Guilty | ✓

XXII | Guilty

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | ONLY ONE

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"BULLSHIT!"

Elias rubbed his forehead with his palm roughly, his nose scrunching slightly as he gritted his teeth. His body was slumped lazily on his desk chair, while his abdomen raised and fell from numerous amounts of harsh breaths.

Francesca who was sitting elegantly in the corner of the room, in an old-fashioned grandfather seat, looked up. A pair of delicate glasses sitting on the edge of her nose, the book she had in hand closed as she looked at her grandson in question.

"What's wrong?"

"Everything's fucking wrong!" Elias stood up, his hands tangling themselves in his brown mane. "How - How is it possible that there are no fucking cases?"

"What do you mean?" Francesca proposed, her attention not fully focused on him and his dramatic gestures.

Elias sighed, "The crime in the city is disappearing—no gangs, no terrorism, no anything. If we are called, we're always late and the act is gone by the time we arrive."

"How is that possible?" Francesca uttered, standing up as she peered at the documents on the mahogany desk.

Various different papers stood spread out, while some were documents with various different paragraphs of information printed on it, somewhere photographs from CCTV cameras. A woman who was the center of the photograph stood out to Francesca—although the woman's significant clothing choice of monochromatic black, her auburn tinted red hair extremely stood out, covering half her face.

"Beatrice McQueen—they call her Trixie, apparently fairly new to the whole 'mafia world', yet, she's better than most," said Elias, almost sarcastically. The exasperation was clearly painted on his features—his eyes were outlined by dark heavy eye bags that defined his recent lack of sleep and insomnia, the normal tanned face that he once sported was sickly pale and sagged.

Francesca narrowed her eyes at the hint of the name. Beatrice McQueen, she'd known it, actually, she definitely heard it from someone but she unfortunately couldn't quite put a name to it.
Though, her suspicions increased as she stared daggers at the photograph. It was weird, most criminals - well, at least the better known ones - liked to be known, quoting, 'I want to be well known, but not found'. It was seen as a respectable as good strategy, investigators only looked so far that they thought everyone was hidden under a rock, but in reality they were under their noses.

Her finger started tapping the tablet screen, a video from a security camera of an deserted land-down south of New York. Several luxurious race cars were lined up one by one, some with flames drawn on the side, and some with various symbols and photos printed throughout the whole car.

One especially, stood out beyond the others, it was slick white Maserati, inside a various notorious redhead, who was facing out the window, glaring at the rest of the competitors; all coincidentally being men.

Francesca widened her eyes slightly, the woman's face was in definite sight, a small scar outlined her forehead down under her eyebrow, yet, almost coming unnoticed from the caking of make-up.

"Are you listening?"

"Wh-What?" Francesca mumbled, finally looking back at Elias with a slight shake of her head.