18. Joao
18
JOAO
O nce again, I was so distracted by Stefi that I forgot to tell her that it wasn’t Sidorov’s men I killed in Zurich. And she hung up so abruptly that I didn’t get a chance to warn her to be careful.
I go into the chat room, hoping to find her there, but she doesn’t show up. I have to tell her, so I leave her a message outlining Antonio’s conversation with the Bratva boss.
It’s not Andrei Sidorov who is hunting you—it’s someone else. Valentina, our hacker, hasn’t been able to identify the team waiting for you in Zurich.
Which suggests that whoever hired them is extremely powerful.
Please be careful, little fox. Be cautious and paranoid, and double and triple-check any intel coming your way
Because it could be another trap.
I can’t sit still, my nerves are on edge. Stefi’s in danger and I need to find her urgently, before the person who’s after her succeeds in taking her out.
If only I knew what she was doing.
Cecelia d’Este’s file is the key to unlocking her motive; I’m sure of it. And although I’ve poured over the file until my eyes glazed over, I still haven’t figured it out.
I’m staring at my screen in frustration when Daniel knocks on my door. “I just got back into town,” he says. “It’s been one hell of a week, and I need a drink. Let’s go.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“Like I said, one hell of a week. Coming?”
“Sure, why not? It’s not like I’m getting anywhere staring at this fucking file. Detailed analytical work isn’t exactly my strong suit.”
“Why don’t you ask Valentina for help?”
I make a face. Daniel interprets my expression correctly. “Let me guess; I’m not the only person who warned you to stay away from your ex-wife?”
“The only people who haven’t weighed in are Leo and Rosa, who are on their honeymoon, and Dante, who is busy dealing with the fallout from the Spina Sacra affair.”
“Show me what you’ve got.”
I step aside so he can enter my house. “I thought you wanted a drink.”
“You have beer in your refrigerator, don’t you? That’ll work. Let’s see this file that has you stumped.”
“Thanks, Daniel.” The mafia lawyer has a mind like a steel trap. The data just looks like noise to me, but if there’s a pattern, Daniel will find it. I grab a couple of bottles of beer and lead the way to my study. “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why are you helping me? Aren’t you in the ‘She’s bad for you’ camp?”
“I’m reserving judgment until I meet her,” he replies. “Besides, my opinion doesn’t matter. You’re going to do whatever you’re going to do, irrespective of what I or anyone else thinks. And you’re determined to chase this woman.”
He settles himself on the couch in my office and cracks open his beer. Mimi saunters into the room and rubs herself against Daniel’s legs, and he picks her up and puts her next to him. “How are you doing, by the way?”
“I’ve been better.”
“No shit,” he says. “On the one hand, your ex-wife is still alive, and on the other, Henrik Bach is dead. It’s a lot to deal with all at once.”
This is the second time he’s called Stefi my ex-wife, and I fight the urge to punch him. “I thought you didn’t like talking about feelings.”
“Unfortunately, my therapist encourages me to do it, so I figure I’ll practice on you.” He lifts his beer to me. “Let’s drink to the death of that asshole.”
Stefi should be here. I should be toasting Henrik’s death with her, not with Daniel. We went through the wringer together and should be celebrating the end the same way. But to do that, I’d need to know where she is, and it’s not like she’s going to tell me.
“Burn in hell, you bastard,” I say, clinking my bottle against Daniel’s.
Bach made me kill my first man when I was thirteen. I didn’t want to do it. For a week, I resisted, but I wasn’t the first child he broke, and I hadn’t been the last. He didn’t hurt me—that would have been too easy. He tossed me into the pit and didn’t let me sleep for five days. By the time he pulled me out, I was cold, starved, and almost delirious. I would have done anything to end the torture.
Stefi held me afterward. I couldn’t talk about it, and she didn’t make me. We just clung to each other, and it was enough.
Daniel gives me a searching look. “You barely talk about Bach, but I have some idea what you went through. I have to ask: why didn’t you ever try to kill him? After what he did to you, nobody would have blamed you for taking him out.”
“I’m not saying the idea didn’t occur to me.” I gulp down the ice-cold beer. “And I would have if the opportunity presented itself. But I never went looking for him.”
“Why not?”
“What’s the point?” I ask bitterly. “If I killed him, someone else would take his place. Pavel Dachev has been not-so-patiently waiting in the wings, ready to pick up the reins. The supply of children is never going to dry up, Daniel. Like most of Bach’s trainees, I assume I was abducted from a refugee camp. My parents probably spent years looking for me, but nobody else would have cared. Nobody gives a shit about refugees. There are too many wars and too many displaced people. That’s how Bach got away with it, over and over again.”
I drain the rest of my beer. “In any case, he was already doing a pretty good job fucking up his empire on his own. He made one bad decision after another the last few years. He was going to fail—it was just a matter of time.”
Daniel is giving me a peculiar look. “I didn’t realize you kept track of his dealings.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Did you find out why your ex-wife tried to kidnap Alina?”
“She’s my wife, ” I bite out through gritted teeth. “Stop calling her my ex. We never got divorced. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still married.”
Daniel stares at me for a long time. “That’s how it is?”
“Yes,” I say flatly. “That’s exactly how it is.”
He whistles through his teeth. “The next few months are going to be interesting. ” He shakes his head. “So, did she tell you why she targeted Alina?”
“Yes.” I tell him what Stefi told me. “Her story checks out,” I finish. “Charlie is real, the stepfather is real, and she really killed him. She didn’t take the job for money—she was doing it to save the teenager.”
“And now you’re wondering if she also had a good reason for faking her own death.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Yes,” he replies, not trying to sugarcoat it. “Was she the first one to try to run?”
I shake my head. “No.” I try not to think about the others. Eren, Jonathan, Dalia, and Michaela. “Bach always sent bounty hunters after the runaways. Zaworski and Pavel Dachev—he was Henrik’s other bounty hunter—were well paid to find anyone who got away, but it wasn’t just the money. Both men got a sick pleasure from hunting us down. And when they were brought back to the compound, Bach would kill them.”
And he’d make us watch.
“If Stefania told you she wanted to get out, what would you have done?”
“Left with her,” I reply promptly. Stefi was the one bright, shining star in my life. I would have followed her to the end of the Earth.
“It’s harder for two people to stay hidden than one, isn’t it?”
“Am I being cross-examined, Daniel?”
“Are you avoiding answering my question, Joao?”
Touché. “Yes, it is.”
“Maybe that’s your answer. Maybe she was trying to keep you safe.”
I exhale in frustration. “Yes, but why? Why run at all and so suddenly? Escaping wasn’t on her radar—I know it wasn’t. She was still shaken up from what happened to her friend Michaela.”
“What happened to her friend?”
“Bach killed her. Stefi had to. . .” Michaela had begged for her life, but Bach wasn’t the merciful sort. He ordered us to gather in a circle, and he blew her brains out. Stefi had been close enough that her friend’s blood landed on her face. “The details don’t matter. What matters is that I’m sure she wasn’t planning to make a break for it.”
“Okay. Then it stands to reason that something happened to change her mind.”
I’d come to the same conclusion. “I don’t know what it is, though.” Only Stefi does, and she refuses to talk about it. So far, she’s shut down every attempt I’ve made to bring it up.
“I went to see Ali and Tomas,” I confess.
“And?”
“Tomas is furious. He thinks I’m making excuses for Stefi.”
Daniel looks unperturbed. “Give him time,” he advises. “Under his stoic facade, Tomas feels very deeply. Alina is the love of his life, and the kidnapping attempt freaked him out. He needs to believe she’s safe again. Until that happens, he’s not going to react well to anything you’re going to say.”
He gets up to get another beer. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s tackle this file. Give me your laptop?”
“Sure.” I hand it to him. “Here’s the problem I’m wrestling with. There are seventy-three folders here, one for each of Stefi’s supposed victims. However, she told me that the real number was thirty-five. I’m trying to narrow it down to the people she actually killed, but I’m getting nowhere.”
Daniel pulls a notepad from my desk. “Let’s start with what we know. We know who she was targeting in Zurich.”
“Varek Zaworski,” I growl. “He’s the one who hunted down Michaela and brought her back to Bach’s compound.”
He writes the name down on his pad. “Then there’s the guy she killed in Paris. Not the rapist stepfather, the guy she found in bed with the child. Do you know his name?”
I’d forgotten about him. I replay our conversation in my head. “No, but she said she broke into his apartment to take him out. Hang on, that’s not all. She gave me a timeframe. She said she killed her target three months ago.” Charlotte Bellegarde is French, and she’s a minor. Unless Stefi got her a new passport, she wouldn’t have been able to take her out of the country without alerting the authorities. Which means. . . “The guy she killed is in France.”
“Let’s find him.”
It takes us half an hour to get a name. “René Vannier,” I say aloud. “His name isn’t even in Stefi’s file, damn it.”
“Maybe because the murder was too recent.” Daniel has a frown on his face. “Why do I know his name?” He stares into space, then snaps his fingers. “That’s it. It was in a file Valentina put together on Henrik Bach.”
“Why does Valentina have a file on Henrik Bach?”
“Because of you, Joao,” he replies, not looking at me. “Obviously.”
Something doesn’t ring true about his explanation. Before I can call him on it, he continues, “Vannier was a retired prosecutor. A year ago, his department was going to bring up charges against Bach, but then he abruptly decided not to prosecute.”
“Henrik paid him off to look the other way.” I wish I were surprised.
“Money talks.” He writes Vannier’s name down on his notepad. “You know what this is looking like, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
A dark foreboding fills me. Stefi’s targeting Henrik Bach’s network. One by one, she’s taking out the people who worked for him and the people who shielded him from consequences. She’s killing everyone who stood by and watched as Henrik Bach took defenseless children and molded them into killers.
No matter how rich, powerful, and well-connected they are.
My heart starts to race.
This is a suicide mission.
And she used to call me reckless.
Stefi is on a dangerous, dangerous path. Now more than ever, I need to find her before she gets herself killed.