Chapter 13 Massimo
MASSIMO
After speaking with Benedict, who’d wanted to reassure me that everything would still run smoothly at the institute, I headed outside.
Benedict was rattled and seemed particularly concerned that I would run off and tell my bosses.
Of course the man I’d used to get me in here was linked to the shadier side of Hallow Hall.
I could guess that there was nothing the good father wanted less than for their director to get cold feet and pull their funding.
Benedict was convinced that I was a representative of Centrium Group, here for training, and therefore would be reporting back on the happenings in Hallow Hall.
Outside, snow swirled in the air. The institute was outside the city, toward the mountains. The nearest city was Torino. I was grateful for the warm cassock when the crisp air of the graveyard hit me.
I walked over the gathered snow, my feet crunching on ice beneath. Ahead, I spied the familiar back of Katarina’s pet orderly rounding the corner of the building, holding something.
A rose?
By the time I found Alonso, he was deeply occupied. The young woman he had against the wall was small, even smaller than Katarina. She wore a nurse’s uniform, and the rose he’d been carrying was now gripped in her hand.
So, Alonso was even more pathetic than I’d thought he was.
How predictable.
I left the two lovebirds to it and retraced my steps past the front entrance.
I made for the gap that led to a clearing just beside the chapel. The place where I’d first set sight on Katarina. Shivering in the cold, ethereal, her long blond hair streaming over her shoulders, her eyes full of secrets . . . I didn’t think I’d ever forget the first time I saw her.
My little stray, feeding the strays. I went to the bowl that Katarina used for the resident feral cat and banged it on the wall. Then I grabbed the leftover ham roll I’d taken from the kitchen and tore it into pieces and dropped them in the bowl.
The cat came running at the sound. As he got closer, he purred loudly, encouraging me to feed him.
He went to eat enthusiastically while I stroked his knobbly back. He was thin, poor thing, but surviving. As soon as he finished, he rubbed himself over my legs. Thanking me.
I scratched him behind the ears. Animals were more honest than humans. I could trust animals, but trusting humans had never come easy.
Snowdrops poked through the white layer of snow on the ground, which was melting in patches.
A harbinger of the changing seasons. My mother had loved them so much.
There was an area beaten down by someone’s indifferent tread.
I reached out and pulled the flowers from the ground.
The tiny bunch was ridiculously inadequate in my hand.
Green and white, fresh and new . . . delicate, but strong enough to push through frozen ground.
“Oh! Shit,” a voice said.
I stood and turned. I was no longer alone. Resident charmer Alonso stood by the wall lighting up a smoke. I placed the snowdrops in my pocket and eyed him critically.
“That was quick,” I muttered.
Poor nurse. It had hardly been worth putting on her winter coat for.
“Sorry, Father, I didn’t know that anyone knew about this place, well . . . anyone else.”
I shrugged. “Katarina told me about it. I hope you don’t mind.”
His face betrayed his annoyance before he reined it in. “No, of course not. Katarina’s a nice girl. Kind to people.”
“Hmm, kind. Too kind for this place.”
“Yeah, she’s . . . great,” Alonso said wistfully.
“Isn’t she?” I said, slowly moving toward Alonso.
I could tell he was dumb as shit and had lived a cushy life, because he didn’t once seem to realize I had bad intentions.
“Yeah. She’s the only good thing about working in this place.”
“I’m sure your girlfriend wouldn’t be too happy to hear how much you admire her,” I added, lashing out and grabbing Alonso’s hand. I gave it a quick twist, locked the joint, and forced him to his knees.
He cried out, but the wind stole his voice away. I took his lit cigarette from his captured hand and drew a long drag, then flicked it away.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Alonso. I’ve got nothing against you.
You seem great—but Katarina Dmitrova doesn’t exist to you anymore.
You’re not going to talk to her, or look at her, or tell her your fake stories about your girlfriend.
Or the nurse you’re fucking. Hey, maybe there’s even more than one. ”
Alonso was quiet, so I twisted his wrist harder, and he cried out again.
“Now, if I find out you’ve been talking to Katarina or messing around with any other patient—you know, those young ones in there, pregnant and alone, only sixteen .
. . I find out that you’ve touched one of them, and it won’t end well for you, Alonso.
I can find out where you live, I can get to you no matter where you are.
Next time, I won’t just break the hand, I’ll take it with me when I go. ”
I let go and shoved him away. He fell onto the snow, sniveling with pain.
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” I tossed toward him, and leaned back against the wall of the chapel, taking my phone from my robes.
After Alonso finally fucked off, I dialed a number and waited for my IT guy to answer. She was a recent find, sister of my old commander, and there was no one with her skills out there, that I’d found, anyway.
Luckily for me, she’d offered to help me with tech support when I needed it.
“Don’t tell me! Let me guess . . . You’re undercover in a kindergarten class and need to know the words to ‘Baby Shark’?”
Giada O’Connor was always tickled pink by the situations I found myself in to reach marks.
“Guess again.”
“Okay . . . You’re posing as a top confectioner in a chocolate factory?”
“No.”
“Austrian goat herder?”
“Nope.”
“Come on, Massimo, give me a clue, then!”
“That’s Father Lucciano to you.”
“Wait, what? A priest? Send me a selfie. I have to see this. Can you cross the threshold of a church? Does the holy water evaporate before it hits you?”
“It sure does.”
“Nice. Okay, lay it on me. What do you need?”
“I want you to check a name for me. Two, actually. First one, Elena Dmitrova. Second is a company.”
“Wait.” Clacking came over the line as she typed the names. “And?”
“A business. Centrium Group. They do business in Torino.”
“Hmm, okay, let me poke into it. It’ll take me a second, because the internet at this hotel sucks.”
“You’re on vacation?”
“If you call a luxury shack in the woods a vacation, sure.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“He wants to roast something over the massive firepit he’s got going outside, so I don’t know . . . hunting? While I’m stuck here, wasting away without Wi-Fi.”
“Well, don’t die before you find out that info for me, okay?”
“Aw, shucks, how sweet. Your concern is touching. Speak to you later, L’Ombra.”
I hung up, my assassin moniker echoing around my head. The Shadow. It was a name that I’d been given pretty quickly after I left the Special Forces and went back to the real world.
I’d worked hard in those first few years, building that reputation, figuring out how to use the skills I’d honed.
Looking back, it was all a blur. The only thing that had felt real was the slow uncovering of my mother’s past. My abusive POS aunt and uncle had both passed, unfortunately, so torturing them for information would have been impossible.
Trying to find the hospital had also been a fucking dead end, despite having the logo of it, since the entire thing had burned down only a few months after my mother had died there. So the hospital was a dead end—and the asshole rapist former boss was dead.
Now Giada was nosing into the steel mill staff registry and taking her sweet time. Once she came back with something, my life would carry me away from here and back on the path to vengeance. The only thing I cared about.
Except that wasn’t quite true anymore. Now I had something new to care about.
Katarina Dmitrova and our contract.
A change, after so long.