Chapter 25 #3
“Who? Luca, what are you talking about.”
“She didn’t know,” Victor whispers.
Or maybe she’s just that good at lying about it. I’m not sure of anything anymore. Either way, I’m like a dog with a bone now, and I just got a taste of a fleshier part. I need more.
“Stefano is alive,” I tell her. “That’s who’s staying in the Mayfair house, Caroline. My fucking brother.”
“Are you insane?” she manages, downright shaken to the core.
Victor steps between us, determined to be a voice of reason and clarity. I feel like the world’s biggest idiot. It’s not a sentiment I’m accustomed to. I’m always two steps ahead of everyone and everything.
Yet this thing with my brother has turned me upside down and inside out at the same time.
“I have no idea what to say to any of this. What do you mean Stefano is alive?” Caroline insists with her innocence.
And I’m somehow inclined to believe her.
“We had our suspicions after the ballroom massacre,” Victor explains. “Long story short, the crew who hit our operation and the charity event had inside information, the kind of information only a few people had, including Stefano.”
“But Stefano’s dead. He was blown up. Dad practically cracked open a fucking champagne bottle that night when he got the news!”
I growl and shake my head slowly. “I couldn’t believe it either. But Victor looked into it. I thought he was fucking crazy. Even when we were posted outside the Mayfair house, I kept telling myself it’s insane, it can’t be…”
“Did you see him, Luca? Did you see Stefano?” Caroline asks.
“You’re damn right I fucking did. So I’m going to ask you again, one last time. Did. You. Know?”
“God, no,” she says and gets off the bed.
She slips her feet into a pair of plush slippers and uses a wet wipe to clean her face from whatever oily substance was being used prior to my rude interruption.
She takes a few deep breaths, pacing around the bed as she gathers her thoughts. “How is it even possible?”
“The chief medical examiner already corrected his colleague’s report.
The body they initially thought was Stefano’s isn’t,” I say.
“We’re still looking into the details of how it all happened, but our guess is that someone snuck Stefano out of the back room during a private dance session.
Someone else took his place at the front of the party and got blown up in his stead. ”
“Oh, my God,” Caroline gasps, leaning against the bed. She’s as pale as a sheet of paper, and I’m running out of reasons to doubt that her shock is anything but genuine. “Luca, why… I mean… why would Stefano… why would he do something like this?”
“I would’ve suggested that maybe he got tired of the life, maybe he was afraid of your father,” I reply. “Reasons to disappear I could find. But reasons to hide out in one of Mancuso’s mansions…”
“I swear to you on my mother’s grave, Luca, I had no idea. No wonder my father’s been so secretive about that place,” she says. “If he’s keeping Stefano there, he must have a reason, something… I don’t know.”
“He could be keeping Stefano hostage,” Victor suggests.
We haven’t really had time to discuss the possibilities. I had to leave before I compromised the entire operation, since I promised Victor and Caroline I wouldn’t take any action in Mayfair until I knew what was happening there.
“He could be squeezing him dry for information against you.”
Caroline is inclined to agree with Victor’s theory. I want to agree, too, but certain details don’t make enough sense. “It must be how he knew about your truck transports, the repercussions of hitting the ballroom that night, sabotaging the Camorra’s vote in his favor.”
“He wasn’t strapped to a chair or anything,” I say. “It looked to me like he had free range.”
“My father has different methods of getting information out of his targets,” Caroline says. “He doesn’t always resort to brutality and physical violence. Sometimes, he goes down the psychological road: imprisonment, negotiation, blackmail, coercion. That man has many ways to get what he wants.”
I believe her. Because believing that my brother would willingly betray our family is simply too outlandish, too nonsensical. Something is going on there, something darker beneath the surface. And I need Caroline to get me more information.
“You have to get your father to tell you more,” I say to her, “one way or another.”
“I agree,” she nods feverishly. “But I have to be careful how I approach this. One wrong move, and your brother might die—this time for real. I don’t know what my father is planning, but I do know he must have a lot riding on this, hence the secrecy.”
“Caroline, we cannot sit idly by in this instance,” Victor warns her. “We have to assemble a crew and extract Stefano from that place.”
Again, she nods. “Of course, just give me forty-eight hours. Two days, gentlemen. It’s all I ask. I’ll figure something out with as little collateral damage as possible. We have to be careful if we want to get Stefano back to your family alive and in one piece.”