When The Sun Goes Down - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Chapter Thirty-Six

Explaining the angry black and blue mark along my forehead to my coworkers was difficult. As far as everyone knew I didn't have a boyfriend though so when I insisted I stepped on my cat, something I also didn't have, and fell. Most believed it. It was only the oldest story in the book, but they bought it. And I was completely right, with a good deal on concealer the evidence of my encounter vanished.

"In other news." I turned my carefree and chipper smile into a stern look. "Just hours ago mayhem struck at what was once Bernie's plastic factory. Civilians nearby reported hearing what sounded like gun shots off and on throughout the night but could not place the exact location of the shots and they were thus left uninvestigated. Things at Bernie's got hot and heavy extremely fast early into the morning as the building combusted. Fire marshals have rolled this terrible tragedy as arson and our NYPD suspects the crime may have some gang related ties, six men were found dead, names have not been released yet. Currently we have no suspects, and no charges have been filed." I hesitated and I could feel the tension in the room shift. This wasn't like me. "With the reveal of new evidence we here at channel 8 hope that eye witnesses may step for and suspects will be named. I'm Katherine Santoro with your channel 8 news and an exclusive video from inside the very factory."

The screen suddenly shifted from me and onto my footage. I had of course cut out a lot of it. With so little time it was cut choppy and poorly, not my best work. But considering the cirumstances the station was just thrilled to have it in the first place.

There was no audio to the video. It started out with a lot of shaking, whoever was recording was obviously running or walking and then there was a sudden shift and the camera was aimed at the sky. I knew of course I'd been knocked down by Matteo, but the viewers had no idea I was the one recording nor had they seen his face. The next was a shot of the one who was watching me as I hung from my wrists. Viewers of course had no clue that I was captured at this point, but they had a perfect view of him standing there with his gun in hand and moments later the second one came in. The situation had felt so personal to me that I had taken out the footage of my struggle with them and the video snapped to a different point of view. This time it was of the two men standing in front of Alessio, their bodies blocked most of his, concealing his identity. You couldn't see his face but with the lighting you could clearly see someone was tied to the chair in front of him. The feed was shaky, I was struggling against them to get to Alessio. Had there been audio I would have been screaming his name out and all of the sudden the room filled with smoke.

The footage was black for a long time, just when viewers would start to wonder if their TV's were malfunctioning a bit of light would be caught on camera. I knew I was just now getting back to my feet in the video. All you could see was the occasional flashes of the guns going off when I was angled up enough to actually catch them. And then darkness until suddenly I burst through the doors and into the light. There you could tell whoever was recording, me, was still running for a few beats. When I finally stopped and whirled around I was hunched over enough that you couldn't see Pietro's face, but you could see his tommy and half of his gas mask and then the video cut out.

When the cameras came back to me I was looking down for a few moments. When I glanced up Alessio was standing beside our cameraman with his hands shoved into his pockets giving me the coldest look I had ever seen in my entire life. If looks could kill, I certainly wouldn't have to worry about the pistol permanently fixed to his hip.

I let our anchor, Spencer, take us out and as soon as the camera was off I threw my blazers jacket off and yanked my ear piece out swiftly. I practically jumped out of my seat to run to Alessio who didn't move a muscle. "What are you doing here?" I hissed.

"What are you doing?" He said in an ice cold tone.

I took his hand and dragged him from the newsroom where all eyes were on us. "You can't be here!" I said as soon as I shut the door to my office.