“Very well,” Eva said, ignoring the way Francesca waited as if she wanted to say more.
Francesca found Eva in her room later, packing.
Eva turned to her. “You think it is wrong that I still am going to America?”
The older woman smiled. “No. After all you still have an entire twenty-four hours to find Chiara.”
“I’m taking the ferry to Sicily to meet with Don Pedro. If our meeting runs late, I’m driving straight to the airport without returning home.”
“That makes sense,” Francesca said.
Eva was only bringing a small carry-on that lay open on her bed. She rolled up her standard uniform and put it in the small case: black leggings in lycra, wool, and leather; a pair of charcoal gray running shoes; five tight long sleeve tee-shirts; silk undergarments; socks.
She was wearing her knee-high boots and would carry onto the plane the huge fur coat that had once belonged to her mother. She didn’t need much. At the last minute, she threw in a pair of red-soled stiletto sandals and a little black dress. Her toiletry kit was small and compact, and she tucked that in and zipped up the gunmetal gray metal suitcase. Done.
Francesca was still standing in the doorway, which for a woman that efficient with her time, meant she had something to say.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said. “I didn’t realize you were still there. I was caught up in my thoughts. Frankly, I’m worried sick about Chiara.”
“I know,” Francesca said. She exhaled. “What shall we tell the girls?”
Eva closed her eyes for the briefest second and swallowed. “We cannot sugar coat it. They need to know the potential danger they are all in.”
She snapped the suitcase shut firmly. “We tell them what we know.”
“I think it needs to come from you,” Francesca, always wise, said.
“Yes.”
The women stood at attention before Eva and Francesca. Some were perspiring in the hot sun beating down on them.
Eva would not waste their time.
“Chiara was kidnapped on her morning break. We think someone overpowered her on a secluded beach and took her away in a boat.” Eva’s voice was steady, but there was an undercurrent of rage in it that she could not hide. “I’m leaving immediately for Sicily to meet with Don Pedro. If her captors are affiliated with any Mafioso family in Italy or Sicily, he will know. I will pay anything, any amount, to get her back safely.”
Eva purposefully avoided saying “do anything.”
She would do a whole hell of a lot to get the young woman back, even subjecting herself to danger or humiliation. And she would kill if she had to. But she would not give her own life. And she would not sacrifice the life of any of her other guerriere.
When she had called earlier, Don Pedro had vouched for her—for this one meeting only. He had ordered what was essentially a cease-fire for a period of twenty-four hours. That didn’t mean some rebel asshole wouldn’t kill her because he hadn’t heard about it or didn’t give a shit, but for the most part, Eva would be able to move in and out of Sicily safely for a very short period of time.
Don Pedro had told her once the time expired, all bets were off, and he could not hold anyone responsible if they fulfilled the hit.
“Fair enough,” Eva had told him.
With dozens of her women’s eyes on her, Eva drew her shoulders back. “I have been given twenty-four hours to move about Sicily unmolested. I plan to find Chiara and bring her back safely. In the meantime, I ask that you stay within the villa until this situation is resolved—for your own safety. We also are cutting external staff, only allowing a few select employees to come and go for the next few days or weeks, depending. Some of the classes you are taking may be delayed. Francesca has arranged for the other classes to be taught live online.”
Eva scanned the young women. A few of them seemed rattled by her words. Others were steeled by them.
“Thank you. I’ll let Francesca fill you in on the adjustments.”
Francesca stepped up and Eva turned toward the door. The clock was ticking.
11
The trigger had been pulled.
There was no going back now.
There would be a meeting, a confrontation. And only one of them would leave the encounter alive.
Sitting in his darkened house, he felt the sea breeze and inhaled the scent of jasmine and lemon. Life was good. He swirled the crystal glass before sipping the fine bourbon, relishing the feel of it burning his throat and warming his belly. He lifted a Louisx from the Tiffany ashtray and took a puff, savoring the taste of one of the finest cigars available to man.
Life was good, but it was going to get even better. He had a feeling that his destiny was to be the one who finally took down the Queen of Spades. But he also knew better than to try to predict the future.
The possibilities for future events was infinite. He was willing to die. It would be worth it. If his time had come, his greatest wish was to take her with him. That would make it all worth it. The vendetta would be fulfilled. His family name would remain one of honor, something that history could never tarnish.
The first step was well underway. It could not be undone.
Although he hated to admit it to himself, it had not been as satisfying as he’d hoped. He knew on some level that the ultimate satisfaction would be seeing incomprehension and pain on Eva Santella’s face.
But that would come with time.
While she was dealing with trying to find the girl, he would already be long gone, having moved on to stage two, which had only recently fallen into his lap with startling serendipity. That alone made him think his destiny was to live through all of this and bask in the glory of his success.
Time would tell.
Sitting in the darkness, he finished the last precious drops of his drink and smiled to himself.
12
Eva pulled her charcoal gray Range Rover onto the ferry at Villa San Giovanni, keeping the vehicle doors locked. The vehicle had been modified with both a bulletproof body and glass. In addition, it was outfitted with a roll bar and had all-wheel terrain so she could drive off road if necessary, something that might come in handy in the rolling and often difficult Sicilian and Southern Italian terrain.
The SUV had hidden compartments for an assortment of weapons: swords, daggers, handguns, an assault rifle, a shotgun, and ammo for all. It had a stainless-steel box containing food rations and medical supplies including samples of heavy-duty antibiotics, painkillers, and other drugs. There was even a kit with night vision goggles and binoculars inside.
The car also had cameras on the front and back with heat-seeking settings. She could flip a switch and it would show thermal images on the screen. Helpful at night if someone was hiding. She had the same app on her cell phone. The cameras would show, people, dogs, overheated electronics, and even vehicle engines that were still cooling down after they’d been parked.
Even though Don Pedro had “guaranteed” her safety, Eva decided to stay in her car during the ferry ride over. At one point, some young Italian mamma’s boy—with slicked back hair, gold chains, and a silk shirt unbuttoned to show a smooth, olive, hairless chest—approached her vehicle. He rapped on the window.
Eva, wearing huge dark sunglasses, took her time turning her head to look. She’d seen him contemplating an approach for the past ten minutes. She didn’t think he was dangerous. He wore white running shoes for Christ’s sake. But you could never be too careful in enemy territory.
He gestured for her to roll down her window.
Just in case he wasn’t just some hot-blooded horny man trying to hit on her or in case he recognized her and wanted to reap the reward on her head, she decided to send a clear message to him and anyone else on this ferry he might be with.
As he gave her what she was sure he thought of as a sexy smile, she didn’t react. Instead, keeping her gaze on him, she reached over to her passenger seat and pushed away a binder containing some paperwork she’d been reviewi
ng. Underneath was her compact, short-barrel AR 15. She waited for his gaze to clock the weapon. She could tell the minute he did because his bronzed skin drained of color. His Adam’s apple bobbed furiously. He could not walk away fast enough.
Soon the ferry docked at Messina Marittima.
When it was Eva’s turn to disembark, impatience flared up within her as she tried to navigate the main drag toward the highway, honking impatiently for people to get off the street and out of her way. The sooner she got out of the town where she was a sitting duck the better.
She passed young women prancing around in sexy dresses of orange and turquoise and pink. Older men and women all in black shuffled along on their way to the piazza for gossip and bocce ball. Children kicking balls and eating ice cream brought her to a crawl and made her smile. Finally, after much honking and gesturing, she was out of town and on the main highway leading toward Don Pedro’s secluded villa.
Once she’d cleared the town, she kept a careful eye on her rearview mirror to make sure nobody was tailing her. A small blue car was keeping a little too far back, slowing down as she eased up on the gas. Just to be safe, she gunned the engine, pressing the gas pedal to the floor as she hit a straight away and then barely slowed at the next curve. Confident that she’d momentarily lost the tail, she zipped down a small road and whipped a U-turn so she was facing the road before parking behind an enclave of trees. The road dead-ended at a small house, so it looked like a poor escape route.
Grabbing her binoculars, she saw the blue car come around the bend and slow. She held her breath, waiting to see if it would turn toward her.
As she’d hoped, it turned to the right where the road went for quite a ways and would appear to be a better escape route. It was not the first time she’d ditched a tail in exactly this manner, in this same spot.
Once the blue car took the small road as she had anticipated it would, it was game over. That road was extremely narrow with steep ditches on each side. Once a car turned down this way, there was no turning back unless the driver was an expert in driving in reverse without plunging off the narrow road into the ditch. Otherwise, the driver was committed to race to the very end of the road where there was a wide turn around.
It always gave Eva time to get away. As soon as the blue car had ventured down the road to the point where it would be very precarious and slow going to reverse its way out of it, Eva gunned her motor and zipped out of the small side road, her tires kicking up gravel as she peeled out onto the main road again. In her rearview mirror, she saw the brake lights on the blue car flash. Too late.
After that, the only other vehicle that tried to tail her was as she came up on a small village on the side of the road. There was a tan truck waiting that pulled out behind her as she passed. Too obvious. If these were the kinds of tactics the Mafioso was using to trap her, she wasn’t sure why she’d been in hiding for as long as she had been.
The tan truck stayed far enough behind her that it was easy for her to whip a U-turn at a wide spot in the road and go zooming past the truck in the opposite direction.
She saw two startled faces as she passed, and she laughed. Back at the small village, she pulled in with her car facing the road near an abandoned service station.
She leaped out, grabbing a shotgun out of the backseat and ran over to a clump of bushes on the opposite side of the road and about twenty yards from where her vehicle was parked. Crouched, she listened until she heard the sound of the wheezing van coming. She counted and then timed it so she could step out just as the truck was passing and shoot out the front tires and then the rear. She knew all eyes in the vehicle would be concentrating on her car—the decoy. And, by shooting out the tires on this side of the truck, she reduced the risk the truck would veer and take out her car. Her calculations were right. By the time the truck came to a stop in the ditch beyond her car, she was back inside and heading for the hills again.
While driving, Francesca rang. When Alicia and Noemi asked at the café, a man had run out the back. They had chased him and cornered him in an alley. He had grabbed Noemi and was trying to stab her when Alicia pulled out a pistol and shot him. Dead. They had left the body as a warning to anyone who tried to harm Eva’s soldiers.
Eva listened carefully and then said, “How is Alicia?”
“She is well,” Francesca said. “But she is getting drunk in the lounge area.”
“Good. Keep a close eye on her. And give her my personal number. Tell her I’m here if she needs to speak to someone about it before I return. And tell her, well done. That she saved Noemi’s life.”
Thirty minutes later, she pulled up to the guard shack at Don Pedro’s estate. A young man with a thick head of black hair stepped out and approached her car. He had a shoulder holster with a Beretta M9 9 millimeter and an AK-47 strung over his shoulder. Eva kept her head facing the gate but took the guard in with her peripheral vision. Her vehicle might be bulletproof, but she still wasn’t completely confident that an assault rifle at close range couldn’t shatter the windows or tear through the vehicle’s armored body.
She was counting on her attitude to keep him at bay. She yawned and pressed one of her Queen of Spades throwing cards against the driver’s side window. She kept her gaze, behind dark glasses, straight ahead. She wouldn’t bother to turn her head to look at this man who just a day before would probably have executed her on sight.
Don Pedro had promised her immunity, but she’d known Mafioso to go back on their words before. It was still a dangerous game she was playing. Now she was entering the enemy’s lair where anything could happen, and she would be powerless to fight it.
The only thing that had given her reassurance was the rumor that Don Pedro had some atrocious gambling debts he was hiding from his wife. Eva had promised to deposit $100,000 euro into his account once she was back safe in her villa. She hadn’t even flinched at the offer. She could not put a price on Chiara’s life. Or her own, for that matter.
Don Pedro had said he could only promise her safe passage into and out of Sicily. What happened after that was out of his control.
Her heart raced, but instead of raising a weapon the man retreated to the guard shack. After a few seconds, the gates swung open. She pulled inside and followed a winding drive that led her along a stretch of coastline and then finally dumped her at the foot of an imposing mansion with large pillars, balconies, and flowers everywhere. In the distance, behind the house, was a steep cliff leading to the sea.
For all of time, people had known there was safety in situating their homes on elevated land bordered by harsh terrain. Mafioso in Sicily never forgot this. In fact, Eva’s previous home there and her home now in Southern Italy were bought for that same reason.
Before her car was in park, Don Pedro and his wife emerged at the top of the steep stone steps, standing before massive oak doors. Don Pedro was a short, but extremely attractive man with flashing black eyes and silver-streaked hair cut short. He wore an exquisitely tailored black blazer and designer jeans above gleaming black dress shoes.
Eva took in the man’s wife, who was also dressed to impress.
Vaguely, Eva wondered if the two dressed this way even when they weren’t expecting visitors.
As she grew closer, Eva, who still wore her huge dark sunglasses, managed to surreptitiously examine the wife. She and Eva had never met. The petite blonde woman wore a tidy, petal-pink Chanel suit, pearls, and sky-high white pumps. Her pose was regal. She was the queen greeting a visiting dignitary. Or, rather, Eva thought, revising her assessment when she saw the look the woman gave her, a queen deigning to listen to the pleading of a local farm girl. Eva quickly hid her smile as she approached the couple.
“Don Pedro. AnnaMarie.”
If the woman was offended to have a strange woman call her by her first name she hid it well and responded in kind. “Eva.”
The two women smiled at one another. AnnaMarie’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. Eva sensed her rather than saw her. The woman
was like a coiled snake, powerful and possibly venomous.
Don Pedro was not gregarious, but he leaned in to kiss both Eva’s cheeks.
Despite herself, Eva couldn’t help but imagine him thrusting a dagger into her side as he did so. But he drew back harmlessly and took her arm.
“I hope you are hungry. When AnnaMarie heard you were our guest today, she arranged one of her usual feasts.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” the blonde said and shrugged elegantly. The two exchanged a look of affection.
Eva realized the two really cared for one another. It was a rare occurrence in the Mafiosa world where so many marriages were arranged to create alliances. Or sometimes marriages were for more common stereotypical reasons: Him for the sex. Her for the money.
But these two shared an obvious fondness, and Eva realized that the other woman’s aura of suspicion might come from one of two places. Either she hated Eva because she knew that, under any other circumstances, Eva would kill Don Pedro without flinching, or, she possibly viewed Eva as a threat.
Eva couldn’t dissuade her from the first fear, but she could ease the second one.
“Don Pedro, no wonder you’ve been hiding your wife. She is exquisite. You are a very lucky man.”
He chuckled. AnnaMarie silently studied her before turning toward the door.
The couple led Eva into a large room dominated by a metal spiral staircase leading to a loft. One wall was taken up by a massive bar with an ornate mirror and polished wood. The bar was filled as if it were in a fine restaurant—bottles of the best aged wines and spirits. Two walls of the room were completely glass. One had a huge sliding glass door open to the courtyard. Eva followed them outside. The backyard faced the sea beyond. An infinity pool looked like it spilled its turquoise blue waters over the edge into the sea a hundred feet below. The rest of the yard was bordered by steep, thick stucco walls. Off to one side was a massive vegetable garden.
The Suicide King Page 4
