30. Stefi
30
STEFI
“ Y ou think Antonio Moretti has been funding Bach?” Joao’s expression sharpens as he works it out. “Is that why you don’t want to go to Venice? You think Antonio’s figured out what you’re doing, that he knows you’re after him, and if you enter his city, he will kill you.”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head instantly. “That’s impossible.”
I can tell by the tone in his voice that he doesn’t believe me. My stomach sinks. It was always a possibility that this was going to happen, but even though I should have been prepared for his reaction, I’m not. His reaction feels like a knife twisting in my gut.
How do I convince Joao if he’s not ready to listen to what I have to say? But I have to try. If the last twenty-four hours have shown me anything, it’s that I want Joao in my life again. I’m not willing to let him go without a fight.
“Would you bet your life on it?” I ask him. “Would you bet mine? ”
He starts to reply and then closes his mouth. I finish stitching his wound, but he doesn’t make any effort to take his hand back from mine.
“I have proof of Moretti’s financial involvement,” I continue. “Every year for the last five years, he’s transferred three million euros into Bach’s Swiss bank account. He made an effort to hide what he’s doing—the transactions are run through dozens of shell companies—but it’s him. I know you don’t want to listen to me, Joao, but this is real. I have evidence of his guilt.”
“How did you find out?” he asks skeptically. “Did you get this information from the same source who told you about Zaworski’s party?”
“Yes, it was Q,” I retort, stung by his obvious implication that my informant has sold me out. “They’re reliable, and their intel is the best there is. I know you don’t believe it, but the leak is not on my end. It can’t be.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” he asks pointedly. “Would you bet mine? ”
“I hate when you throw my own words back at me,” I grumble. “Really hate it.” I take a deep breath and think about how else I’m going to convince Joao about Moretti’s guilt. “How did you discover I was taking out Bach’s network?”
He frowns. “Daniel helped me figure it out. He was the one who saw the pattern, not me.”
His voice trails off thoughtfully, and something flickers over his face. Doubt?
“What is it?” I demand. “What did you just remember?”
“Daniel was familiar with one of your targets,” he says slowly. “René Vannier. He said that he recognized Vannier’s name from a file on Bach that Valentina, our hacker, had compiled when I first joined the organization. But. . .”
“But what?”
“But I joined five years ago, and Bach didn’t bribe Vannier until?—”
“Last year. Why would your hacker bother to keep an eye on Henrik Bach when she must have so many other threats to track?” My heart sinks. As convinced as I was that Moretti was part of Bach’s network, I didn’t want to do this to Joao. I wanted there to be a loophole, damn it.
“There’s more.” Joao looks upset. “I asked Daniel why Valentina would have a file on Bach, and he changed the topic almost immediately. I could have sworn he was hiding something.” He leans back against the wall, his eyes clenched shut. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he says at last. “If your intel is right, then yes, Antonio looks guilty. But I know the man. I’ve worked with him for five years, Stef. I’ve eaten at his house. His housekeeper watches my cat when I travel. I know who he is, and Bach is the last person he’d work with.”
He exhales in a long breath. “When Antonio was younger, the Venice Mafia was run by a man named Domenico Cartozzi. This was before my time, but I’ve heard the stories. Cartozzi was erratic. Violent. He’d be smiling one moment and swinging at someone with a machete the next. When Antonio killed him and took over, he swore to make a better organization. Bach is too much like Cartozzi, don’t you see? Antonio would never ally himself with someone like that.”
“Maybe you don’t know what motivates him as well as you think you do. Or maybe Moretti thought that as long as Bach stayed away from Venice, there was no harm working with him.”
“That doesn’t track,” Joao responds immediately. “I’m the organization’s assassin. Do you know how many times I’ve been asked to kill in the last five years? Less than a dozen.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he holds up his hand. “Don’t get me wrong. Antonio is ruthless when he needs to be. You don’t rise to be the head of the mafia without a willingness to do what needs to be done. But Antonio doesn’t relish murder, Stef, not the way Henrik did. He’ll only kill if he has no other alternative. I’m so underused that I’ve started managing his smuggling operations just so that I’m not bored out of my mind.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. If you tell me you’re absolutely sure about the money and the shell companies and the Swiss bank account, I’ll accept that. But you’re asking me to discredit five years of knowing him, and I can’t do that. What if you’re missing something? What if your intel is faulty, or what if the person giving it to you has ulterior motives? It’s not as if you can trust them after what happened at Zaworski’s birthd?—”
“We’re back to this,” I say in frustration. We’re talking in circles and getting nowhere, but I have to keep trying. “You think the leak is at my end. You think Q sold me out to the gunmen.”
“They knew you were going to be at Varek’s party,” he says stubbornly.
“And so did your friend Daniel. Maybe he ran to Moretti as soon as he figured out that I was going to go after Zaworski. And then Moretti sent the gunmen.”
“It’s a good theory, except for two things. First, I didn’t tell Daniel about Zaworski’s birthday party. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“You didn’t need to. Don’t you think your phone has a tracker on it?”
He nods. “Fair enough. But I said there were two things. The second one is this. The gunmen didn’t know who they were looking for. They were checking IDs, looking for a fake. Antonio doesn’t need to do that. He has a photo of you. Yes, your hair was a different color in that picture, and so were your eyes, but even so. Those guys didn’t even know they were looking for a woman.”
Okay, he has a point there.
For the first time, a little worm of doubt rears its head in the back of my mind. Could Q have betrayed me, and if so, why? I’m not fooling myself that they have any loyalty to me, but they’ve been a valuable informant for almost seven years, and they’ve helped me take down most of Bach’s network. Why would they flip on me, and why now?
“So, no,” Joao continues. “I don’t think that Antonio asked me to bring you back to Venice so that he could kill you. I don’t know what’s going on with the money trail, but I know this. Antonio gave me his word that he would protect you if you came to Venice, and the man I know does not break his promises. He does not stab people in the back.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith in him,” I say softly, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “So much loyalty. Is he worth it?”
He stares into my eyes. “This isn’t a question of loyalty and what I owe the padrino,” he says. “If I believed Antonio was a threat, I would attack because my loyalty to you is far, far greater than anything I owe him. If it comes down to a choice, I will always choose you. But. . .”
“But what?”
“But you’re asking me to ignore my intuition, little fox.”
And his intuition has kept him alive more times than I can count. I’m the one who is all about detailed analysis. Joao follows his instincts, and they are superb.
Sudden weariness fills me. “Let’s talk about something else. We need to make a plan.”
He nods, his eyes troubled. “We’re not safe in Poland,” he says. “But to get out, you need to be operational, and you’re not. We’re not going anywhere until your ankle heals.”
“That could take a couple of days. We can’t risk?—”
“It’ll take a week, and yes, we can. This is about as secure a base as we can hope for. It’s abandoned, and the fields haven’t been plowed in at least a couple of years. The nearest neighbor is miles down the road. We’ll only light the fire at night so nobody can see the smoke coming from the fireplace.” His voice is confident. “We’ll be safe here, Stef. It’s going to be fine.”
His optimism is contagious, and I want to give in. Staying here for a week will mean getting to spend that time with Joao. A week during which the outside world can’t intrude. “I only bought us a day’s worth of food,” I say weakly.
“I’ll go into town for supplies this evening once it gets dark. This is Poland’s wine region, and even in November, there are tourists in Zielona Góra. I won’t stand out.”
“You will, dressed like that.”
He glances down at his bloodstained tuxedo. “I’ll steal a T-shirt off someone’s clothesline before I go shopping. Besides, it’s not only food we need. I need to call Mathilde and arrange for passports for both of us.”
“And then what? We go to Venice? I’m not doing that. Not until I’m positive Q was the leak. And right now, I’m not even close to being convinced.”
“I have an idea about that. We could set a trap for them.”
“What kind of trap?”
“Dunno yet. But we’ll figure it out.” He gives me a cocky, confident grin. “As long as we work together, we can do anything. Deal?”
I’m still dubious about Moretti and Joao’s faith in him.
But when he smiles at me like that, I can’t deny him anything.
“Deal.”