Chapter 42
Chapter Forty Two
Giovanni
The car settles as we idle. The street is one of those old-money loops where the houses sit back from the curb, and the trees line long drives. Russo’s place is just around the corner.
Antonio is behind the wheel, seat slid back, tablet angled low against his thigh to kill reflections.
Nico’s in the rear, right behind me, steady and calm.
I keep my eyes on the mirror that gives me a triangle of street and a slice of wrought-iron fence.
The glass shows nothing, which is what I want.
Antonio checks his watch. “Three warehouses are down,” he says, voice low. “Waiting on the all clear for the fourth.”
We sit in silence in a way only we can. No one tries to fill it with useless words. I breathe in through my nose, slowly, and hold it. Russo country smells like cut hedge and wet stone. I let the breath out and find the calm I need.
Warehouse four is the last piece we need. When it goes, we do too.
The tablet gives a dull buzz against Antonio’s leg. He glances down. “Four is down,” he says. “Team out clean.”
Nico leans into the space between the seats. “Are we sure he really falls for this?” he says quietly. Which, for Nico, is just his regular volume.
“He’ll fall,” I say, absolutely.
If there’s one thing Roberto is good at, it’s reading people. And planning their downfall.
Nico nods once, accepting it as truth.
Antonio lifts his eyes from the tablet. In the dark, they look flat and calm. “You both know the plan?” he asks, because it’s his job to ask. “You want it one more time?”
“No,” I respond curtly. “Have they come in yet?”
“Just a few more minutes.” His eyes are still glued to the tablet.
I roll my shoulders once against the seat and try to loosen the knot. I don’t let my mind wander to Bianca, what she’s been through. If I let my mind go there, I can’t do what I need to do.
A ping comes from Antonio’s tablet.
Antonio doesn’t look away from the screen. “Now.”
I’m already opening my door slowly, staying low. Nico is pulling bags out of the car and hands me one before hefting one onto his shoulders.
Antonio rounds the hood and falls in on my left, tablet gone, hands empty. He takes the third bag and straps it to his back.
The houses along this block are generous with their hedges and stingy with their lights.
We take the grass line where the sprinklers left a damp seam next to the cobbles.
Our shoes barely whisper. I count the steps to the corner I already walked a dozen times in my head.
We hold at the brick pillar at the corner and listen.
From here, Adriano’s place is visible: the top of a dormer; a slice of roof where the slate glints; iron fencing. Two guard shadows pass across a spill of warm light and then are gone. I watch the rhythm—forwards, vanish; backwards, reappear—and drop it into the same groove as my heartbeat.
The night is thick enough to hide us from prying eyes. Antonio is a half-step behind me and to the outside. Nico ranges tight to my other side, eyes on the periphery, hands loose.
At the next pillar, we stop and take a long look before moving again.
We don’t risk approaching the wall of Russo’s property just yet, but instead skirt the wall a couple of houses away.
We move two houses down before we angle toward the wall, keeping to the hedge-shadow. The iron runs shoulder-high here, brick pillars every ten yards, cameras set to warn off anyone who dares try to break in.
My head keeps trying to run ahead of my feet to where she is. I reel it back. I need the minutes it’ll take to locate her, and I won’t get them if we light the place up on entry.
As we walk soundly along the wall surrounding Russo’s property, I can’t help but focus on Bianca.
I don’t know exactly where she is on the property, and I need time to find her.
The service gate is ten yards off. I cut a look at Antonio. “Are we programmed in?”
“Yes,” he says, already sliding a glove fingertip over the panel’s edge to clear grit. “Don’t start.”
“If we trip the alarm, all of this goes to hell,” I tell him.
“We’re programmed,” he repeats, a thread of irritation that means he’s certain. “Roberto took warehouse two himself, put us in. We’re ghosts.”
“We need to stay that way,” Nico says quietly.
“He won’t be looking for three bodies through the side door,” Antonio says. “Not after the show we put on at the warehouses.”
“Doesn’t mean he isn’t armed for a siege,” I add. “They won’t hesitate to take us down.”
That’s the gist of it. Almost too simple. Adriano Russo sits on his throne, convinced the only winning play is to keep every piece inside his walls. He’s braced for trucks and men and a battering ram through the front. He isn’t watching for a small cut at the seam.
He thought the warehouse hits were decoys, but only three of them were.
I put my thumb on the glass and hold my breath. The light blinks green, and a soft internal release of the locks.
The fourth warehouse got us through the gate.
I ease the handle of the gate and feel the bolt slide back on a spring when we close it behind us.