Chapter 31: Dangerous Deception: Chapter 31

A smothering silence fills the car as Vito and I drive through city streets thriving with nightlife oblivious to the danger surrounding them. A danger from the one thing that should be the least dangerous thing on the fucking planet.

The water from the reservoir.

So much of what we’ve learned today feels like the broken pieces of a pot jumbling around in a bag waiting to be put together.

Vito sits next to me in the passenger seat, tapping his fingers furiously against his thigh. Just as I’m about to ask him what he’s thinking, he speaks.

“So, Pascal has been paying off doctors to forge death certificates and paying government officials to squash down any attempts by the public to question the quality of water coming from the reservoir.” He clicks his tongue behind his teeth. “A list which includes Lucia, Adelina’s mother, and… Serena.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him looking at me, but I don’t speak. I can’t. Serena being on that list doesn’t make sense because she died from cancer. That’s what they told me. She got sick. She got cancer and she died. There’s no way she was poisoned.

No way she was that sick and I didn’t see it.

My grip tightens on the steering wheel, turning my knuckles white.

“But the important question right now is why,” Vito continues. And how? How is the water so toxic that it slowly poisons people and makes them so sick that there’s nothing that can help them? And why cover it up? Why pay people to keep something like this hidden, especially when it’s taken the life of your own wife?”

Vito’s trying to find a connection in this mess, but it currently feels like there isn’t one. Everything is aimless and broken. Adelina’s mother suffered and died, and instead of tearing the world apart to find out why, Pascal paid to cover it up.

I couldn’t do that to Adelina. The world would burn if anything like that happened to her.

Just like it should have with Serena.

If I’d just looked a little deeper and seen something, even something random and disconnected⁠—

I slam on the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching stop. We’re both flung forward and several cars around us honk their annoyance at my sudden stop, but it hit me so fast that everything suddenly makes complete sense.

“The Irish.”

“What?” Vito coughs, adjusting the seat belt against his chest. “Holy shit, ow.”

“Sorry, but don’t you see?” I turn to face him. “It’s weird that the Irish caused so much shit in my brothel but it could be explained away as their being too drunk to realize just whose girls they were messing with. But the same night, Adelina was assaulted. And then the attack on the manor on the same night we return from Italy. I could maybe excuse that as the Irish not even knowing I was out of the country and that maybe I was just staying locked up.”

Vito’s eyes begin to widen as he gets on the same wavelength as me. “You think they’re connected to everything else, that it’s not random?”

“Exactly. Pascal. He knew when we were coming back from Italy. In fact, he’s the fucking reason we came back. But the attack on the brothel… I don’t know how that’s connected, but there has to be something.”

“Pascal is in bed with those Irish fucks!” Vito slams his hand down on the dashboard, then aggressively flips off a car that screeches around us.

“He has to be. And more than that, fuck, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before, but the Irish make their money through oil and energy, right? They’ve got those big fucking rigs out on the ocean, they have all those power plants and compounds across the city.”

“But they always preach about how green their energy is. All those fucking green Irish jokes, bragging about how safe their practices are.”

“What if they’re not? I mean, fuck. Something’s tainting the water supply. Pascal knows about it and is paying heavy amounts to keep people quiet, which means he’s covering for someone. Which means he knows what’s making the water toxic.”

“And the Irish don’t operate here,” Vito adds. “They’re all the way over on the other side of the city.”

“Exactly. To anyone who checks their shit, they look as green as the fucking grass, but what if they’re paying someone else to dump their toxic waste, dump it so far away that even if it was discovered, it wouldn’t lead back to them? And they maintain that their own way of making energy is safe and green.”

“But why?” Vito meets my eyes. “I like this theory. A lot. But why cover up the fact that people got sick and died? Including his own wife. Wouldn’t that make him furious and want revenge? Why get into bed with the Irish in the first place?”

“I…” That’s where my theory falters. “I don’t know. He did sell Adelina to me, so maybe he’s not as family-oriented for sure. But I do know one thing.”

Vito lifts one brow.

“Carlos learned what we’ve just learned. And then he was having screaming matches with Pascal until he turned up dead. A death that was covered up by me killing his family for stealing that drug shipment.”

“You think that was fake?”

I turn back to face the road, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “I think I’ve been played. I’m a pawn in someone else’s fucking game, and as soon as I get my hands on them, I’m going to kill them.”

Thoughts of revenge ignite a new, fresh fire in my soul that blazes all the way home. I might not know the whole truth, but I know enough to make sure that Pascal will be dust when I’m finished with him. And then the Irish will follow.

I hope Adelina will forgive me, but I have a feeling she will understand.

That fire exists until I make it back to the manor where the doorman stumbles over himself to reach me as Vito and I stride inside.

“What’s wrong?” I ask the second our eyes meet.

He thrusts a note into my hand, panting from his hurried steps. “Your wife, sir. Adelina. She went to dinner with her father some hours ago and never came home!”