Chapter 11 #2
How long had he known? He’d just been waiting, making every second more dangerous? I thought of Angela, back in the safe house, guarded, yes, but not by me. Fuck.
Tonio’s head snapped up. “He paid for the right?”
Sal nodded. “Full transfer. Three million even, laundered through a Toronto shell. A French crew’s already here—landed last night at O’Hare. Professionals.”
Dante looked at the sheet, then at Sal. “Names?”
“They’re listed as Legault and Denis. Not their real names. We ran them against Marseille records. They specialize in taking people alive. No civilian casualties. Minimum noise.”
Marco sipped his coffee. “That’s new. Valenti usually hires locals.”
“Enzo doesn’t want this traced back,” Sal said. “The money went through two cuts. We only found it because Marco flagged a customs anomaly.”
Tonio, more to himself than anyone, said: “So they’ll watch for two days, get her pattern, and try to take her somewhere quiet.”
Sal said, “That’s what we think. They checked into a motel near the airport. Rented a white Dodge Caravan, not registered to any name we recognize.”
Dante finally sat. His face gave nothing, but his hands were tight on the edge of the table, the knuckles bone-white.
Marco broke the silence first. He was never one to let a conversation die on its feet, not when there was a solution to be had, even if it meant more blood. “So what do we do?” he said, twisting the ring on his finger, eyes darting between Sal and Dante. “We hit them now? Or set a trap?”
Sal didn’t hesitate. He had probably been rehearsing the answer the whole time, letting the rest of us play catch up.
“We let them make the first move,” he said, voice flat as the marble at the head of a tomb.
“It’s the only way we get them in one piece, maybe even get them talking.
If we move too soon, Enzo just hires another crew.
If we let it run, we catch them in the act, take them alive.
They’ll have the handoff instructions, maybe even a direct line to Enzo.
That’s our only shot to pull him out of hiding. ”
Wait. He was talking about using Angela as bait?
Dante didn’t even blink. He went from watching the window to watching Sal. “Risks?” he said, like he was asking about the weather.
“When they grab the girl, we stay on them,” Sal said.
“We don’t lose sight. We follow every step.
If we hit at the snatch, we lose the link—we get the shooters, but not the man who sent them.
But if we trail them, we get the chain, all the way up.
But—and this is important—the girl is never out of sight.
Not for a second.” He drilled me with his eyes, like he was daring me to argue.
I didn’t need to be dared. “No way.”
“You know this is the right play, fratello.”
“No fucking chance.”
“I swear,” Dante said, “we can do this without putting her in danger. We don’t tall her, we—”
“We have to tell her!” I said. I didn’t raise my voice, but it cut through the room anyway.
All three of them went still. Even Marco, who usually had a joke for moments like this, just leaned forward, watching my face like I was a bomb about to go off.
“She has a right to know,” I said again. I could feel my pulse in my throat and the back of my eyes. “I signed a contract with her. It says no games. Total honesty. If you make me stand in front of her and lie—”
Dante held up a hand. “Pietro.” It was a warning, and a plea, all at once.
“She’ll handle it,” I said, trying to hold the line. “She’s not weak—she’s survived worse than this. I have to tell her. That’s the deal. I can’t let her think that we’ve let her get taken without a plan.”
Sal’s mouth twitched, like he was holding back a frown.
“If you tell her, her behavior changes,” he said.
“She starts looking over her shoulder, checking exits, flinching. Her body language tells on her. That’s a risk we can’t take.
We need her to act like nothing’s changed.
Otherwise, the crew spooks, and we lose the window. ”
Tonio looked at me, worry clear in his eyes. “He’s not wrong, Pi. About the risk.” He hesitated, then added, “But neither are you.”
I waited, hoping someone would back me. Marco just shrugged, palms up, like he was saying, What do you want me to do? Dante’s face hadn’t moved a muscle.
“So she can’t know,” Dante said, not a question. “Not until it’s over.”
I hated this. All of it. The feeling of deciding someone’s fate while they were out of the room, the way the silence pressed down on my chest. I wanted to flip the table, call them all cowards, but I knew that wasn’t true.
They’d lived with this calculus their whole lives.
They were just better at pretending it didn’t cost them anything.
I shoved back from the table, the legs scraping across the floor so loud it made Marco flinch. “You’re using her as bait,” I said. “And you won’t even warn her. You’re making her a target and she doesn’t even get to know it.”
“We’re keeping her alive,” Sal said. Calm, unbothered, like he expected me to throw a punch and was sure he could take it. “And we’re saving the others. Other women, taken by these fucking monsters.”
I knew what he was doing. He was talking about Catania.
“Don’t use my past against me,” I warned. But the damage was already done. It as true—if we took this apart, we would be saving other women from being trafficked.
Dante looked at me, long and hard. I knew that look. It was the same look he gave the day our father died, the look that told you what had to happen and then dared you to argue. He said, “We do it.” And that was it. The gavel dropped.
Sal leaned back, folded his hands, and started detailing the plan.
“We run the full detail, keep eyes on every exit of every place she goes. There’s only one window, and it’s at the extraction point.
That’s the only chance we have to tag the Frenchmen to the pickup.
If we lose them, it’s over. Enzo goes back underground and tries again next month.
More women go missing. The misery continues. ”
I stared at the wood grain in front of me, jaw locked.
I replayed every second I’d spent with Angela in the last five days: the little cracks in her armor when she let herself laugh, the way she’d look away when she wanted something but didn’t want to ask, the shape of her fear when she woke up from a nightmare.
The thought of her out there, in the crosshairs, and me not able to warn her—it made my stomach go cold.
Tonio was the first to break. He said, “Are you good for this, Pi?” He meant it, too. He always did.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say I could do anything. But I couldn’t lie, not even to save face. I clenched my jaw and nodded, once.
Dante read my face with a tilt of his head, then gave a kind of final nod, like he was closing a file. “It’s only forty-eight hours,” he said. “You keep her close. After that, she’s clear. We all are.”
Marco leaned forward, voice low, a conspirator’s whisper. “Difference between now and before is us. She’s not alone. Not anymore.”
I felt the words, heavy and true.
Dante tapped the table once, final. “We go live at twenty-one hundred tonight. Pietro, you’re with the girl. Tonio, you’re roving. Sal, you coordinate with Santo on the tactical. Marco, get me the local PD’s comms so we can kill any outside noise. Nobody else needs to know.”
Tonio said, “Understood, boss.”
Sal just nodded.
Dante looked at me, the way he had when we were kids and he was about to tell you something that would change your life. He said, “Do what you have to do to keep her normal. After, you can tell her everything. But until this is over, she’s in the dark.”
He stood, straightened his cuffs, and turned for the door.
Marco waited until Dante was gone, then looked at me across the table. Just one second, the kind of look that says: You’re not alone, even if it feels like you are.
I closed the folder, ran my thumb along the edge, and watched the steam off my mug. I thought about her, how she’d look if I told her the truth now, how it would ruin everything we’d built in a week.
I told myself I could do it. For forty-eight hours, I could hold the line.
But I didn’t believe it.
It was supposed to be over. But my hand hovered over the folder, and the words clawed their way up before I could lock them down.
I said, “She’ll know, Dante.”
He didn’t turn. “Then make her believe you. You’ve lied before. Your brothers tell me you’re good at it.”
I stood. “No. I mean it. If she finds out after, she’ll never trust me again. You want me to run point, let me do it my way. Let me tell her.”
Dante’s back stayed to the window. “Absolutely not. The more people who know, the more risk. You want to help her, you keep her safe. You want to keep her, you do it my way. Or walk.”
“Don Arturo—” I started, and heard the edge in my voice, sharper than I’d meant.
Dante spun, slow, face like stone. “Don Arturo would have you skinned alive if you fucked this up. You know that.”
Tonio looked at the ceiling, jaw tight, but didn’t disagree.
I gripped the edge of the table, hard enough to feel the wood creak. “This is your call, Dante. Remember it.”
He nodded, and just like that, the argument was over. A finality settled in the air, like a gunshot in a closed room.
Marco looked at me, eyes softer than the rest. For a second, I thought he might say something—tell Dante to go easy, to let me have this one—but he didn’t. He just held the look, then turned it away, disappointment landing in the space between us like a dropped plate.
Assignments went out. Tonio was to run the exterior, shifts every three hours, nobody else.
Sal and Santo would coordinate tactical; Santo was already moving, probably armed and itching for a fight.
Marco had the finances—he could choke off every wire transfer in a hundred-mile radius, and he would.
Dante put on his coat, dark wool, cut like it belonged on a king. He looked at each of us, then paused at me.