Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen: Antonia
We move through the breach, Carmelo first, then me, then Matteo.
The courtyard is debris, chunks of concrete from the wall scattered across the asphalt, a Bonaccorso vehicle overturned near the gate, its windshield shattered.
Two soldiers are positioned at the gate, weapons aimed at the tree line, and they nod at Carmelo as we pass.
The tree line is a hundred meters beyond the wall. Dense, dark, the kind of overgrown perimeter that military planners hate because it provides cover for approaching forces and conceals withdrawal routes. Marco chose his assault position well.
Carmelo moves through the trees with a silence that shouldn't be possible for a man his size. He's twenty feet ahead, his gun in one hand, his knife in the other, clearing the path. I follow his route, stepping where he steps, moving when he moves.
Matteo is behind me. He's carrying the rifle he took, looking more comfortable holding it than he did before. His suit is dirty, the white shirt torn at the collar, blood on his cuffs that isn't his.
Three hundred meters in, Carmelo stops. Raises his fist. We stop.
He points through the trees.
Two vehicles, black SUVs, parked end-to-end in a small clearing.
Engines running. Six soldiers in a loose perimeter around the vehicles, armed, facing outward, covering the approaches.
And standing beside the lead vehicle with a radio in his hand and the particular posture of a man who is directing an operation from a safe distance, my father.
Six soldiers against Carmelo, Matteo, and me… and Marco.
The math isn't good, but logic has never been the point.
The point is that my father is standing a hundred meters away directing an assault on the compound where I just got married, and the assault has killed Bonaccorso soldiers, and the soldiers died because Marco decided his daughter's refusal to be bred was a declaration of war.
And that my life is worthless without my womb.
"Six guards," Carmelo says. "Two on the north approach, two south, two at the vehicles. The ones at the vehicles are close to Marco. Personal detail."
"Can you take the north pair?" I ask.
"Yes."
"I'll take south."
"That leaves the personal detail and Marco," Matteo says. "I'll—"
"You won't," I say. "Marco is mine. I need you to cover me when I move on the detail. Same thing you did in the corridor. Step out, draw attention, give me the seconds I need."
"The last time I drew attention, Carmelo told me I shoot wide."
"Then don't miss this time, take out the guards. My father won’t shoot me. Probably. I dunno, actually. He might."
Matteo looks at me. The expression on his face is the specific combination of frustration and wanting and grudging respect that defines every interaction between us.
He wants to argue. He wants to protect me.
He wants to tell me that walking into a guarded position to confront the most dangerous man in the Castillo organization is insane.
Instead, he checks the rifle's magazine and nods.
We move.
Carmelo disappears into the trees to the north. He makes no sound. One moment he's beside me and the next he's gone, absorbed into the darkness between the trunks.
I circle south. The two soldiers on the southern approach are thirty meters apart, covering the gap between two large oaks.
They're alert, professional, their weapons sweeping the tree line in steady arcs.
I recognize one of them. Fiero. He trained with me at the estate three years ago.
He's good with a rifle. He's slower with a knife.
I close the distance to twenty meters. Fifteen. The forest floor is soft from recent rain, and my boots make no sound on the wet leaves.
Ten meters.
Fiero turns. He sees me and the recognition hits, and his body does exactly what I predicted.
He hesitates. Not long. A second, maybe less.
His brain processing the information that the woman standing in the trees in a blood-stained wedding dress with two karambits is Marco's daughter, and that daughter is supposed to be inside the compound, not outside it, and the weapon in her hands is not pointed at the enemy, it's pointed at him.
A second is enough.
I close the gap in three strides, and the X-slash takes him across both forearms. He drops the rifle. I spin and drive my elbow into his jaw, and he goes down, unconscious and unable to hold a weapon. The second soldier turns at the noise, brings his gun up, and I throw Morte.
The karambit isn't designed to be thrown.
The curved blade doesn't fly true, doesn't rotate predictably, doesn't behave the way a throwing knife behaves, but from eight meters, thrown with the hip rotation Carmelo corrected, the blade catches the soldier in the shoulder, penetrating through the fabric and into the muscle.
He screams, his weapon drops, and I'm on him before the scream finishes, pulling Morte free and bringing Vita across his wrist. He lets go of everything and drops to his knees.
Gunfire from the north. Two shots, close together, then silence.
The personal detail at the vehicles reacts. Both soldiers spin toward the sounds, weapons up, and Matteo steps out from behind a tree at the edge of the clearing and fires three rounds.
He hits closer this time. The first round punches the near vehicle's windshield, the second hits the dirt at the soldier's feet, and the third catches one of them in the vest, staggering him backward.
Not a kill, but the distraction does what it needs to do.
Both soldiers redirect toward Matteo's position, and the three seconds they spend aiming at the wrong target are the three seconds I need to cross the clearing.
Matteo fires another round, catching him in the neck, an arc of blood spurting from the gash.
I reach the first guard and Vita opens a line across the back of his knee. He drops. The second guard turns and I'm inside his weapon's effective range, too close for the rifle to track, and Morte finds the gap between his vest and his belt. He folds.
Six soldiers down. Four wounded, two dealt with by Carmelo in whatever way Carmelo deals with things in the dark between trees.
Marco is standing beside the vehicle. The radio is still in his hand. His face hasn't changed. The calm is intact, the performance unbroken, and the man watching his daughter take apart his personal guard with two karambits doesn't flinch.
"Antonia," he says.
"Put the radio down."
He doesn't put the radio down. He raises it to his mouth. "All units, hold position. Stand down until further notice."
The radio crackles with confirmations. The Castillo soldiers, scattered through the trees, receiving the order, obeying. The assault stops. The gunfire stops. The operation that was tearing the compound apart ten minutes ago goes silent.
He sets the radio on the hood of the vehicle.
"You trained her well," Matteo says from behind me. He's emerged from the trees, rifle lowered, and Carmelo appears from the north side, silent, his knife bloody, his face blood-stained.
"I trained her too well," Marco says, looking at me. Those flat brown eyes that have never once looked at me with warmth or pride or the basic human recognition that the person standing in front of them is a daughter, not a weapon.
"Call them off," I say. "All of them. Pull every Castillo soldier off Bonaccorso territory. Now."
"I already did."
"Permanently. This is over, Marco. The war, the alliance, the Silent's arrangement, all of it.
You lost. Your soldiers are wounded or dead.
Your assault failed. Your daughter is standing in front of you in a wedding dress covered in the blood of men who followed your orders, and every one of those men was someone I trained with, someone I knew by name, and you sent them to kill the family I married into. On my wedding day."
"The Silent required—"
"I don't give a fuck what the Silent required.
The Silent is losing its power base. The Harrisons are dismantling it from inside.
The Replication Initiative's funding is cut.
The people you sold me to are collapsing, and you chose to go down with them instead of standing with your daughter. That was your choice. This is mine."
I step forward. Vita up. The blade at his throat, the tip resting against the skin below his jaw, and his eyes finally change, but not in fear, in recognition. He finally sees himself reflected back at him and he doesn’t like it.
"You're going to come with us," I say. "Back to the compound. And you're going to answer every question Leone asks about the Silent, the Replication Initiative, and the Binding Protocol. Everything you know, Marco. Every name, every connection, every deal you made in the last forty years."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll drag you. And the dragging will be less comfortable than the walking."
Marco looks at Vita against his throat, at Carmelo standing behind me with his bloody knife. Then his gaze swings to Matteo with the rifle, and finally he stares at the soldiers on the ground, his personal guard, dismantled by his own daughter in under a minute.
"You're making a mistake," he says.
"I've been making mistakes since the day I was born into your family. This isn't one of them."
Carmelo steps forward with zip ties. Marco doesn't resist. He lets himself be bound, wrists behind his back, and the image of him in zip ties with his daughter's karambit at his throat is the image that will define the end of his reign, whether anyone else ever sees it or not.
We walk him back through the trees. Carmelo in front, Matteo behind, me beside Marco with Vita in my hand and the blade pointed at his ribs.
The walk takes five minutes. Marco doesn't speak.
The trees thin and the wall appears and the breach in the eastern wall opens up and we walk through the gap into the courtyard.
The Bonaccorso soldiers at the gate see us coming and the look on their faces when they register that the woman in the wedding dress is escorting the enemy Don in zip ties is something I will remember for the rest of my life.
Leone is in the courtyard. He sees Marco and his face does the thing it does when the Don is processing information that requires a response he hasn't prepared. For the first time since I've known him, Leone Costa looks surprised.
"Antonia," he says. “I didn’t think you’d bring him alive.”
"Consider it a gift for officiating my wedding.” I push Marco forward. "He's going to talk. And if he doesn't, I will give him reasons."
Leone looks at Marco. Marco looks at Leone. Two Dons, one in zip ties, one covered in blood, and the power transfer is visible in the space between them.
"Get him inside," Leone says. "War room. Full security. Nobody in or out without my authorization."
Soldiers take Marco. He goes without fighting because fighting is pointless and Marco has always known when resistance serves him and when it doesn't. He walks into the building with Bonaccorso soldiers on either side and his hands bound behind his back and his daughter watching from the courtyard.
Matteo stands beside me. His hand finds the small of my back, warm through the torn dress.
"You captured a Don," he says. “Well done.”
"I captured my father. It’s not the same."
"You sure?"
I look at Marco disappearing into the building. The man who made me. The man who sold me. The man who sent soldiers to kill the family I chose on the day I finally chose them.
"Yeah," I say. "There is. A Don is a title. A father is a wound. And I'm done bleeding for him."
My chest twists. Despite all the bad blood between us, he was my father. Not a good one, not even an average one. I can count the number of times he’s said I love you on a snakes fingers. And yet… knowing that he will never walk out of this compound alive makes me feel some kind of way.
I’m just not sure what that feeling is yet.