Mafia Legacy

Chapter Twelve- Charlotte

"Murder?" My eyes widened.

"The woman that they found was murdered in some kind of turf war. The officers thought it looked suspicious that Luca and Angelo were on the witness list with their ties to organized crime." He explained.

"What do you mean, Axel?" I hissed.

"What he's getting at is that Angelo and I are now 'persons of interest' in the murder." Luca said with a heavy sigh.

All the air left my lungs. Murder? Somehow, this was so much bigger than I thought it was. When Luca said they were looking into them, I thought he meant they were suspicious of his operations. Not that they thought he killed this woman. He would never in a million years. This was absolutely insane.

Axel bit his lip. "I'm going to go. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help."

"You've done quite enough." Marco rolled his eyes, following Axel to show him out.

I had about a thousand questions rolling through my mind and no way to get them out in any way that would make sense. The only thing I could get out was, "How serious is this?"

Angelo shifted his weight. "We aren't sure. No one has connected either one of us so far, but they talked to Marco and they showed up at the gallery and..."

"And they hunted me down at the courthouse this morning." I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek. It made complete sense what they were trying to do. They probably didn't have quite enough for the takedown and were hoping to get me to spill something.

"What?" Luca shrieked. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I came straight home to tell you, but your moron cousin was sitting in my kitchen." I rolled my eyes as Marco came back into the room.

"Axel is gone." He announced. "Hopefully for good."

I held on to the counter, trying to steady myself. I hated that this was happening. That we were at this point in our lives, a few short years from moving on and enjoying Luca's retirement together, after all the bullshit we'd been through, and now he was staring down a murder charge.

"What did they say to you, Char?" Angelo asked.

"I... I don't know. It happened so fast. It was the same guy from the gallery. He said that when all of this went down, I would want to be on their side of it."

"Motherfuckers." Luca growled, running his fingers through his hair. "I ought to go down there right now and rip out..."

"No, you won't." I glared. "All of you will stay far away from the police. I'll talk to them."

"That's definitely not happening." Luca scoffed.

"You're in no position to make that kind of decision right now, Luca." I said harshly, folding my arms over my chest.

He rolled his eyes. "Look, Charlotte, I appreciate you want to help, I really do but..."

"Oh, are you seriously going to start this sexist bullshit again?" I snapped. "Haven't I saved your life enough to count for something?"

"That's not the point, Charlotte." Luca was flustered. "I know you're capable of handling this. I'm not being sexist. I just don't want..."

"She's right." Marco interjected. "Neither of you can walk into that police station. It's a fucking death trap if you do. And I can't go because I'm too close to the operation."

"Should any of us really be going in there?" Angelo asked. "That's exactly what they want. Maybe we should just not acknowledge it. Obviously, we don't want them harassing Charlotte, but things are delicate right now."