33. … and grief
“The journalist Giulia contacted did great work. Look at this.”
DeRossi throws a paper on the wooden and epoxy table in my high rise office, my name as the headline.
An innocent framed for murder, the incredible story of Andrea Capaldi
She did not go light on this one. My lips tilt up and I skim across the lines written in the biggest newspaper in the country. This is bigger than West Hill now.
All the verbatim is from Giulia and people I’ve worked with and helped over the years. Over the course of the next few weeks, I know Giulia will work with all the friends she has in high places to paint me in the best light. I don’t like being under the microscope as I deal with enemies, but so far, I’ve always evaded arrests for actual murders I perpetrated. No reason to change that. Getting cocky will get me arrested again, so Nico and I need to cover our tracks.
My phone rings and I pick it up without looking.
“I found her,” Pierce says by way of greeting.
My smile grows, the logistics of my revenge and Addams’s downfall falling into place like the perfect set of dominos. I dismiss Luca before asking, “Where?”
“Down South. She changed name, hair colour, even had plastic surgery on her face. She’s not the same person.”
“That would explain why we couldn’t find her for so long.”
Very few people have the skills and resources to pay someone that can fake a new social security number, birth certificate and all that shit with accuracy. Considering we’ve been looking for her for months, we’re fishing a fucking shark. Now with the face change on top? The violence within me trembles and writhes at the promise of retribution.
“Check where she got all her new papers, and find her plastic surgeon,” I tell Pierce.
“I don’t work for you, cugino.”
“It’s one less favour on the never ending list you owe me, bastardo.”
“Insult me again and I’ll make her disappear before you can get to her,” he threatens jokingly.
Our combined resources helped him find her, but I’ll have to admit that we weren’t able to do it without him. He’d hide her just to spite me if I push him too hard, yet I can’t resist our back and forth.
“It turns me on when you threaten me.”
“Fucking grow up, Andrea.” He hangs up and I smile.
He’ll never admit it, and I won’t either, but roasting my cousin alleviates stress like nothing else and this new dynamic between us, it just works. I pretend I hate him, he pretends back and then we still help each other.
Almost like brothers.
What I have with my brother is far different. Despite the darkness surrounding his soul, we both thrive on control and structure. He knows how I operate and I know how he does. We only add other people to our duo when necessary. Only a few men are close to us, like Marco or Luca DeRossi. And it wasn’t a ride in the park to add them to our trusted inner circle.
When I open my text app to tell him where I’m going, I see Giulia’s text.
GIULIA
Pierce and Jules found Louis. He’s not answering the phone. Nico and I are heading there.
Me
Be careful, guerrieritta. Pierce found the nanny. Down South. I’ll be in and out. I’ll see you tonight.
Iclose the text chain, text Nico, then immediately open Giulia’s again.
Me
Te amo, tesoro mio. heart emoji
I’m a lovesick fool.
I send her the address of where I’m going and the documents Pierce just forwarded. I want her to know every step of the way, my equal and partner in everything.
* * *
Jennie Alfred looks nothing like Serena Hogg. That was the point. Only if I look closer do the eyes of the woman asking for my coffee order match the picture of Serena.
She’s finishing her shift in an hour, so I take my drink and sit in one corner of the specialty coffee place she’s working at. It’s a shit job with shit hours, but she lives in a very nice flat downtown that doesn’t match her salary. Another stitch of the thread to unravel.
When she’s done, I follow her to her building. I know how this looks. It’s definitely not the best way to make her talk; she’s gonna be spooked but I don’t have the luxury of waiting anymore.
When I get to her floor, I knock on the door and wait in the softly lit hallway decorated with beige plush carpets and chequered grey wallpaper.
A chain prevents the door from opening fully, but gives enough for a pair of deep brown eyes to meet mine. “Miss Alfred, my name is Andrea Capaldi, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your previous employer.”
She frowns. “I only worked at Baked Beans for three months.”
“Not that employer. Mr. Addams?”
The light in her eyes flickers and dies and she pushes the door to close on my face. In the spur of the moment, I place my foot in the doorway and groan when the heavy door slams against the bones of my toes.
With a push of my shoulder on the frame, the chain breaks from the lock on the wall and the door gives way.
Jennie scatters and runs from one room to the other, throwing lamps and any object she seems to be able to get her hands on. And there aren’t that many of them. She enters what I believe might be her bedroom, but I’m right behind her.
She opens the drawer of her nightstand, and whirls around, a handgun lifted in her slender arms. With a tremble like that, she won’t do much damage, but she’s in fight or flight mode, in what she believes is a life or death situation, and that’s dangerous.
I immediately raise my hands and take a tentative step forward.
“Don’t move!” she yells.
“Miss Alfred, I’m not here to hurt you,” I say, placating.
“You banged open my door!”
Her voice is high pitched and she’s sweating, a drop forming at her temple.
“I’m just here to talk.”
“I don’t talk. I haven’t talked!” She’s yelling now, frantic and trembling.
I use the only element I have to get her to trust me. “Addams hurt my wife. I need your help,” I plead.
Her brow furrows, and she drops the gun marginally. Her defences are down and she’s sensitive to my plea. She probably wants to help people if she ever was a witness to violence. I don’t know what I expect her to say about Addams, but I’m preparing myself for anything, for the worst.
“How did you find me?” she asks.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time. It wasn’t easy, but I needed your help. I’ll help you disappear again if that’s what you want. Or protect you if you want to stay here.”
“He’s going to find me again.”
“Are you talking about Addams?”
She shakes her head. “He’s just a supplier.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask, coaxing her but keeping still, hands raised. Inside my head, the cogs are turning fast. That word, supplier, doesn’t fucking bode well.
“The devil,” she whispers.
“I don’t know what that means. Will you tell me your story?”
Suddenly, she drops the gun and crumples to the floor, exhaustion marring her soft features. She must be twenty at most. I take her gun and safely store it at the back of my dark jeans, before I help her up and walk her to her kitchen. She’s trembling so much, shivers racking her body that I set the kettle on the stove to get her a warm tea.
When she’s more settled, a cup of tea in her hand, she spills everything, and it’s worse than I thought.
Jennie started working for Addams a year ago, taking care of his two boys, who are five and nine years old. His wife was always absent and his gaze was always roving over her body, but she needed the money. One night, he invited her to join a private party with his friends while his wife stayed with the kids. The money he promised her was astronomical for a young woman weighted with student debt.
She went and served as a hostess for what anyone would call an orgy. Rich men drunk on power and booze, with girls and boys to attend their every need.
“Except the workers didn’t seem like they wanted to be there. And…” She hesitates, closing her eyes as if the memory is physically painful. “Some were beaten up pretty badly. I didn’t see much, but it gave me the creeps, and I never accepted another invitation.”
Unfortunately for Jennie, Addams took a liking to her and kept inviting her. She started to feel like someone was following her.
“It was like everywhere I went, there was a shadow. A nefarious one. And then one day, I was with the boys, ending my shift and Addams… he just knocked me down. I woke up in a weird warehouse with dozens of other people.”
Tears and sobs fill the silent space around us, and I wait patiently for her to continue when she feels strong enough.
Her tale freezes the air in my lungs but turns my blood to a boil. Rage seeps into my every pore and I hate that someone would do that to her, to anyone. Addams is going to die a very agonising death.
“When I was there, there was a man. He worked with The Devil but his eyes were haunted. He helped me and another boy and girl escape. I don’t know how, I just know that he gave us money, a car and papers and told us to leave and rebuild, but far away from each other.”
“Did you decide to have surgery to protect yourself?” I ask and she nods, touching her cheeks like she regrets every needle that has modified the shape of her face.
“Do you know his name? The man who helped you?”
“Igor. His name was Igor.”
Fuck.
So Igor is working against Misha while still being in his brother’s clutches. That could be very dangerous.
I leave Jennie and get back into my car, dialling my brother to ask him to pick Addams and set him up in the stables behind our property.
It goes to voicemail.
That has never happened. Not a single time since Nico got a phone at twelve years old. He is anal about answering the phone, especially if it’s from me or our mother.
I try again, the hackles rising at the back of my neck.
Voicemail again.
I try Giulia.
Voicemail.
Sounds around me echo like my head is in an aquarium tank. My vision has blurred and in the fog, all I see is her.
My point of no return registers.
Something’s wrong with my family.
The tracker app on my phone reveals her location. I never told her I put a tracker in her first wedding ring, the microchip hidden within the chiselled design of the band. I pray she keeps it on.
The red dot is at a standstill somewhere North of West Hill, in the middle of the woods.
“FUCK!”
I beat the steering wheel over and over again, but nothing helps with the violence coursing through my veins.
I call the airport closest to me and have a jet chartered for the next hour.
I need to get to my family.
Knowing I can trace her is only thing that prevents me from spiralling out of control but when I arrive at the airport and I see the red dot moving towards the East Coast while Nico’s blue dot from his medallion remains at Louis’s place, I grip the phone so hard my knuckles turn white.
Images of my brother’s body burnt to ash flashes in my mind, my beautiful wife taken captive by Addams or Misha or people like them, turning my blood to ice and slowing down time. This plane needs to take off right fucking now. I try to rush the staff, but there isn’t anything I can do but look as the red dot gets further and further away from the blue one on the screen.
I call the Security and Protection Department of my company, specialised in high profile surveillance. Most of the men in that team are ex-MI6 and military, trained for difficult missions and retrievals. They’re the same team we used when we rescued Lana from Misha’s hands back in September and I hold on to the hope that my wife isn’t with that monster right now, but I’m not sure of anything.
I hold on to the scenario where her ex is bringing her somewhere safe while Nico deals with the issue happening at Louis’s place. Maybe Addams showed up, following her, and found Nico instead of Giulia.
Hope is all I have right now.
She is my queen, my world, but my brother is my blood and right now, I’m only sure that she is alive and he might not. She’s valuable as merchandise, he’s a problem.
I take another deep breath in, picturing Giulia smiling at me to calm me down. It only works marginally.
By the time we land in West Hill, the protection team is in gear and ready to go. The drive to Louis’s property takes us thirty minutes of driving past the speed limit with a police siren on top of the van. Illegal as fuck, but it’s the least of the many illegal shit I’m about to do to get my brother and wife back to safety.
The van hasn’t stopped when I open the sliding door and jump out, running up the three stairs to the front porch and into the house. I stop dead in my tracks. It’s like entering my own cottage, but I don’t have time to feel the dread of realising the depth of Louis’s obsession.
My brother’s feet peek out from the corner of the corridor and I rush into the living area. A pool of blood spreads underneath his lifeless body, staining his dark clothes and his hair.
I fall into it, on my knees as I take in the bullet holes on my brother’s chest and stomach.
“No, no, no, no, no…” Over and over, I chant the word as if it will be the incantation that brings Nico back to life.
My hands tremble violently and my heart palpitates as I take his head and chest into my arms and clutch him to me. I start to rock back and forth, unaware of what my body does to help me come to terms with my brother’s death.