Chapter 112
Niccolo
The Mansion
“Dario won’t listen to reason,” I said as I hung up the phone.
“Why, because he won’t leave Alessandra?” Sofia raised one eyebrow. “Would you leave me in a similar situation?”
“If I thought it would keep you safe – yes. Yes, I would.”
“Bullshit.”
I grinned. “You’re not helping.”
“If you wanted him to leave, then you should have sold him harder on protecting Alessandra, not on protecting himself.”
“Now you tell me,” I joked.
Sofia looked thoughtful. “Do you think Lucrezia planned the shooting in Piazza della Repubblica?”
“No. It feels improvised – chaotic. Besides, how could she know Dario would take Alessandra to the hospital? We didn’t until it happened.”
“Maybe they have a mole,” she suggested.
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, “don’t even joke about that.”
“It’s too bad you don’t have a mole in the Camorra.”
I froze as a memory floated up through my brain.
A summer evening seven years ago…
When my father was still alive, and we didn’t know yet that Dario would go to prison.
I was an apprentice consigliere at the time, and I’d sat in on a meeting between my uncle and a guy my age.
The boy’s father was a judge who’d taken our money, then refused to follow our orders during a murder trial.
Ordinarily, that was something Fausto would have him killed for.
Instead, my uncle had used that leverage to pressure the young man into working for him as a mole…
In Naples.
Until today, my memory of that meeting had been no more important than a dozen other times I’d watched my uncle ‘persuade’ a poor bastard to work for him as a mole. In fact, until Sofia’s comment, I’d forgotten all about it.
I could remember the guy’s face – he’d been young at the time, just like me –
But what was his name?
…Marcello?
“Actually… maybe we do,” I said to Sofia, and walked over to the desk in the corner of the room. I had put Fausto’s flip phone inside earlier when I gave the presentation on Cesare.
“‘Maybe we do’ what?” Sofia asked.
“Have a mole inside the Camorra.”
If only I could remember specific details from the meeting ten years ago… maybe I could decipher the vague text conversations…
Sofia snorted. “What are the odds?”
“Not good,” I said as I opened the desk drawer, “but – ”
I froze.
On the outside of the flip phone, on the LCD screen, there was a message:
1 New Text.
It was the first message the phone had received since I came into possession of it.
I opened the flip phone excitedly –
And saw a Florence telephone number and a text.
THEY’RE COMING.
GET OUT NOW.
I stared at the message.
The time stamp said 52 minutes ago.
“Niccolo?” Sofia asked, concern in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
I started to pick up the landline –
But then I heard a noise in the distance, outside the house.
It sounded like….
Helicopters.
Our cameras would pick up any threat on the ground…
But not from the sky.
SHIT.
“Let’s go,” I said to Sofia as I shoved the flip phone in my pocket.
She frowned. “Go where?”
The helicopters were getting closer.
“NOW!” I screamed.
I grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet, and ran as fast as I could for the door.
“Niccolo! What – ”
We burst into the foyer.
A foot soldier was standing right outside the parlor door.
“GET EVERYONE TO THE CENTER OF THE HOUSE, NOW!” I shouted at him as I dragged Sofia towards the safe room.
The foot soldier stood there in shock. “…sir?”
I glanced back at him to yell my instructions again –
When the parlor exploded.
The foot soldier flew twenty feet across the foyer in a blast of fire and debris –
And the shock wave knocked me and Sofia to the ground.