Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

Angelo

"What?" I stop dead at the bottom of the staircase. "Roch?"

"Yes, sir. He's in bad shape, but he has a pulse."

I start walking again, my steps powered with urgency. "Where's he been shot?"

"In the stomach. I don't see any other wounds."

"Forget an ambulance. I'll send a chopper from Bastia. They'll need to operate, and they don't have a theater here."

"Yes, sir. You'll want to come and see this for yourself. There are bodies."

"Ours or theirs?"

"Theirs."

I gnash my teeth. "Who were they?"

"Marziale's men. They have the cross and dagger tattoo on their wrists."

"None of them has the tattoo on his hand?"

"No, sir. Marziale isn't one of them."

"Call in the cleanup team but tell them not to touch anything until I get there," I say under my breath, making sure the front staff don't hear me.

"Yes, sir."

"What about our men?"

"We don't know yet. There's no sign of them. The others just left to search the forest."

"I'll be there in half an hour," I say before hanging up.

The receptionist licks her lips in a nervous gesture as I stop at her desk.

"Give me the paperwork," I say. "I'll complete everything and drop it off later."

"I'm afraid?—"

"I don't have time for this."

She thrusts a file at me.

"If there's any change in my wife's condition, you call me. I'm keeping you personally responsible."

"My shift ends at ten," she calls after me as I walk through the doors.

My driver pulls up at the entrance. I get into the back of the car and just sit for a moment, thinking things through.

I sent Marziale a message when I eliminated his spy. His response was to retaliate by targeting my wife and the children living under my roof. He didn't care whether the kids lived or died. He paid those incompetent motherfuckers to do the job because the outcome didn't matter to him. All that mattered was Sabella. He wanted to hit me where he knew he'd cause the most damage. He would've taken his best men with him to fight the battle that truly counted. He knew my wife is my biggest weakness, and the only way he could know that is if Daisy told him. I made my feelings about Sabella crystal clear when I gatecrashed her wedding and dragged her off to Corsica. My tireless and violent pursuit of her is enough to tell anyone how much she means to me.

She's everything.

She's the reason I fight, live, and survive.

Like the rest of Sabella's family, Daisy was aware of the events that transpired in South Africa. Like everyone else familiar with our history, she knew Sabella was my obsession. Then she came to my house with her nose to the ground like a hound sniffing for blood and discovered Sabella and I didn't live together. When I rejected her proposal, she went to my uncles and saw her chance when she discovered they weren't loyal. I'm willing to bet every penny I own that's the call she made straight after walking through my door.

My uncles were already scheming to get rid of my wife. Knowing I'd kill them if they laid a finger on her, they needed to convince me to do it myself. That was why they paid Hugo to feed me false information. I already doubted Sabella. It wasn't difficult to manipulate me into believing the lie. They counted on me to put a bullet through her head. I made how much I cared about her as plain as day. They knew killing her would floor me like nothing else. They hoped to hit me when I was at my weakest and to cover it up as a police raid.

Only, I didn't kill Sabella. I never would. No matter what she did. My uncles needed someone else to take care of the task. Then Daisy showed up, and they saw their opportunity. So they made a deal with Marziale. They slipped him my wife's location. He'd go in and do the dirty work. With the help of his army, they'd get rid of me while my defenses were down.

Uncle Enzo knew. He knew what Sabella's fate would be. He could've easily stopped it. Yet all day, he didn't say a word. Why? Because he still hoped their plan would work out. He still believed Marziale would save the day and that Gianni would escape the death sentence I reserve for traitors.

Only, Marziale isn't a team player. He's a greedy bastard who works alone. That way, he doesn't have to divide the spoils. Too bad he got to Daisy before I did. Maybe Laura was aware of Daisy's plans. Maybe not. Either way, she was a witness. Collateral damage. He ordered his man to finish them quickly.

He wasn't so lenient with my wife. He wanted to give her a slow and violent death. It always sends a stronger message. He wants a fight? He picked the wrong fucking battlefield.

This isn't war.

It's going to be a massacre.

The feelings tearing me apart will have to wait. Survival comes first. Always. I have a responsibility to my wife and my family. I can't go back in time and fix the unspeakable deeds that can't be undone, but I can give Sabella vengeance.

"What's going on?" my uncle asks. "Your men refused to tell me anything."

Goddamn, I want to plant my fist in his face so badly. His mere presence is an offense. I want nothing more than to put a bullet in his brain, but I need him for the strategy I'm working out in my head.

"Who's in the hospital?" he asks. "Are you just going to keep me in the dark?"

I face him squarely. "Who gave Sabella's location to Marziale?"

He opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water.

"Was it you or Nico?"

I can't even bring myself to call him my uncle any longer. He's no family of mine. None of them are. Nico won't be buried, neither on the family plot nor in an unmarked grave in the city cemetery. No, his body is already shark food.

"Angelo," Enzo says, his tone beseeching.

My voice is harsh, every word measured. "Stop fucking saying my name."

He nods a couple of times, his gaze turning closed-off. "It was Nico."

I clench my hands hard, cracking my knuckles. "Did he give the information to Marziale himself?"

"I can't say for sure." He shrugs. "Nico said he'd take care of it."

"Then it was Nico or Toma."

"You have to understand. This is what your father wanted."

"That you stab me in the back?"

He doesn't reply.

"Do you know what they did to her?" I bite out.

He looks away.

I grab his face and turn it back to me. "I asked you a question."

"I didn't want to know the details," he says with his lips puffed out from the pressure of my fingers on his cheeks.

"Ignorance." My laugh is cold. "It's always the easy choice, isn't it?" I let him go with a shove and address the driver. "Give me a burner phone."

The driver takes one of the phones we keep handy from the glove compartment, switches it on, and hands it to me.

I take Enzo's arm, squeezing his wrist hard enough to make him flinch, and slap the phone on his palm. "Call Marziale. Tell him I'm coming for him. Tell him I called you and Nico and summoned your men. Tonight. At eight. His warehouses in Bastia."

Enzo stares at the phone.

"And tell him I'm bringing enough explosives to make the Sydney New Year fireworks look like Disneyland. I'm going to blow up all those drugs he stashed away, ready to be shipped in my containers via my routes. I'm going to cut every one of his men to pieces, and then I'm going to skin him alive and gut him like the slimy fucking fish he is. He'll watch his intestines spill from his fat, ugly stomach, and I'll watch him die while he tries to shove them back."

Enzo's breath catches.

"Say that." I take my gun and push the barrel against the rolls of fat on his side. "Repeat it fucking word for word."

A trickle of sweat runs down his temple as he types a number into the phone with a shaking hand.

Caressing his ribs with the gun, I say, "You better be convincing." My smile is mocking. "Try to sound normal if you can't pull a confident tone off."

"It's two-thirty in the morning."

I clench my jaw so hard is difficult to utter the words. "Say you just got news that my wife is dead."

He swallows. "Angelo?—"

"Just fucking do it," I snap.

He jumps.

A ringtone cuts into the space.

"Put the phone on speaker," I instruct.

Enzo wipes his brow as he complies.

The voice of a dead man comes over the line. That's what Marziale is to me. I dig the barrel into Enzo's flesh as he relays my message like I instructed. He does me proud, going as far as to say it'll be a good opportunity to set a trap and off me once and for all.

When he's done, I take the phone and tell the driver, "The new house."

Enzo shoots me an anxious glance. He must be certain Sabella is dead. What was the plan? That Gianni would sit quietly while Marziale attacked? Then hide out somewhere until I was dead? Unluckily for them, they didn't know I had the foresight to have them watched. What transpired with the men I stationed at the new house remains to be seen. The communication silence isn't a good sign. I expect the worst.

On the way, I throw the phone over the cliff into the sea.

"Sabella went to the village," I say matter-of-factly.

Enzo doesn't reply.

"You wanted to give her enough rope to hang herself," I say. "Is that why you didn't tell me? Is that why Toma and Gianni lied in their reports?"

His silence gives me my answer.

That's what I thought.

The closer we come to the house, the more volatile I get. My men wait outside in the garden, their breaths making white puffs in the darkness. The powerful beams of tactical flashlights cut through the forest and up into the velvet-black sky. The air has a distinct smell of gunpowder and smoke mixed with the fresh scent of pine needles.

"Come with me," I tell Enzo.

He blanches.

One of the men walks up to meet us. The slight shake of his head and the hard glint in his eyes as he juts his chin toward the forest tells me my men are dead.

The man guarding the front door nods when we reach him.

"In the kitchen," he says.

My ribcage constricts around my lungs, making it hard to breathe when I clamber over the broken door and enter. The lounge smells of her perfume. The whole house does. I always liked the way her presence seemed to have pulled into the very woodwork of the house. It feels permanent. I like to believe nothing will ever wash that smell away, not the bleach the men will soon be using or the stench of blood that reaches my nostrils when I step into the kitchen.

The furniture isn't disturbed. Nothing is broken except for the doors.

And my wife.

One of my men guards the back door. He stands in the doorframe, smoking a cigarette, which he puts out when he sees me.

I take it all in—the three bodies on the floor each with a bullet hole between the eyes. Only Roch can shoot like that. He hasn't lost his sniper's aim. I slide a gaze over a puddle of thick, sticky-black blood. The pool is intact. It's Roch's blood. I force myself to look at the floor where a struggle is painted in more blood. The picture is like a snow angel drawn in red. I force myself to imagine how that picture was made, to live the horror through Sabella's eyes, ears, and skin, and it's like a thousand white-hot pokers that skewer my heart.

Enzo gags behind me. I don't tell him to wait outside. He needs to see his work, what he did. I take my time, imprinting every detail in my mind. The broken pieces of a phone that lie next to the table catch my gaze.

I only turn to the guard when I've stored everything in my head so that the reminder can haunt me forever. "Did the chopper arrive?"

"Fifteen minutes ago, sir. They touched down in Bastia. We're waiting for an update from the hospital."

"Was he conscious?"

"Surprisingly, yes." The corner of his mouth lifts. "Roch has always been a tough bastard."

"What did he tell you?"

"He took out those guys." He spits on the ground. "He managed to take out the three of them before Marziale shot back, otherwise that piece of shit would've been dead too. Roch did wound the bastard though. Shot him in the shoulder."

"Did Roch say why he happened to be here?"

"He said Mrs. Russo called him on a phone he gave her. She didn't speak to him, but he could hear there was a fight, so he came. He told me you'd want to know. Said that he took his off-road motorbike from the village."

Roch lives in the village. He teaches at the local school. I kept tabs on him after dismissing him. You never know. Is that why Nico and Enzo were so insistent that I should've killed him? They understood that he was faithful and that he'd be loyal to the end?

How he gave Sabella a phone is a mystery. The only logical explanation is that he did it when Sabella went to the village, because my men would've told me if Roch came here. She somehow managed to slip away undetected. She went to a small town where the people despise my family and ended up making friends. Why else would all those people crowd the corridor in front of her hospital room?

The guard hands me a phone. "We found this in the dressing room."

I turn it over. It's the phone I gave her. I wake up the screen and press on the green button of the only dialable number. My number. A recording comes on, stating that the number doesn't exist.

Motherfucking bastards. I close my fingers around the phone until the edges dig into my palm. "Anything else I should know?"

"We checked the house. The other rooms are clear. They came in through the front and the back."

To block Sabella's only exits. My instruction is practical, omitting the emotions churning inside me. "Get this cleaned up and have the damage repaired."

"Yes, sir."

I go out via the back with Enzo in tow.

He grabs my arm. "Where is Gianni?"

I shake him off. "What was the deal? That Marziale would go in, assault my wife, and slip away while Gianni turned a blind eye?"

Guilt flashes across his face.

"Thought so," I say, my lips curling with disgust before a cruel smile curves them. "Did you think I wouldn't have my own men watching yours?"

He staggers, almost tripping backward over a rock.

That's right. What took place here happened because of his actions. Those men's lives are on his conscience.

He runs to keep up when I walk around the house to meet the men stationed at the perimeter of the yard.

"Is the coast clear?" I ask when I reach the team leader.

He hands me a torch. "Yes, sir. We scouted the forest in a five-kilometer radius. A couple of men are checking the farther perimeters as we speak."

Anger burns in my gut as I make the hike to the dense cover of the trees. Enzo half-runs and half-walks as fast as his slippers allow.

The first body lies just beyond the border of the pine trees. The farther we go, the bloodier the scenery gets. Both my and Enzo's men were taken by surprise. They didn't stand a chance. My men didn't know what was coming, and Enzo's men didn't expect an attack that wasn't part of the deal.

When my men spotted Marziale's gang, they must've opened fire. With me and most of my army on the tail of the kids' kidnappers, my men were vastly outnumbered here. Marziale didn't bother to distinguish between my and Enzo's men. He went in for the kill, eliminating everyone.

We take in the destruction and the waste of lives as we go deeper into the forest. My guards pinpointed the location of the bodies. Night reflectors attached to branches mark their positions. The infrared dots on the head torches of two armed men who stand in the dark foliage and knee-high ferns act like beacons.

Enzo jumps hurdles over fallen logs and shrubs, pushing the thorny branches of mulberry bushes away and shouting, "Gianni," as he fights his way from reflector to reflector.

In a small clearing, he sinks to his knees next to a body and lifts his face to the sky. A wail tears from his chest. He collapses on top of the corpse, shouting unintelligible words and phrases of denial.

I stop next to him. In the light of my torch, Gianni lies white and still, his lifeless eyes staring at the treetops.

"Gianni, my son," Enzo cries, rocking the body in his arms.

His suffering is palpable, but I feel nothing for him. He's already dead to me.

He raises a pale, tear-stricken face to look at me.

Yeah. That's what betrayal feels like.

The sorrow etched on his features turns into hatred. "Give me a gun. Let me come with you when you go after Mario." His expression becomes fierce. "Let me avenge my son's death."

I don't owe him a damn thing, but he has inside info on Marziale's operations. They met. They negotiated. He knows the fucker's warehouses. I still have a use for him. Plus, it's best to keep him alive in case Marziale calls.

Turning without a word, I go back to the car. Dawn will break over the mountain in a few hours, coloring the landscape in gold and shining with a soft yellow light on the new green pine needles. Spring is around the corner. The dead of winter is over. New growth is on the way. I grab that promise of nature, making it my own as I get into the car and instruct the driver to go home. The only place I want to be is at the hospital, but there are things that must be done.

The kids are still up when I arrive. Heidi tells me they refused to go to bed before seeing me. I take care of the difficult task of bringing them up to speed with Sabella's progress. I'm honest about the fact that she's still unconscious, but I only say that she's had an accident.

After assuring them that the doctor is taking good care of her, I tuck them in for a well-needed nap after their sleepless night, and then I go to my study to make a call I don't look forward to.

Ryan answers with a stiff greeting in a voice thick with sleep.

I don't mince my words. There's no time. "Sabella is in hospital. She's in a coma."

"What?" he exclaims, wide awake now. "What the fuck happened?"

"She was attacked. I'll organize flights for your family to come over. It'll be best to fly to Marseille. I'll have my skipper meet you there with my yacht."

"What do you mean she's been attacked?" he yells in my ear. "How? How could you let this happen?"

I rub my brow. "Her injuries are serious, but the doctor is positive about her recovery."

"This is your fault. You failed to protect my sister. Or maybe this is what you wanted. When I get my hands on you, I'll fuck you up so badly your friends won't recognize you."

"I'll email the details of your trip."

"Where is she? In which hospital?" Anger and blame lace his tone. "I want to talk to the doctor."

"I'll include the information in my email."

"You dragged her into this, you fucking piece of scum."

As there's nothing to argue, I hang up. I deserve those insults. I deserve much worse.

I take a minute to send instructions to a local travel agency before I email Ryan the name and number of the hospital where my wife lies unconscious, and then I prepare for a massacre.

A knock falls on my open study door as I'm strapping on my holster. I look up. Heidi stands in the doorframe, her face pulled into a mask of concern.

"How's Sabella?"

The question is code for, How is Sabella really doing? and not the watered-down version I gave the kids.

I holster my gun, keeping my voice level. "She's in a bad shape."

Her features harden. "Those bastards."

"I'm going after them. All of them."

Concern again. "You haven't slept a wink."

"My mind is focused. I just need another cup of coffee."

She crosses her arms. "Have you even eaten?"

Hunger is the last thing on my mind. My body doesn't feel a craving for food. The need for vengeance overrides such basic needs as nutrition. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is all the fuel I need.

"What happened, Angelo?"

She's in charge of the children's safety when I'm absent. She has to know. "Nico and Enzo betrayed me. They made a pact with Marziale." I grab a box of bullets from my drawer. "Gianni and Toma were in on the deal."

She untangles her arms and places a palm over her heart. "Marziale? No. Dear God. Are they…?"

"Dead? Nico, yes. Gianni was gunned down with the other men. Enzo, no. I still need him to give me insight into the layout of Marziale's warehouses."

She purses her lips. "Can you trust him?"

"He wants to avenge his son's death. He'll do what must be done to ensure Marziale pays, but do I trust him?" I slip the bullets into my pocket. "No."

"Be careful, Angelo," she says as I walk to the door. "She needs you."

I'm not sure she does, not after what she suffered because of me, but I'll be there for her regardless.

"Don't worry," I say, pushing past Heidi. "I have no intention of dying today." But if I do, it'll be for a good cause. I'll die happily if it means Sabella can move on a little easier.

While the men who were out all night eat, shower, and catch a few hours of sleep, the others are tasked with loading the weapons and staking out Marziale's warehouses in Bastia.

The drone pilot is already at work, filming the territory that Marziale claimed. Soon, I'll smoke that cockroach out of the woodwork. Wherever he's hiding, he'll come out to play. A greedy bastard like him isn't going to let the opportunity to take out the biggest crime lord in Corsica slip. No. He's too eager to fill my shoes.

I make sure enough men guard the house and that the alarms are set before I get into my car and take the road to Bastia. An SUV with two men follows.

On the way, I dial the hospital. The nurse I speak to tells me there's no change. Sabella is stable but unconscious. The news fills me with both calm and dread. Sabella's condition isn't turning for the worst, but it's not getting better either.

I put a man in charge of babysitting Enzo, making sure he doesn't get his hands on a phone. No one alerted Toma to the turn of events. For all he knows, everything went according to plan, and I'm as good as dead. He probably thinks his father and his uncle are sleeping soundly in their beds, fucking their whores, and that I returned from Marseille to find my wife raped and killed in the house to which I banished her.

He must imagine me weak and going out of my mind, an easy target. He can't know that Enzo's informant spilled the beans before I shot his dick off and left him to bleed out or that Roch showed up and saved Sabella's life. He's not privy to the fact that Marziale is currently hiding with a bullet wound in his shoulder. No, he's sitting comfortably at home, waiting for Marziale to take care of the dirty work.

My assumptions are confirmed when I fit my gloves and kick down Toma's apartment door. He sits naked on the sofa with the girl from the previous time splayed out on her back next to him. Judging by the lines of coke cut on the table and the two glasses of champagne standing next to the half-empty bottle, they're celebrating. The premature smugness vanishes from his face as he looks at the gun I'm pointing at him.

"Angelo." He utters an uncomfortable laugh. "You're making a habit of showing up at the most inconvenient times."

The girl's face is turned to the side. She stares at me with glassy eyes, but I doubt she sees anything. A pile of vomit lies next to her on the carpet, confirming the source of the sour smell in the air. Pieces of partly digested food are encrusted in her hair, and traces of bile have dried in the corner of her slack mouth.

I keep the gun trained on him. "She looks like she's ODing."

"Yeah, well, I told her to go slow on the candy."

"Celebrating something?" I ask with a cold smile.

He measures me. "Just starting the weekend early. What's up?"

I kick the coffee table out of the way, sending glasses and ashtrays flying. The bottle hits the floor with a thud and sprays a circle of champagne around the room as it spins on the tiles. Toma leans away from me, flattening himself against the backrest of the sofa. The girl doesn't as much as blink.

I climb over the mess and kick his feet apart.

He raises his hands. "Ange?—"

Pop.

The silencer dampens the sound of the shot I fire, but there's nothing to be done about the howl that splits the sky as he slides to the edge of the sofa and slumps into a heap, cupping his groin where I shot off his nut.

Blood pisses through his fingers. Splatters cover the face of the girl who's still lying like a naked corpse.

"You were saying?" I ask, pushing the barrel against his temple.

"It wasn't me," he screams through a mixture of tears and snot that runs into his mouth. "It was my father's idea. I swear it." He breaks out into a violent shiver. "I-I was against it. I s-swear. I told him n-not to hurt Sabella."

The name alone on his lips does it.

Pop.

Brain matter and blood explode from the side of his head. His body falls sideways.

One more down, a few left to go.

I turn to the woman and feel her pulse.

Nothing.

Just like me. I feel nothing.

I leave the gun on the floor. I took it from one of Marziale's dead men. His prints will be all over it. Then I step over the blood and walk to the door.

"Neighbors?" I ask my man who stands in the hallway.

He shakes his head. "They're too scared to come out." He tilts his head to the door. "They know who he is." Correcting himself, he says, "Who he was."

"Let's go."

"Cleanup?" he asks.

"No." I take the fire exit. "Let the cops have this one."

My next stop is at the hospital.

The men in front of Sabella's room greet me with nods. They'll change shifts in a couple of hours. I want the soldiers who guard her fresh and vigilant.

A few people sit on the chairs in the corridor, reading or checking their phones. I recognize one or two from last night. They move their feet out of the way to let me pass.

"Any change?" I ask the woman who sits at the nurse's station on the first floor.

"No," she says, giving me a small smile.

I push the door open and go inside. She's right. Sabella looks exactly like she did six hours ago. The room is different though. A huge bouquet of pink flowers stands on the trolley at the foot-end of the bed, and a giant get-well balloon floats against the ceiling. Boxes of chocolates and candy are stacked on the nightstand. My wife is popular in town. She looks well-loved.

I take her hand and press it against my heart. "I'll make them pay, bella. I promise you that. Nothing will ever happen to you again."

I seal the oath with a kiss on her forehead, and then I leave to fight a war someone else started but that I have every intention of finishing.