The Hunter

32. Joao

32

JOAO

W e ditch the car on the outskirts of Szczecin and catch a bus into town. I’ve arranged to meet Matilde at a low-budget pizzeria located behind the main square.

I met the German woman on my last job for Henrik. I’d been sent to kill Mojiz Qamari, a French-Moroccan gunrunner who lived in Marseilles. Qamari was a piece of crap, and under normal circumstances, I would have had no qualms about taking him out. But it was just six months after Stefi’s death, and I was still reeling. I walked into the job, a hollow shell of a man, truly uncaring if I lived or died.

Mathilde was a hacker embedded in Qamari’s organization to spy on his dealings. I don’t know who she really worked for. I didn’t ask her, and she didn’t volunteer that information. But she saw I was walking into my death, and she helped me get out.

I have no reason not to trust her. But after the events of the last week, I’m not taking anything or anyone on faith, so we arrive at the pizzeria three hours early and stake out the place, watching for any signs that she’s sold us out.

There aren’t any. The hacker arrives alone, as promised, a little after two in the afternoon. Once I’m satisfied that she hasn’t been followed, we head inside.

My wife stops just inside the first set of double doors. “When we get inside, I’m going to the washroom,” she says. “Flush toilets and running water are luxuries I’m never going to take for granted again. You go ahead and meet your friend.”

I frown. Stefi’s body language is telegraphing that she wants to be anywhere but here. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, but she doesn’t meet my gaze, and I know she’s lying. “I just want to clean up.”

“Tell me.”

She runs her hand through her hair, making it stand up in adorably messy spikes. “It’s just. . .” Her voice trails off. “After what I did to you, every single one of your friends has good reason to hate me. I don’t know if I’m ready?—”

“Listen to me.” I take her hands in mine. “I can’t promise my friends will love you. But it doesn’t matter. You and me, we’re a team. We’ll be a team always and forever. Nobody—not the padrino and not my friends—will come between us. I promise you that.”

“You don’t know why I left.”

“I know you. And that’s enough for me.” I tug her forward. “Now, come on. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of meeting Mathilde. The Stefi I knew didn’t run from a fight.”

Her chin lifts in the air. “I know what you’re doing,” she says. “You think if you dare me, I’m going to do whatever you want.”

I grin as I push open the inner door, and she steps inside with me. “And yet, despite how obvious my actions are, you’re coming inside.”

Mathilde is sitting at a table in the middle of the room, engrossed in something on her phone. She looks up when we enter and jumps to her feet, a smile breaking out on her face. “Look at you,” she marvels. “Still alive after all these years.” She turns to Stefi. “And you must be Stefania. Joao was pretty broken up about you. I’m glad you’re not actually dead.”

Stefi smiles nervously. “Thank you for helping us.”

“Of course.” She sits back down and pushes a large envelope toward me. “I can’t stay long—a friend is picking me up in ten minutes. But this should have everything you need. Car keys are inside as well. I figured you wouldn’t want to cross the border in a stolen vehicle.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

“It’s not a problem. I had to work in a rush, but the passports should stand up to a fair bit of scrutiny. Still, I recommend a land crossing. Take the A6. There’s a checkpoint there, but Poland is part of the EU, so security is pretty lax.”

“Got it.”

“Good luck,” she replies, and then, before I have a chance to thank her again, she shakes our hands and is out of there like a whirlwind.

The instant she leaves, a teenage server rushes over. “Where’s the woman who was here?” he demands. “She ordered an extra-large pizza with all the toppings. The kitchen is almost done making it. Did she really take off without paying?”

I start to laugh. This isn’t the first time that Mathilde has been too distracted to eat. “It’s okay,” I tell the outraged kid. “She’s a friend, and the pizza is for us. But could we get it to go? We’re in a hurry.”

Stefi waits for the teenager to leave before raising her eyebrow at me. “We are?”

“Yes,” I reply. “I’m going to celebrate our new passports by checking into a nice hotel for the night. Someplace with heat, hot water, and flush toilets. What do you think?”

I have good reason to linger in this town. Mathilde would have just crossed the border in the car she left us. If we try to head to Germany immediately, it might set off some kind of security flag. Better to pretend to be tourists coming to Poland from Berlin for an overnight trip. Szczecin sees plenty of those, and we won’t stand out at all.

But that’s not the only reason for me to delay. I’ve spent a week alone with Stefi, and I’m not ready for our interlude to end.

“It sounds amazing,” my wife replies. “You had me at flush toilets.”

We splurge on a really nice room in a fancy hotel. Stefi’s eyes light up when she takes in the massive bathtub, easily big enough for two people. “Shower first if you need,” she says. “As soon as you’re done, I intend to soak in this tub all night long.”

I can tell she means it. “Got it,” I say with a laugh. “Eat the pizza while it’s hot. Don’t wait for me.”

I shower as quickly as I can, scrubbing off a week’s worth of dried blood and grime. My shoulder is healing nicely with no sign of infection, thanks to Stefi, who diligently cleaned the wound each day. When I’m done, I wrap a towel around my waist and head into the room, where the pizza is sitting, still uneaten.

“I told you to eat,” I grumble. “Now it’s going to be cold.”

“I wanted to wait for you,” she replies. “Also, I know this is going to come as a shock, but I don’t always do everything you tell me.” She opens the pizza box, and a look of bliss comes over her face. “Oh God, I never thought I’d be so happy to eat a hot meal in my life.”

“It would have been hot if you’d eaten it when I told you to,” I say pointedly. “It’s lukewarm now.”

“Whatever,” she says with a grin, leaning forward and putting a slice of pizza in front of me. “Dig in.”

True to her word, Stef retires to the bathroom shortly after eating, showering quickly before filling the tub with steaming hot water and sliding in with a sigh of complete happiness.

I go through the envelope Mathilde gave me. She came through like a champion. She supplied not just passports but also credit cards made in each of our new fake names. I take advantage by heading to the boutique across the street for a quick shopping expedition. On the way back, I duck into the hotel bar before returning to our room and knocking on the bathroom door.

“Come on in,” Stef invites.

I enter. The bathtub is filled to the brim with bubbles, and Stefi is submerged under them. Her face is luminous, a smile on her soft lips, and she’s never looked as beautiful to me as she does in that moment. The only part of her body that I can see is her bare shoulders, but that doesn’t matter. My cock knows she’s naked under those bubbles and reacts accordingly.

As usual, I’m gaping at her like an idiot. “I thought you’d want a drink.” I hold up the bottle of champagne and the two flutes I got from the hotel bartender.

Her eyes light up. “You know I’m never going to say no to champagne. What are we celebrating?”

“Surviving.” That was always our toast. After every job we did for Henrik, that was what we drank to: the sheer relief of being alive.

Stefi shakes her head. “I’m done surviving,” she says. “No more. I want to thrive.” She beckons me with two tempting fingers. “Join me. The tub’s big enough.”

I don’t need any more persuasion. I strip and slide in behind her, yelping as soon as the almost scalding water touches my skin. “I should have remembered you like the water at lobster-boil levels of heat.”

“Sorry,” she giggles. “I should have warned you.”

I pop the cork and pour the bubbly into two glasses. “It’s going to warm quickly in this room.”

“In that case, I better gulp it down,” she replies with a laugh. “Hang on, are you trying to get me drunk?”

“Drunk, sober, it doesn’t matter.” I kiss the curve of her shoulder. “I like every version of you.”

She registers my words, and her muscles tense. “Joao,” she says in a whisper. She leans back against my chest, her head resting against my uninjured shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She doesn’t reply immediately. Despite what she said about gulping her champagne down, she barely touches it. The silence stretches until she finally speaks, her voice so soft I have to strain to hear her. “I hadn’t been feeling well in the run-up to Puerto Vallarta. I thought I had a stomach bug, figured I ate something that disagreed with me, and eventually, it would go away. But it didn’t.”

I have a sudden, dreadful feeling about this story.

“On the way to Mexico, they served fish on the plane, and I couldn’t stand the smell. I threw up in the bathroom. I was sitting next to a woman in her forties, and when I came back from the bathroom, she gave me a sympathetic look and told me she too had terrible morning sickness in her first trimester.”

Shock jolts through me.

She plays with the bubbles absently with her pinkie. “I hadn’t even considered that I could be pregnant. Why would I? Bach had all the girls on birth control. But when she said that to me, it struck me that maybe it wasn’t a stomach bug after all. Maybe I was pregnant with our baby.”

I don’t say anything—I can’t. I’m reeling. My grip around her waist tightens, and I hold her against me as if the warmth of her body can shield me from the rest of her story.

“My first reaction was denial. How could I be pregnant? I was on a contraceptive. I took the monthly birth control shots without fail. It’s not like Bach gave us a choice about that. And then I remembered I got hurt in Lagos. I got shot in my right arm and was grounded in the compound for six weeks, taking some pretty heavy-duty antibiotics to ward off infection.” She exhales in a slow breath. “Antibiotics interfere with birth control.”

Does that mean I have a child? A daughter or a son out there somewhere? Likely adopted because as heartbreaking as it would have been to give up the baby, Stefi would have known it was the safest thing to do?

I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood so I don’t ask that question. This is Stefi’s story, a burden she’s had to bear for eight long years. All by herself. The least I can do is to let her tell it at her pace without throwing a barrage of questions at her.

“As soon as the plane touched down in Puerto Vallarta, I went in search of a pregnancy test. I bought one from the pharmacy in the airport and huddled in a bathroom in the terminal to take the test. Two lines. I was pregnant.”

There’s so much pain in her voice. So much heartbreak. It was eight years ago, but the wound hasn’t healed. I can hear it in her voice that it’s just as raw as ever.

I hug her close to me in a futile attempt to protect her from her grief, my own emotions churning like a tornado. I’ve never felt as helpless as I do in that moment. I want to scream. I want to break things. I want to find Henrik Bach and snap every single bone in his body because of what he put my wife through.

“I was still processing the news when the first cartel assassin tried to kill me,” she continues. “She almost succeeded. And I was terrified. For the first time in my life, I was afraid, not just for myself but for our baby. The odds of me surviving that mission weren’t great. I’d been made, and more cartel assassins were on their way. I was only in my first trimester. If I died, our baby would have died too.”

She told me she tried to contact me. On the day she told me how she made her escape, I asked her why she didn’t call me, and she said she did.

And I didn’t answer.

Bile fills my mouth. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t my fault—it doesn’t matter that I was on a job of my own and couldn’t break radio silence. On the day my wife needed me the most, I wasn’t there.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Stefi, I’m so, so sorry. I should have been there for you.”

“No,” she says sharply, shifting to face me. “No. You will not blame yourself for this when it wasn’t your fault. Don’t you dare. That’s not why I’m telling you this story.” She traces more patterns in the bubbles. “I had less than an hour to make a plan. I couldn’t possibly succeed in taking Peng Wu out; he was too well protected. And if I walked off the job, Bach would have killed me. Sure, all my training didn’t come cheap, but?—”

“But Bach was a fucking psychopath,” I finish for her.

She nods. “It was just a week after he killed Michaela,” she whispers. “When I closed my eyes, I could still feel her blood on my face. I was scared, so scared. If I walked off the job, Bach would search for me. If I left you a message telling you what happened, you would have immediately taken off to find me, and he would have killed you. I had to make a choice, and that day, there were no good ones. I couldn’t stand the thought of our baby dying, and I couldn’t bear it if you died either.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “So, I chose our baby, and I sacrificed us. Our love, our marriage. Our happiness. I knew it would wreck you if I faked my own death, and I did it anyway.”

When Stefi loves, she loves deeply and with every fiber of her being. She loved me, and she loved the baby, so she destroyed herself to protect both of us.

“You should have told me.”

“If I told you, you would have tried to find me. You could have been killed, shot the way Michaela was. She begged for her life, but Bach had no pity, no mercy. I couldn’t risk it. That first six months, I was a wreck. I cried myself to sleep every single night, but I never once wanted to change my mind because you were still alive. The price we paid was heavy, but it was worth it.”

“It wasn’t just your choice to make.” I lace my fingers with hers. “If you asked me what I wanted, I would have told you that I would rather die with you than face a world that didn’t have you in it. I would make that choice a thousand times over. I would make that choice every day of my life.”

She doesn’t respond, not right away. When she finally resumes her story, her voice is very small. “I know you can never forgive me for letting you believe I was dead for eight years, but?—”

“But nothing.” I kiss the top of her head. “Yes, I wish you hadn’t made the decision you did, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. ” My voice is very, very quiet. “I would have made the same choice you did, Stef. I would have done everything I could to protect you. If faking my own death would have meant you got to live, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Forgive you? There’s nothing to forgive.”

“I don’t deserve your love, Joao,” she whispers shakily.

She’s rarely wrong, but she’s wrong about this. “Let me love you anyway.”

“You say that now, but the story’s not over. You’re not asking me what comes next.”

I hold her hand and wait for her to continue. “I eventually ended up in Istanbul,” she says. “I needed to hole up somewhere while I gave birth, and that was the one place I knew Bach wouldn’t come. For some reason, Turkey’s always been off-limits.”

“It’s because he stole a child from the wrong family.”

“Oh.” Stefi digests that. “That explains it. Anyway, I went to Istanbul. Got a job at a restaurant and lived with the family that owned it. Then, two weeks before my due date, Pavel Dachev found me.”

I grow cold. Dachev used to be a bounty hunter in Henrik Bach’s organization, similar to Varek Zaworski, but in the last eight years, he’s backstabbed his way into becoming Henrik Bach’s second-in-command. Zaworski was an asshole, but Dachev made him look like a choir boy.

“I don’t know how he tracked me down.” Despite the warmth of the water, she shivers. “But he knocked on the door one afternoon. I was expecting a spice delivery, so I opened it without thinking.” Her voice is flat now, flat and drained. “We got into a fight. He knocked me down, and I landed badly. I thought he was going to kill me, but before he could, the restaurant owner and his sons heard the commotion and came to help me. Ozel had a weak knee, but he was still ex-military. Special Forces Command. Dachev was forced to run for it. But the fall. . .” She swallows. “I went into labor, but our baby. . .” She shakes her head. “Christopher didn’t make it.”

I hear the name and pain tips through my heart. Stefi didn’t just fantasize about where we’d live and what we’d call our cat. She also had the name of our firstborn picked out. Christopher if it was a boy, and Magali if it was a girl.

“Oh, Stefi,” I say, trying to keep the grief out of my voice and failing miserably. All I can do is hold her close. “I’m so sorry, little fox. I should have been there. I should have never stopped looking for you.” My heart stops as I realize something even more heartbreaking. “Wait a second. If I’m calculating the timing correctly?—”

She nods tightly. “As much as I hated leaving you, at least I was comforted because I knew it was for the baby’s sake. That this was the best thing I could do for him. But then, when I lost Christopher…”

“By the time you lost Christopher, I had already faked my own death,” I finish. What horrible, star-crossed timing. This is the part that I don’t want to face. The brutally ironic part. If I hadn’t pretended to drown in Marseilles, we could have been together. I could have been with her all these years.

“I contacted Tommy Power,” she says tonelessly. “I pretended to be a potential client, and he told me that you’d drowned. Just like that, I had nothing. My choice was supposed to keep our baby alive and you as well, but it all went painfully wrong because both of you were dead.”

There’s more. I know there is. “What happened next?”

“I. . . I tried to kill myself,” she whispers. “After that, they locked me up in a psych ward.”

Tears prick my eyes. Stefi carried all of that alone. I should have been there to comfort her after the loss of our child, and instead, I wasn’t around. I hadn’t been around in Mexico when she was terrified out of her mind, and I hadn’t been there in Turkey when she mourned her baby.

At the same time as my wife was suicidal, when she needed me to love her and support her and be a shoulder for her to cry on, I’d been traveling around the world, trying to find myself.

“You’re blaming yourself.”

“I’m plotting Pavel Dachev’s death.” It’s only half a lie. Dachev doesn’t know it, but the moment he touched my wife, he signed his death warrant. I don’t care how powerful the Bulgarian is and how untouchable he’s supposed to be. I intend to kill him.

“I know you, remember? You might be swearing vengeance, but you’re also blaming yourself. I did the same thing—that’s why I tried to kill myself. But this isn’t your fault, and it isn’t mine. When I was recovering in the hospital, I realized something. I found myself in an impossible situation because of Bach and all the people who covered for him, people who enabled him to do what he did. When I got out, I went to the cemetery, and I swore an oath at Christopher’s grave. I wouldn’t rest until I took out all of Bach’s network. And now I have two people left. Antonio Moretti and Pavel Dachev.”

I don’t have a response to that. For the first time, I have no desire to argue for Antonio’s innocence. By this time tomorrow, our trap will be set, and we’ll know where the leak is coming from.

And then what?

Stefi’s determined not to go to Venice, and I’m just as determined to keep her safe.

We’re at an impasse.

Sooner or later, something’s gotta give.