Smoke & Gun (+18) (COMPLETE)

|4| Shaking Something Loose |

Anabella looked out the window as the rows of plowed fields passed by. She might regret what she was about to do, but she couldn't help what she was feeling inside herself. The man sitting next to her driving at an ungodly speed down the road was telling her the truth. She remembered how he ended the story that was heartbreaking to her even for a wretched fiend like Piero Albano. The frantic, manic, panic that he must have felt. The loss. The betrayal.

"Everyone thought Sophia died in that explosion." He said after a long pause. "I did too. When I woke up at the hospital it was Lorenzo Espocito who was there. I wanted to know where she was, where my child was. The man wouldn't speak to me at first. Once he did all he said was that I got her killed. I was a danger to her and got her killed.

I was unconscious in the hospital for over three weeks with internal bleeding and some shrapnels in my body from being so close for both explosions. It was a closed casket funeral mostly because after the explosion there wasn't that much left. That's what they told me anyway. When I asked about the baby Lorenzo got mad said there wasn't a child showed me an autopsy report to prove it, but I knew better. I knew something wasn't right so I kept digging."

He tossed a picture on the table of a pretty dark haired woman in a dress that tried but failed to hide her protruding stomach.

"Eight months after the explosion a source sent me this."

"The woman's in profile. It's hand to really make out her face."

He pointed to the necklace of a key around the woman's neck. "I gave her that when I asked her to marry me. She wanted it. Talk about it all the time so I got it for her. That's Sophia."

"And if it's not?"

"It is!"

Annabella was taken aback by his outburst. Piero was the personification of calm, measured, mannered. He didn't cause attention he didn't raise his voice. He was calculated and executed with precision. This she didn't understand. "Maybe you want her to be alive. I wouldn't blame you."

He put another image on the desk. "Taken three months ago in Istanbul."

"This woman is wearing shades hardly unequivocal proof."

He pointed to the same key necklace that time next to a locket hanging around the woman's neck.

"It's her."

She took a deep breath and moved the image closer to her then pushed it away. "I agree it's a bit of a coincidence if it weren't the same woman."

He growled and marched toward her, pulled out a knife and grabbed he bound hands. She flinched when he cut the binds.

"Prove me wrong."

"Take a right at the next light then park."

He had a handsome profile, but she already knew that. Piero Albano was known for his good looks, charm and ruthlessness. She wasn't expecting him to be so attractive though. She turned her head so she was looking out the window. In most of the images in the Faust Files, he was clean shaven, hair cut and styled in place. In her present, he was scruffy and his hair was long to the point where the bottom ends were in deep dark brown waves past his neck. His state of ill-keep did not change the magnificent browns in his eyes or the deep cupid's bow on his full lips.

She started from her thoughts when he reached over her to the glove compartment, pulled out a gun and checked the magazine to make sure it had bullets. He slammed the cartridge back in the weapon and got out the car then tucked the gun in the back of his pants.