"Where is he now?"
Her stomach rolled and she pressed her hand beneath the table to it. "I don't know. I haven't heard from him in a while."
CHAPTER FIVE
R
icco kept up small talk throughout their breakfast, and as they rose to walk out, he put his hand on the small of Mariko's back again. She moved slightly, an indication that she was uncomfortable with the familiarity, but she had to get used to his touch. There was no doubt in his mind that Mariko Majo was in fact Mariko Tanaka from the legendary Tanaka family.
He knew his cousins Renato and Romano Greco were already conducting their investigation into Mariko, but this information was vital. He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted Romano one-handed. He kept the other firmly on Mariko. She could pull away if she wanted, but she would have to make that decision on her own.
Anyone could come to the Ferraro family and get an audience with the greeters. His mother, Eloisa, and father, Phillip, had acted as greeters since the death of his grandparents. They were former riders and could hear and compel the truth. Once in a while someone slipped through that shouldn't, but it was rare. Whatever the problem that needed to be heard, at first the visitor merely talked about his life, mundane things that allowed the greeters to get a feel for his voice, respiration and heartbeat. Once that was done, the greeters would ask the visitor to state his reason for contact. They would listen with no response and then stand up, dismissing the visitor without comment. That way, if they were under investigation by law enforcement, nothing could be recorded or said that might confirm anything illegal was going on.
The greeters would turn their findings over to the investigators if they felt the visitor had a legitimate claim against someone. There were two teams of investigators. One would study the crime and the person or persons accused, while the second set of investigators would examine those making the request and look into everything about them. They didn't want any mistakes made in their business, so there were checks and balances every step of the way protecting the family as well as those making requests.
If Mariko was a Tanaka, and her brother was in trouble, then Ricco was in far more danger than he'd first considered. Could someone blackmail a shadow rider? Shadow riders were human and they could make all kinds of mistakes, so yes, they could be blackmailed. They were born with serious flaws, just as everyone else was. He added that to the text informing his cousins. Find her brother immediately. Get everyone on it.
Ricco glanced down at Mariko as he guided her out of Biagi's café and down the sidewalk so he could show her the neighborhood. He loved their community and the people in it. He wanted her to feel that same sense of camaraderie he always felt. If Mariko was a Tanaka, she might not have been better off with her own family. He'd met her father, a shell of a man, but then, he was no longer capable of riding shadows and carrying out their work.
Ricco had a small taste of what it was like to be sidelined. He found himself restless and moody, edgy even. Not that he wasn't like that most of the time, but he was even more so without being able to do what he was born to do. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to be a rider unable to ride permanently.
Tanaka had married a woman who had eventually destroyed him. She'd left, and in doing so, she'd torn the shadows apart, rendering Mariko's father incapable of riding the shadows and carrying out justice for his people. The price her mother had paid was forgetting she had ever been married and had children. She remembered nothing about the Tanaka family or what they did. It was a heavy price for making a mistake in choosing one's life partner – or being forced to take one for the sole purpose of having children like his own parents had done.
"Ricco." Lucia Fausti waved at him from the doorway of her shop, Lucia's Treasures.
Ricco immediately picked up the pace. Lucia was the perfect person for Mariko to meet. There was no one he knew sweeter than Lucia other than, possibly, his sister-in-law, Francesca. Lucia stepped onto the sidewalk, holding hands with Nicoletta, the teen she'd taken in when the Ferraros had asked her. Lucia and Amo hadn't even hesitated. They'd lost their daughter to cancer when the child was three. Their son was murdered after coming home from serving in two wars and countless hot spots around the world, coming out of a theater with a date. Instead of being made bitter, the couple were closer than ever and truly wonderful human beings.