Chapter 109
Niccolo
The Mansion
As I paced back and forth in the parlor, Sofia sat at the chessboard. She was playing both white and black simultaneously.
“Stop it,” she said emotionlessly as she stared at the pieces. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You should be nervous!” I exclaimed. “Cesare Caproni is insane – and insane people are completely unpredictable! We have no idea what he’s going to do next!”
“What about Lucrezia? I thought she was the brains of the operation.”
I snorted. “Clearly, Cesare’s the one driving the bus right now.”
“So let’s figure out what he’s thinking,” she said as she made another move.
“I don’t think there’s any logic to it, unless he wants to draw us into a street fight.”
“Well, it worked, right?” she asked as she moved a white knight and took a black pawn. “Adriano and Massimo are on their way now.”
I stopped pacing and stood still for a moment.
If I wanted to know what they were going to do next –
Then the best place to start was what they’d already done.
“Why did he order the dress shop firebombed?” I said aloud.
“I think you mean, ‘Why did she order the dress shop firebombed.’”
I looked at her. “You’re right. Why did Lucrezia order the dress shop firebombed?”
“To kill Bianca and Lucia.”
“I think that was incidental.”
“Then what was the reason?”
I stared off into the distance. “We had no idea they were coming until they firebombed the shop. Lucrezia sacrificed the element of surprise – but why?”
Sofia’s face lit up –
And she touched one finger to a rook on the board. “…so we’d all go scurrying back to the castle.”
“Yes – yes!” I agreed. It made perfect sense. “We all went back to the fortress, which meant we were concentrated in one place. But that would suggest an attack on the castle, and that hasn’t happened.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” I admitted. “But then half of us left the castle. Do they know that? Are they watching us even now?”
“Possibly… but why not attack as Dario and Alessandra were leaving the property?”
“Maybe they were caught unawares,” I said. “Maybe they didn’t anticipate it. I mean, we didn’t know it was going to happen.”
“Then maybe the attack in Florence is about scaring everyone who left the castle… into going back to the castle.”
“Maybe…” I mused.
Sofia made another move on the board. “That was the one stupid thing about Fausto’s strategy. He never wanted to attack you here, the one place he knew you’d all be.”
“Because he didn’t want to destroy the house,” I explained. “He wanted it for himself, undamaged.”
“You think he wanted the house more than he wanted to kill you?”
“I think he wanted both, but… yes. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice the mansion.”
“Would the Camorra care about keeping your house intact?”
I looked at her with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“…no. No, they wouldn’t.”
I walked over to the desk, picked up the landline, and called the Observation Room – the hub where we monitored all 150 surveillance cameras on our property, 24 hours a day.
When the foot soldier on duty answered, I asked, “Have you seen anything unusual?”
“No, sir.”
Something was wrong.
It felt like the quiet before the storm.
“Let me know if you spot anything,” I ordered, then hung up.
I frowned at Sofia and said, “I don’t think the shooting is about scaring us back into hiding. But if that’s not the reason, then why do it?”
My wife started rearranging pieces on the board and staring at them in deep thought.
“Pincer movement… no, too far away to be effective,” she murmured to herself. “Fork… no…”
“A distraction would be the most obvious explanation,” I said.
Sofia looked up at me. “Maybe they do know where Dario is.”
“But Lars said that everything was peaceful at the hospital.”
“Didn’t they have a police escort, though? Maybe that’s why it’s peaceful.”
“Yes, but…”
I froze.
Suddenly, all the random pieces made sense.
“Oh my god,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone.