Silence in New York - Book One

~Chapter 39~

"What happens now?" Adriana asked sitting on the floor of her freshly cleaned apartment. She sat leaning against the couch, underneath her lay the cool freshly mopped floorboards. The grey throw rug Claudia picked up at a closing down sale now gone. It lay wrapped up in one of the bin bags by the front door.

The dawn light now flooding into the apartment while the men casually drank their coffees as if they had merely come home from an all night bender. "Have some coffee," Salvatore urged holding his cappuccino out towards her encouraging her to get some caffeine into her system. "You can't miss your shift at work today, I need you to do exactly what you would do every other day Adriana. Do not change your routine. Not today understand?"

She nodded while pushing away the mug in front of her. She could accept going about her daily routine, but there was no way she could stomach anything right now. Not after the bloodshed before her during the last few hours. How they could stand around drinking coffee and snacking on almond cookies was beyond her right now, all she wanted to do was hurl at the sight of food.
She watched as Luca made his way over and sat next to her on the ground with his back up leaned up against the couch. "What's that?" She questioned eyeing the cell phone and an unknown electronic device in his hands.

"Well" Luca began, "it's a sim card reader." He removed Mike's sim card from the back of his cell phone and placed it in the reader as he continued. "This little guy" he held up the device, "will now copy all of Mike's contacts into its memory storage. Then all we have to do is connect it to a compute and we have all his contacts. Pretty handy in our line of business." He smiled triumphantly impressed with himself. "Did he make any calls in front of you?"

"No" she replied quickly, "he just had some sort of problem with Salvo. Said something about wasting his time moving into this apartment and how I was supposed to lead him to more. I don't know what he meant, I don't know what he expected me to know." The more she spoke about the last few hours with Mike, the more frustrated she became with herself. How could he be so kind yet so conniving and evil at the same time all right under her nose?

"Have you been to his apartment Adriana?" Salvatore asked.

"No, he only ever came here. He's apartment 204."

"Stefano," Salvatore called him over, "you and me, let's go check it out. Luca stay here with Adriana." The pair left immediately to break into apartment 204 while Luca continued to transfer all of Mike's contacts.

"Are you ok Ade?" Luca's voice genuinely filled with concern for her. This wasn't something she should've been involved in. None of this should've happened to her. Now they had to figure out what Mike wanted and why. Did he work for someone? Was he alone in this? How did know Adriana was involved with the Abandonato family? There were so many questions, Luca even considered dumping the questions on her now, but he knew it was too soon. Too soon so ask her to put all the puzzle pieces together.

"I'm fine," she stated with little enthusiasm in her voice. She sounded anything but convincing. "As fine as I can be I guess" she added feeling as though she had to elaborate.

"I'm sorry," Luca added taking the sim card back out of the device and inserting it back into Mike's cell phone. He would later get rid of the phone along with the many body parts piled up within the apartment. "I should've shot him when I had the chance." His mind thinking back to the standoff moment the three of them shared. Had he only shot first and asked questions later things would not have spiraled out of control.

Adriana shook her head immediately disagreeing. "Seriously? Fairly certain we wouldn't be friends right now if you did."

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