Page 202 of Diego

“I will.”

Then Lorenzo is gone.

The door closes behind him, and for a moment none of us speaks. I picture Donna at nine months pregnant, Lorenzo probably breaking every traffic law between here and wherever she is, and the rest of the family learning within minutes that another Conti baby will soon arrive.

Unfortunately, we can't spare much attention to it right now.

Mario looks at me. “With Lorenzo out, Ricardo and the boys can handle Giovanni’s arrival tonight. You can go back to Blair if you want.”

The offer catches me slightly off guard, although it should not. Mario knows exactly why I hesitated to leave the house in the first place. He also knows Blair is doing better, which is probably why he phrases it as an option rather than an instruction.

“I can handle it,” I say. “If Giovanni is coming here asking for our help, I should be here.”

Mario watches me for a second, making sure I mean it.

I do.

Blair is home. Emilia is there. She has spent the afternoon happily buried in property files and threatened bodily harm if I hovered any more than I already had. I do not need to abandon everything else simply because leaving her makes me uneasy.

Still, I am not interested in having her alone tonight if this meeting turns into something that keeps me away for hours.

“Victoria and Julia can go over to the house,” I add. “Blair already knows both of them. If this runs late, she won’t be there by herself.”

Mario nods immediately. “I’ll call Victoria.”

“I’ll call Julia,” Ricardo says. “She’ll go.”

I take out my phone long enough to check the screen. No missed calls from Blair. No messages from Emilia. Nothing suggesting I need to be anywhere except exactly where I am.

Mario opens a folder on his desk and turns it toward us. “Giovanni sent over the preliminary information. We’ll have the rest when he gets here.”

Ricardo reaches for the first page while I lean closer.

Somewhere in Chicago, one of Giovanni Conti’s people has disappeared.

In a few hours, Giovanni himself will be here looking for him.

And until we know what happened, the problem belongs to us all.

Chapter Thirty Six

Blair

I lose track of time somewhere between the fourth ownership transfer and the second shell company.

The Meridian files have become far more absorbing than I expected, which is saying something considering how desperate I was for work in the first place.

What started as a way to keep myself from climbing the walls has turned into the kind of research that makes hours disappear. Every property has a history, and some of them are far more complicated than they need to be.

Diego’s old building is one of those.

I had already flagged it because Conti Enterprises tried to acquire it twice and failed both times, but I keep coming back to the ownership records. The building itself sits under one LLC, which is common enough that I would never have given it a second thought. What catches my attention is what is behind that company.

And behind the next one.

I open another window and start tracing the chain properly.

The LLC that technically owns Diego’s building is tied to another entity through a financing agreement. That company appears in the history of a commercial property I reviewed earlier this afternoon. The names are different, but the registered agent is the same. Another address leads me to a holding company attached to a small apartment portfolio I had already marked for further review.