One of them is the mole...

The lamp on Nico's desk cast a soft amber glow over a stack of reports while he scribbled some notes in the margins. Working himself late had become a way to evade the nightmares that came with the ambush at docks a few months ago.

The loss of all those men who had entrusted him with their safety haunted him. However, it was the thought of Gino that cut the deepest. His Gino. No matter how hard he tried burying the painful memories of his secret lover, the way Gino had held on to Nico like he could save him with raw fear in his eyes...

Nico swallowed a lump in his throat reaching for a vodka bottle on the desk and took a long burning gulp. "Fottuta FBI," the words slipped through gritted teeth. When Saint's name flashed across his phone, he gladly welcomed the distraction.

"Saint!" It was 8PM in Chicago meaning it was somewhere close to 2AM in Sicily. "How was your flight? I hope the champagne was up to your standards."

There was no response, the silence between them dragged on for a long excruciating minute making Nico's stomach drop down to the floor.

"Saint?" he prompted.

"Why are you watching me, Niccolo?"

Nico's blue eyes widened as he processed what he thought he'd just heard. "What are you talking about?"

"The cameras you set up in my fucking apartment!" Nico winced as he slightly removed the phone from his ear. "Why are they there?"

Cameras? He had no idea what Saint was blabbering about. "Saint, I don't know what you mean. Cameras? In your apartment? That doesn't make any sense."

"Don't you dare lie to me cazzone!" Saint bellowed, and Nico could hear something way too close to glass shattering in the background. "There's footage from my apartment being streamed to your club. Now are you ready to talk to me without the lies?"

Nico struggled to piece fragments of conversations together. Roman. He'd mentioned something about surveillance, but Nico hadn't fully grasped what he meant at the time. Now, it all clicked into place and this was some serious shit.

"Saint," he said carefully as though he were approaching a ticking time bomb, "I swear to you, I had no idea about any of this."

"Do not insult my intelligence."

Nico exhaled. "Let me figure out what the hell is going on, okay? I'll call you back as soon as I have some information."

Saint hung up on him. Merda.

Nico didn't waste much time. He stormed into the surveillance room at The Qube where he found monitors displaying live feeds from various locations of their business operations.

Nothing suspicious about that.

His eyes darted across the screens until one specific monitor caught his eye. The footage on it was grainy and when he looked closely, there were also missing timestamps.

"What is this?" his gut twisted.

As if on cue, Alessandro walked in, carrying two steaming coffee cups. He extended one to Nico. "I was looking for you."

Nico ignored the stupid coffee and pointed to the monitor. "Why is there missing timestamps on this one?"

Alessandro glanced at the monitor in question, he gently set the cup that was meant for Nico on the nearest table. "Missing footage?"

"Look at this." Nico gestured impatiently.

Alessandro stepped closer, his eyes narrowing at the monitor. "I didn't notice that before."

"Bullshit," Nico snapped. "What footage was on it? And don't even think about lying to me."

Alessandro's tone remained annoyingly casual as he sipped from his cup. "It was footage from the boss's apartment."

Nico stared at him, disbelief giving way to fury. "You set up cameras in Saint's apartment without running it by him first?"

"I did it to flush out the mole," Alessandro said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

"Minchia!" His face devoid of any humor, Nico laughed. "Do you realize how insane that is?"

Alessandro finally set his coffee down, "There is a reason I didn't tell anyone what I was doing." He sighed. "When I was sweeping the boss's apartment for bugs the night he got shot, I found three microphones. You want to take a guess who they belonged to?"

Nico didn't waste his breath.

"They were all registered to the Bureau," Alessandro supplied. "I destroyed them, obviously. Didn't want them feeding any more information than they already had. Also, I wanted to see who would try to replace them."

"And?"

"The microphones are still unclaimed but if the footage was tampered with, it means someone knows about my setup."

Nico's mind was buzzing. Saint's anger made so much sense now, but the missing timestamps still bugged him. "So why is the footage blank, it records on our hard drives, no?"

Alessandro hesitated for the first time. "I don't know why it's blank," he mumbled, then quickly added, "but I'll figure it out."

"That's not good enough," Nico said sharply. "If you're hiding something now is the time to tell me."

"I'm not hiding anything," Alessandro shot back.

"Then explain this!" Nico jabbed a finger at the monitor.

Alessandro's jaw clenched. "It's possible the hard drive was corrupted remotely and the only person who could've done that is the mole."

Nico rubbed his temples. "Saint now knows about your little operation and he's murderous. What the hell were you thinking?"

Alessandro ran a hand through his dark hair muttering a curse. "I planned on telling him about it once I had answers," he said. "But I couldn't risk the mole catching wind of it first."

Nico narrowed his eyes. "For all I know, you could be the mole."

Alessandro smirked. "Fair suspicion. But I wouldn't do anything to hurt you or Saint, you know that."

"What's the timeline for the missing footage?"

Alessandro checked the monitor and rattled off some dates. A frown instantly etched Nico's brow. Those dates lined up with the time Saint had been recovering from his gunshot wound. Those days Saint was mostly staying at his apartment before he was taken into Federal custody a few days later.

"The only people who had full access to the apartment back then were Antonio, Federico, Saint's bodyguard, and..." Nico's voice trailed off. "The priest."

"And you," Alessandro added, eyeing him carefully.

"I didn't do this," Nico snapped. He breathed slowly, thinking. "One of them must have set the microphones in Saint's apartment and tampered with the footage. I'm going to find out who did this."

"Let me help you."

Nico's instincts screamed at him. Alessandro was not a man to be trusted. The man was capable of making a whole body disappear in minutes, what more of a little compromising footage on a hard disk drive?

Cristo. They really were in a shitstorm.

"You're the last person I want help from," Nico ended up saying.

Alessandro's face fell though he quickly recovered. Nico could've easily missed it if he wasn't looking. "I understand."