Mafia Fall-Out

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte

"Is this is a fucking joke?" Luca's entire body tensed as he clutched the piece of paper Angelo had given him in his hands. My mind was swirling with possibilities, but I didn't need to know what it said to know it wasn't good. Luca's reaction told me everything I needed to know.

Angelo shook his head. "I wish it was. It came from a sample of blood that was on the edge of Lucy's crib."

"What exactly are you trying to tell me here?" He hissed, tossing the paper to the side.

I picked it up and glanced over at the graphs on the page. It was a DNA comparison of Luca and that sample that was found on Lucy's crib, and it was 50% match.

"We don't know what it means yet." Marco said. "Obviously someone is trying to set you up, but the sample they tried to plant was so degraded that it only came back as a 50% match. Whoever it was probably took it off of a beer bottle or cigar or something at the resort."

"You said it was from a blood sample." I said, biting my lip. None of this made any sense. Why would someone frame Luca for this? Whoever it was couldn't possibly think that it would work, could they?

"Right. But there are ways of taking a person's DNA out of their blood and putting someone else's in." Luca sighed, shoving his fingers through his hair. He was more stressed than I had ever seen him.

"Isn't that a lot of trouble to go to, though? I mean, whoever has Lucy can't think we'd fall for this, could they?" I said exasperatedly, trying to understand what was going on.

Luca paced in front of me for a second before sitting down at one of the chairs at the table.

"It doesn't matter what we think, Charlotte. What matters is what the police say, and if we found this, you can guarantee it's only a matter of time before they do. And all that's going to matter to them is that Luca's profile matches pretty strongly. They'll argue the sample would have been a full match if it wasn't so degraded. And we can't prove that this sample is bogus, and even if we could, we'd be in deep shit for messing around with the evidence."

"But they can't prove it's not." I said adamantly. "Fifty percent means nothing. They can't pin this on him with just that."

"Babe," Luca took a heavy breath and grabbed my hand, pulling me onto his lap. "You're preaching to the choir. We know that. But the problem is, if someone is framing me, and sophisticated enough to swap DNA in blood, that means they probably have a lot more up their sleeve. This won't be the only evidence they planted."

"But you haven't found anything else, right? And Seth swept the room before the police got there."

"As of now, no. And that's going to be our saving grace." Marco clenched his jaw. "I already am working on getting into their system to make sure they don't have anything we don't. I say for now, we just focus on what we've got. The maid was a dead end, right? But what about the security cameras from the hotel?"

"They claim they weren't working." Angelo rolled his eyes.

Marco scoffed. "That's a bunch of bullshit. When I tried to pull the airport security tapes from their database, there was hours of footage from the hotel. I just haven't had time to sort through it yet."

"Okay. Well, let's start there." Luca said. "Maybe the parking garages or outer areas. I doubt these people were dumb enough to get their faces on a camera. You got the airport footage?"

"Not yet." He shook his head. "I'm doing my best."

"Well, keep trying." Luca said. "We're not going to jump to any conclusions. Stone will explain away the DNA in a heartbeat. We'd been staying in that room. There are a million times I could have transferred it into the crib. Char, you and I are going to go meet him at the hotel. He might have a little more guidance for us, and I want to be sure we're being cautious here."