Emily didn't want to go home, and Leo wasn't about to let her return alone.
So he brought her back to his place. Their relationship had been an open secret long before the war—Ricardo and Maria had always known.
While Maria took Emily to wash up, Ricardo noticed Leo's tense expression and couldn't help but ask,
"What happened?"
Leo lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. His voice was low:
"Dot is dead."
"Who?" Ricardo stood up in shock.
"Dot. That kind, simple fool. He was stabbed to death outside the movie theater."
Shock flickered across Ricardo's face, quickly replaced by anger, then finally dissolved into deep sorrow. His voice was hoarse:
"Who did it?"
"Bodyguards from the Brown Lumber Company."
Leo's answer made Ricardo glance instinctively toward the bathroom. Worry flashed in his eyes.
"Michael would never do such a thing. He loved Dot and Dolores," Ricardo murmured, but then his face changed drastically:
"Dot's dead, and it was Brown's men? The workers will riot. They've wanted to for a long time—the only reason they didn't was because I held them back.
I have to go to the police station—something big is going to happen at the lumberyard tomorrow."
Leo frowned. He caught a critical detail in Ricardo's words. In an age edging toward confrontation, Dot's death triggering a workers' uprising?
That was exactly what someone wanted.
He was certain Carlo wasn't the mastermind behind all of this.
Carlo didn't have the vision—or the brain. And no real conspirator would risk showing up to clean up their own mess.
Leo stopped Ricardo.
"Did you report it to the police when you couldn't get into the lumberyard? Did they do anything?
And you're no longer the union leader. What are you going to report as? A concerned citizen?"
Ricardo slumped back onto the couch, defeated.
"I don't understand… how did it come to this?"
Leo looked at the man he'd long seen as a surrogate father. He knew Ricardo wasn't the type to grasp the complexity behind such manipulations.
Patting Ricardo on the shoulder, Leo said,
"Take care of Emily for me. I'm not coming home tonight."
When he stepped out the door, Leo's gaze was resolute.
If he couldn't read the cards on the table, then he'd flip the whole damn table—at least then he'd know who was playing.
It was late. In a room at the Brown Lumber Company, Carlo had just arrived, his face stormy.
He had been thoroughly chewed out by Ben for the botched hit earlier that day. Three bodies left behind had forced Ben to make several unwanted concessions to cover things up.
"Johnny, your head full of cotton? Why didn't you use a gun?" Carlo snapped.
Johnny was equally irritated. He grumbled,
"Didn't you say we needed shock value? What's more shocking than someone bleeding out in public?"
Carlo clenched his fists, suppressing his fury. He had sacrificed his friend Dot to rise as Ben's proxy in Lynchburg.
Now he had to clean up the aftermath quickly—there was no time to argue.
"Where's Tony?" Carlo asked.
"He's around. What, you want to…?"
Johnny gestured a throat-cutting motion.
Carlo thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"Not here. That'd ruin morale. Send him out of town first, then deal with him."
Johnny nodded in agreement.
"Let's wait until the heat dies down. The whole town's looking for him."
"No need. Tomorrow will do. The police are already handled. Whether it's Tony or tomorrow's chaos, they won't interfere."
Johnny's eyes gleamed. If Carlo's backers could silence a town-wide scandal, their power was far greater than he'd imagined.
Carlo turned to Hassan, one of Johnny's men:
"Tomorrow, provoke them. Keep bringing up Dot. I know those workers—they won't be able to hold back. You've got our scapegoats?"
"Don't worry, boss. Two deadbeat gamblers from the next town over," Hassan said.
"Good. Push them to the front when the fighting starts. Once the workers take them down, you finish them off and send the signal.
The police will show. 'Workers riot, attack the factory, bodyguards die'—everyone will think they're starting a red revolution.
And no one will care about Dot anymore."
Carlo stood, pulled two stacks of cash from his pocket—twenty thousand dollars—and slapped them into Hassan's chest.
"Don't screw this up. You're my cousin—I don't want to bury you. Split this with the boys."
Then he and Johnny left by car.
What they didn't know was that beneath the window of the very room they'd been planning in, hidden in the shadows and camouflaged with grease paint, Leo had heard everything.
With keen hearing trained by war, Leo caught every word.
He now knew for certain: Carlo was not the true mastermind.
There was no way a local thug like Carlo could've bought off the entire police force.
He was just a pawn.
Leo resisted the urge to act. Killing Carlo would be easy. Finding who was behind him would be much harder.
Under cover of darkness, Leo slipped away from the lumberyard's core and crept into the timber storage yard.
Puffing out his cheeks, he let out a series of sharp bird calls.
Moments later, three figures emerged beside him—Joseph, Sean, and Daniel. They were his old comrades, summoned as soon as he'd left the house.
Desmond wasn't part of this operation. He had a strict rule: no killing. At the moment, he waited outside, holding the reins of their getaway cart.
The four quickly shared intel.
There were 19 gang members inside the yard. Three carried Thompson submachine guns, seven had M1911 pistols, and the rest held knives.
"Any sign of the killer?" Leo asked grimly.
Sean shook his head but offered a lead:
"There's a cutting shed to the east. Two guys with M1911s are standing guard, and there's a basement beneath them. My guess? The killer's in there."
"What about Michael? Where is he?" Leo pressed.
Daniel pointed to the only two-story building nearby. A single window glowed with light.
"Two men with Thompsons on the first floor," he said. "And two with pistols guarding the second-floor entrance."
He paused. "The rest are in another two-story building nearby, resting."
Leo mapped it all out in his mind, then issued orders without hesitation:
"Joseph, Daniel—you take out the ones in the rest area."
"Sean, you're with me. We're going into the main building. Our target is to extract Michael.
Move fast. Move silent. Leave no survivors.
Sweep the site. Janitor mode."
"Understood," the three responded in unison.