Mafia Queen

Chapter Nine

Luca

"They're children." I sighed, staring down at the pictures Angelo brought me. He and Marco spent the night pulling footage off of the surveillance cameras and these two were caught throwing the bottles through the front windows of the studio. They couldn't have been older than fifteen, and they had done nothing to hide their faces.

For some reason, seeing children enact such violence was harrowing. The attack was bad enough; this only made it worse.

I shoved my hand through my hair, gulping down a mouthful of coffee. This was already my third one, and I desperately needed another.

I hadn't gotten any sleep last night. Julia stayed to help with the kids, but Charlotte was wired. When I finally was able to get her calmed enough to sleep, it was brief. She woke up three different times with night terrors, the same way it was for weeks after Italy. I knew what to expect now and could coax her out of them rather quickly, but as badly as I wanted to, I couldn't stop them from coming. And as much as I prepared myself, I would never get used to hearing her screams in the middle of the night like that. Most of the time, I could get her calm down without even waking up by just holding her. That made for a long and sleepless night for me, though, which was why I would be only surviving on coffee today.

"This is Niko's MO." Marco said. "Almost all of his recruits are teenagers. They are so young I wouldn't be surprised if this was some kind of initiation thing."

"Good luck pinning this on him." Axel scoffed. "If this was him, there's no chance he left any trace."

Angelo glared at him. I had similar sentiments. This was about winning a case to Axel, padding his numbers and hauling in another high-profile criminal. He wanted Niko alive and with enough evidence against him to put him in jail for the rest of his life. If his chicken shit way of holding back and gathering intel got people like Charlotte hurt, that was par for his course. That was the plan to begin with and I agreed to take things slow, but then he went after my family and all bets were off. I couldn't care less about his case. I wanted Niko dead.

"Take those to Serena tomorrow." He suggested, pointing to the stills. "See what she has to say, if she recognizes anyone."

Marco's eyes widened. "We're still going to go through with that?" He had a point. Obviously, me being with Serena triggered something. Maybe it was best to call it off for now.

Before I could even get my answer out, Axel was speaking.

"Of course we are. We can't cut out our only source of viable information on him right now. You said yourself you've been working for months. We found out more in three hours yesterday than you have in all this time." He threw his hands in the air.

"Fuck viable information." Angelo's patience was running thin. I didn't blame him. From the second Axel got here, he was acting like we were working for him, and not the other way around. "We can't just let him get away with what happened yesterday. No one was hurt this time, but it easily could've ended differently. And I guarantee you it will next time."

"Which is exactly why we need all the information we can get!" Axel interrupted.

Angelo clenched his fist in restraint. I wouldn't have tried to stop him if he punched Axel, though.

"Enough." I held my hand up. "There is not going to be a next time. As of now, keep the meeting with Serena. I want us all at that bar tonight, with eyes on him. I want him to know we're watching and we're on to his shit."

"Luca, that's not..." Axel tried to suede me in another direction, but I stopped it immediately.

"I don't give a fuck about your protocols. You're the one who brought us in on this. We're doing it my way."