool of dark red, her clothes red. Her hair was matted with blood. I ran to her, dropped to my knees beside her and tried to stem the blood and at the same time call 911.”

“All right,
bambina
,” Stefano said softly. “You're safe with us now. He isn't going to get away with this.”

“He was there. Barry was there. He had blood all over him. He didn't try to deny that he killed her. He wanted me to know. He told me that she'd been stupid and that I'd better give him what he wanted. I could hear the sirens and he just walked out, as if it didn't matter who saw him. In the end it didn't. I told the police it was him, and they said he had an airtight alibi.” Her voice shook, turned bitter.

The two cousins leaned forward, almost in unison, instantly drawing her attention. She had forgotten they were there. For some reason, she didn't mind Stefano's brothers hearing her story, but the cousins didn't seem as sympathetic. They were much more unemotional, although, she had to admit, not unkind.

The moment the cousins shifted forward in their chairs,
their gazes fixed steadily on her face, every one of Stefano's brothers reacted, hitching forward as well, but protectively. She felt that instant shield go around her. She looked around and saw that every shadow was connected. She was feeling the emotions the brothers were, and they were definitely protective of her. Stefano's hand on her shoulder was suddenly different as well. His fingers dug into her arm, and she knew he was fighting anger.

His brothers hadn't come here to hear her story; they had come to show solidarity. The knowledge hit her instantly and made her want to cry. They believed her on her word alone; it was the cousins she had to convince. She didn't know why Stefano and his family had rallied around her, or had chosen to side with her against Barry Anthon, but she was grateful they had. Surprisingly, it was Stefano's anger that settled her churning stomach. She didn't want him upset at his cousins when clearly he had asked them there to listen to her story.

“He didn't find her phone then,” Lanz said, making it a statement.

She shook her head. “But at the time, I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't for a while.”

“Continue,” Deangelo encouraged.

Her heart began to beat harder and a little faster. She turned her hand, the one on Stefano's thigh, threading her fingers through his, needing his reassurance. He instantly bent his head, his lips pressed to her ear, right through the thick mass of hair tumbling around her.

“Francesca, if you need a break or this is too upsetting, we can continue later. We don't have to do this now.”

She wanted to take that out. The rest of her story was a roller coaster of emotions. She had managed to tamp down the horror of her sister's murder, the terror of the man she knew had savagely killed her. She was tempted to take the out he gave her, but looking around the room at his brothers waiting so patiently for her decision, knowing all of them would back her up, gave her the necessary courage to continue.

Francesca shook her head. “It's better to do this all at
once. If you want to know, I'll tell you now. Barry Anthon is a monster and he does all kinds of horrible things and gets away with it. You have to know what he's like, because if I stay here, and I think he's already found me, he'll come after anyone who helps me.”

“I believe you're correct on that,” Lanz said, sitting back in his chair.

At once she felt the difference in Stefano and his brothers. The tension in the room eased and several of them lifted their glasses to their mouths, where before they had just held them without moving. They
wanted
Lanz and Deangelo to believe her. That meant the two cousins had the same gift of hearing truth when others spoke. They believed her. She hoped they would continue to believe her because no one else had.

“An older man was arrested for the crime. He walked into the police department and turned himself in. He had the knife and his fingerprints were all over it. He said he'd been drinking and followed her home. He had brain cancer and sometimes he would fly into a rage. He was remorseful. Crying. He pleaded guilty and died before he ever served time. I believe he did it in order to get money for his family before he died. He couldn't even look me in the eye.”

“His name,” Deangelo said abruptly.

“Harold Benson. His daughter, Carla O'Brian, was with him. She works for Barry Anthon and has, apparently, for several years.”

Deangelo nodded. “That's easy enough. It does seem like everything leads back to him. But there's more, isn't there?”

Francesca nodded, tightening her fingers around Stefano's. “Barry came by about a dozen times. He'd just show up in my house. It didn't seem to matter what locks I used—he'd be in there with a couple of his men. They pushed me around a lot and threatened to . . .” She swallowed and lowered her voice, unable to look at any of them, the humiliation and fear crowding too close. “Rape me,” she finished. “They would shove me down and rip my clothes, always demanding I give
them what Barry wanted. They never said what it was, but I knew they hadn't found her cell phone.”

The tension in the room was back and with it, oppressive, scary heat. The room vibrated with rage. Not just Stefano's but all of his brothers' collectively. That was a lot of anger to fill even that large space. Only their two cousins seemed unaffected.

“But you didn't have it,” Ricco prompted.

“I had no idea where it was. I couldn't have given it to them if I wanted to, which I didn't. I knew they'd kill me if I handed it over to them.