Michael looked at him with concern. The last thing they needed was to get in a pissing contest with the Rossi’s and the old bill. “Cace, before you go all caveman on her arse, let me speak to Dad. He may know someone who knows someone, who knows the Rossi family. He knows a lot of people.”
“That would be great, thanks.” Cace looked at the man’s face on the laptop. He would never hurt Frankie again. Cace had seen the scarring from injuries on her rib and left breast, along with the scar from a gunshot wound on her right side last night. If Rossi had caused those injuries, he had gone for injury, not death straight away.
Frankie walked back into the living room. “I’ve spoken to the head of the disbanded task force; he and my inspector will meet us at my house in a few hours. I don’t want him knowing I’ve been staying with you. I told him about the videos, he’ll bring a warrant to cover the request to have a copy if you could arrange it, please.”
Cace could see her brain ticking over. “We’ve got you, baby; you won’t be dealing with this alone.”
“You don’t understand, it’s not just me.” Both men looked at her, surprised.
Cace wasn’t sure how much he could take; his woman was going to give him a heart attack if she carried on. “What do you mean?”
Frankie knew she had to leave and walked into the bedroom to start packing. Cace followed behind. “Frankie, don’t fucking walk away from me!”
She threw clothes into her bag she’d pulled from the wardrobe when she’d spoken to her old boss. “Stop swearing!”
Cace took a breath. “I can hear your eyes rolling, Frankie. Sit down and tell me why you think I’m going to let you leave when I’ve only just got you back?”
She carried on packing, pulling clothes from the wardrobe. “My friends, they’ll be at risk too. Listen to what my Inspector and the Task Force leader has to say first., I promise I will come back when it’s over.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Frankie stood in the kitchen staring out of the window in a world of her own as she saw two SUV’s pull in and park up behind the old factory. Michael and Cace had gone down to meet the men. As they got out of the cars, Frankie watched them shake hands and hug members of the group. They were both hugged by a big bear of a man she recognised as Liam, or Uncle Liam as everyone knew him, including her. She remembered him from when she was a kid and had come to visit Cace and his family.
Frankie opened the apartment door and watched the men, except for Liam and Cace’s cousins, go into the semi-finished apartments with their kit bags. Her two friends had messaged back. Emma was heading back to London; she’d been on leave visiting her family. Charley had come off shift and had woken to her message; she was at their house already and wasn’t due on shift for two days. Charley planned to meet Emma for coffee at the café at the top of their street. They’d come in together when she gave the signal. They’d planned for this day; they just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. The day they could deal with Rossi themselves; it could cost them their jobs going up against the Rossi family but this time, they would end this. It was what they had been working towards since they had sent him to prison.
Liam looked at Frankie and grinned. “Good to see you again darling, you’ve grown into a beautiful woman.”
Frankie smiled up at him. Confidence radiated off the man and it was infectious. “Hey, Uncle Liam, sorry to get you involved in the drama.”
Liam ushered her back into the apartment. “So, you took on a Rossi. Let’s all sit down and see if we can’t come up with a plan before we go meet these bosses of yours, shall we?”
Frankie looked at them all, feeling a little nervous. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
Cace guided Frankie into the seat next to him, opposite Matt, Michael and Liam. “Start from the beginning, young lady.”
Frankie explained that the Rossi’s had appeared to be a legitimate business enterprise from the outside after Luca Rossi had inherited the businesses from their elderly father when he had finally died. He had been older than his wives and had lived into his eighties. Luca had ensured all the businesses, from restaurants and bars to property they owned across London and the Southeast were legitimate. If not, they became that way. He knew his father had a reputation in certain circles back in the seventies.
The only exception was his younger half-brother Marco, who had been left the nightclubs in his father’s will. Marco had wanted to believe all the stories he’d been told as a young boy, about the life of gangsters. He thought he was untouchable. His father’s fancy high priced lawyers had got him out of a few scrapes with the law, before his death. He didn’t want to go legitimate and didn’t understand the meaning of don’t shit on your own doorstep. Marco and a couple of friends, with the help of bartenders in his various clubs, would pick out women they considered easy marks. The women would think they were being invited to the VIP area to party and their drinks would be spiked towards the end of the evening as they were ready to leave or if they had agreed to move the party elsewhere. The women wouldn’t always remember what happened, depending on the drug they used and if they wanted them to remember, but they knew something had happened to them. A few of their victims were sent videos to their phones from an anonymous source showing exactly what had happened after they had been drugged, along with a threat of if the victim reported what happened the video would go online, to their employers and families.
The men waited for Frankie to collect her thoughts. “We heard what was happening in clubs, via several reports from a friend who had gone through training with us and had moved to Brighton when she met her fiancé. She’d been at a club with some girlfriends and had suspicions after a woman had come in looking for Marco Rossi and she had got talking to her. Emma, Charley and I joined the task force – we were one of several bait teams. We were undercover for a year; we had someone in each of the clubs that had been targeted more than once and we worked on rotation but always together.”
Frankie took a sip of water from the glass Michael placed in front of her. She thanked him and continued. this was a story she only wanted to tell once. “We were put on Rossi as we fit his victim type. We originally thought someone else was going after the Rossi’s, thinking they had gone soft for going legit. There were several units that wanted to be involved, that included organised crime, vice, etc. We’d never been in the area and were set up with full backgrounds, identities, places to stay before we went in. We did background work while other teams watched Rossi when he wasn’t at the clubs.
Cace squeezed Frankie’s hand. “Go on, baby.”
Frankie took a breath as she approached the end of the story. “I ended things with you when I went undercover because I needed to stay focused. I stayed on with the task force to finish building the case while Rossi was out on bail. I’d been out for the day, visiting my friend and the concierge let Rossi into the building I lived in, thinking he was a workman going to another property as he went off for the night. He got into my apartment. He wants revenge because that scar on his face is from me. He was lying in wait when I got home. I checked everywhere whenever I came in. He was waiting for me in my bedroom, it was the last room I checked. He shot me when I’d turned to run away from him. I’d managed to get to the kitchen and grab a knife from the worktop. I struck him with it across the leg and face as he came towards me with a syringe. One of the neighbours heard screaming and called the police. When they broke in, I was bleeding and unconscious and they caught him trying to escape from my balcony to a neighbour’s.”
Frankie got up and started to pace. “We realised after the attack on me that they found out we were undercover, and that Emma wasn’t just one of their potential victims. We don’t know how; they went for all three of us at the same time. The girls were in a car accident on their way home from their shift. The plan was to grab us separately and teach us a lesson, then kill us. We still don’t know how they knew about us, because everyone was investigated and came back clean. Someone could have been watching us or we could have been hacked, we’ll never know. The only thing we did know was that this day would come. He said he would kill us when they dragged him out of court after the sentencing.”
Frankie sat back down next to Cace. He put his arm across the back of the sofa and played with her hair needing contact. Taking a breath, she continued. “We made the decision that we would be safer together. We looked at areas and I found a house in one of my old neighbourhoods. The house is rented in my mum’s new husband’s name, along with the bills. Nothing is under our names. I’d moved onto the Isle of Dogs for a while when I was at uni. The Island was perfect to be close but not too close to work for all of us. We all got on well, so we decided to rent a house. There was no way we could afford the area on just one cop’s salary.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cace was fuming. Everything was starting to make sense on why she hadn’t returned his emails. It wasn’t because she had met someone else. Frankie stood in her living room looking out the window as she listened to the task force leader and Inspector Johnson brief Cace, Liam and his sons on the Rossi family. She continued to text her friends with updates on their group chat.
A moment later, Inspector Johnson spoke. “So, you see gentlemen, it appears we have a little problem, and we may need to put Francesca into protective custody until this issue can be resolved. However long that may be.” Liam put his hand on Cace’s knee, indicating he had this as he went to stand.
“Inspector Johnson, with all the goodwill in the world, from what you’ve told us, Rossi and his friends shouldn’t be out yet, but for so-called good behaviour. Someone fucked up! They should have also had the decency to tell Francesca and the other women concerned that Rossi is a free man. From what I understand from my sources, he is now back in London, working for his uncle who isn’t as clean as Luca, shall we say. We are offering our services free of charge. After all, Francesca is part of our family and my nephew’s fiancée. Phoenix looks after our own, you only need to speak to your station in Covent Garden. They know us very well and they know what we can do.”