28. Michelangelo

Typhon made arrangements to have the paintings that had been acquired for the mission delivered to his villa in Tropea. Tomorrow, when I returned to the Sicilians’ compound, I’d have seventeen new masterpieces to paint. No doubt, they’d expect all to be completed by the end of the week—a physical impossibility.

The plan we’d put in place was for me to say I could paint no more than three, and thus, they’d move the artwork to another location, where the forger or forgers who’d created the pieces Penelope purchased could pick up my slack. I doubted very much that they’d put the two or more of us in a room together.

Chips that were too small to be seen by the naked eye and unable to be detected by any device other than the one recently developed in the States and given to MI6, were affixed to the originals so we could track them.

While arrests couldn’t be made yet, it would lead Tank and Blackjack to the artist or artists, so when the sting eventually came down, they could be taken into custody.

So far, we suspected the Sicilians had stolen priceless originals, arranged for them to be forged, then sold them at auction. We still had to prove all that, along with whether they owned or controlled the place where the pieces had been sold, and find their forgers.

We hoped the newly chipped artwork would lead us to where the authentic work was being stored. If we were successful, we’d add the same devices to the rest of the paintings.

After meeting all those objectives, we’d make contact with the Calabrians and let them do the dirty work of taking down their rival while, at the same time, digging their own hole.

As I’d explained to Pen, the financial losses the Sicilians would suffer would hit the crime family hard. If they’d used either the authentic pieces or the replicas for collateral to fund other illegal activities, then their creditors could make the situation all the more dire.

While all of this sounded good in theory, we had a problem I hadn’t figured out how to solve. Why would the Calabrians trust we wouldn’t do to them what we were asking them to do to the Sicilians?

It wasn’t as if Don Scaglione and I had a close personal relationship. It had taken a lot of Richard Emsworth’s money to get him to call off the hit on me. I wouldn’t have believed he had if Typhon hadn’t confirmed it.

What I needed was a compelling-enough reason—something for him to trust why I’d hand him the Sicilians on a metaphoric platter. But what?

I audibly sighed.

“Ditto,” said Typhon, sitting next to me in first class. “Trouble with Penelope?”

His question baffled me. “Not at all. I still haven’t come up with a reason for the Calabrians to trust me.”

“Yes, there’s that.” He scrubbed his face with his hand.

“Why did you ask about Pen?”

“Eliza and I are at odds.”

I hoped he left it at that. While Typhon had proved to be far more of a professional ally than I’d anticipated, I didn’t want to encourage a personal conversation.

“Fucking Saint,” he spat, turning his head away and shaking it. “I hate the bastard.”

“I see,” I said under my breath.

Several minutes passed before he spoke again. “Maximo de Rossi was in the States at the same time you were. Did he make contact?”

My eyes scrunched. “He did not. Why was he there?”

Typhon shrugged. “I hoped you knew.”

The question on the tip of my tongue was how and why Typhon was aware of Maximo’s travels.

Within three weeksof my return to Tropea, we’d discovered where the Sicilians were storing the stolen artwork and also found two of their forgers.

The duo was good, I’d give them that. Clearly, the elder of them was training his grandson to take over the “family business.” The sad part was that I could see the prodigy’s abilities. The still unidentified young man was twenty-five, the same age as me when I went to prison. Also like me, if he’d been allowed to let his talent develop in legal ways, he could be an exceptional artist. Based on his obvious skill, he might’ve been one of the greats—like Michelangelo. All the kid needed was a patron who would look the other way. That didn’t happen in this day and age, however.

Or did it? Hadn’t Doc done that for me? Sure, I could’ve served the rest of my sentence. If I had, I would’ve been thirty-one when I was released. Which meant Richard Emsworth would’ve been easier to get me to work for our “family business.”

But what of my art? No doubt, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue it. And while I couldn’t now, once this mission came to a conclusion, I intended to carve out whatever time I could to paint.

I already knew what my first series would be—my Butterfly.

First, though, I needed to finish this fucking mission. Typhon was working on discovering the identity of the grandfather as well as his grandson’s while Blackjack and Tank were following leads to prove if the auction house knew they were selling forged work or if it was Sicilian owned.

No one had come up with a viable enough reason for me to go to the Calabrians other than one that would perpetuate the mission for me—something I had no desire to do. The working plan was that Typhon—who’d well established his undercover role as contract enforcer—would get me an audience with Don Scaglione under the premise that I’d seen the writing on the wall as far as the Sicilians’ lack of business acumen. I’d then propose to run a similar operation for the Calabrians, for which I’d receive a share of the profits.

The problem with that plan was there was no way out for me that didn’t involve either my death or having to stay on the run. If it were the latter, Penelope’s life, along with anyone else close to me—my mother, father, and Tara primarily—would also be in constant danger.

I couldn’t trust or accept assurances that the coalition and MI6 would protect me or them, particularly after I’d spoken to Doc and Merrigan about it and they weren’t in favor any more than I was.

We’d agreed to formulate our own plan in the time it would take for the other objectives to be met.

The next time I heard from him, I was floored by what he’d sent. It was a message that had gone out to everyone involved in any capacity with K19 Security Solutions, asking for help in identifying a missing MI5 agent. Her name? DeDe Starkweather, the woman Pen and I had helped and who I now knew was staying at Butterfly Cottage on Fire Island.