10. Manuel
TEN
MANUEL
I threw my jacket onto one of the tufted upholstered lounge chairs in my room and sat down on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, listening to Giovanni Agosti drone on about some issue with a supplier. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with more fuckups.
“One last thing,” he said, sounding apprehensive all of a sudden. “Atticus Popov has been spotted roaming the Omertà territory here in Italy.”
Why in the fuck did Atticus keep popping up everywhere?
“Has he attempted to reach out to our contacts?” I asked, squeezing the bridge of my nose.
“That’s the bizarre part.” Giovanni sounded weary. It would seem I wasn’t the only one plagued by lack of sleep. “He hasn’t. He inquired about a certain… performer.”
I scoffed—of course he did. “Maybe his mistress?”
Atticus was known for keeping multiple women for his own pleasure. He certainly was a horny old man.
“Maybe. Although, who’d fuck that old fuck is beyond me.”
“His wealth and name know no bounds,” I muttered, closing my eyes in frustration. I was too tired for this shit. “Plenty of women go for that shit.”
“Well, I don’t think he was searching for a mistress.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He inquired about a specific woman who performed at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma about ten, eleven years ago. He seemed curious about whether she had a child with her.” Something nudged at the far corner of my mind, but before I could zero in on it, Giovanni continued. “The Triads must be following the idiot because they also showed up.”
The corners of my mouth tipped up. “I’m guessing you took care of them?”
Knowing Giovanni, he probably skinned them alive.
“I did, but I left a few for you.”
“How generous of you,” I deadpanned, reaching for my discarded jacket. “Drop me your location. I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t end them without me.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve had our fill. The last three are all yours.”
“We?”
“Ghost and me.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Ghost was the best tracker in the Omertà. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
As I made my way out of the house, I caught my reflection in the entryway mirror. My body was clear of tattoos with the exception of a single one on my back, a skull wrapped in thorns and roses. It was the Omertà tattoo, a testament to the training I’d gone through, its symbol of death, sacrifice, and vow a perfect depiction of its meaning.
All that work had inevitably changed me. I often dreamed of drowning in blood, of it filling my mouth and choking me. The dreams started back when I watched everyone I loved be killed off—my parents who I barely remembered, my brother, and Enrico’s brother.
It was the reason I never married. It was the reason for my lack of commitment. It was the reason I hadn’t started a family. I’d seen and tasted too much death, and it always came close, brushing against the ones I loved or taking them away.
So I settled for passing flings as I became stronger and more brutal. I’d gone through thick and thin with Enrico, having his back the same way he had mine. The gruesome tasks we’d performed had hardened both of us.
Torture and killing became second nature to me, work I learned to love. It earned me both respect and fear from my enemies. The things I needed to do in order to stay on top weighed on my soul, a vicious, never-ending cycle. Not that I believed my soul could be saved.
All this ensured the survival of the Marchetti name. That was what family meant to us: protect our own at all costs. But it did come at a cost—front-row seat to death and lack of rest. Most nights, I slept three to four hours max.
Until the night I had her . The mysterious Athena. I hadn’t slept that soundly in years.
One helicopter ride later, I walked inside the warehouse where Giovanni Agosti and Ghost casually played cornhole while three men hung off the ceiling. The metallic smell filled the space and my nostrils, the floor sticky under my leather shoes.
It wasn’t the pool of blood all over the floor that surprised me, nor the men hanging off the ceiling, but rather the two grown men playing a game—an American game at that.
“ Ma che cazzo ?”
Both of them lifted their heads.
“Took you long enough,” Giovanni muttered. “I thought you took a trip around the world.”
I fought an eye roll—it had taken me two hours door to door, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. “What are you doing?”
“Playing cornhole,” Ghost deadpanned. “We were bored.”
“I know what it is, but couldn’t you have found an Italian game to play?”
They both snorted.
“We were born in the States,” Giovanni muttered. “Just because we’re on Italian soil doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy football, baseball, and cornhole. Fucking sue us.”
“I wouldn’t be too proud of that shit,” I retorted dryly.
“Don’t start shit,” Ghost muttered. “We know you’re offended because soccer is a girl’s sport and football a man’s.”
I scoffed.
“We Italians believe in the one true fútbol. You know, the thing you guys butcher and call soccer. It’s not soccer.”
Ghost snorted. “Sounds like soccer to me.”
The three men who were still alive followed our exchange with wide eyes.
“Now, gentlemen, what do you think?” I asked, focusing on them as I tucked my hand into the pocket of my Brioni suit. “Soccer or fútbol?” Their eyes bulged, their mouths opening and closing like gaping fish. I flicked a look over my shoulder. “They speak English, no?”
Ghost shrugged. “They scream, I can tell you that much.”
I shook my head, returning my attention to our prisoners. The tattoo—a symbol in the mouth of a skull—was etched on their skin, depicting the old alliance made by the Tijuana cartel, Albanians, and the Triads that still stood today.
Giovanni had one too, as well as the Omertà tattoo.
“They’re all insane,” one of the Triads’ men mumbled in Chinese. My language skills were definitely paying off today.
“You have no idea,” I answered in Chinese, smiling like the devil himself.
My heart pounded, my body alive after weeks of exhaustion. I let the darkness take over, welcoming the sensation. I needed to kill, to feel life draining out from under my blade, hear their cries as they begged for me to stop.
And so the torture started. As did their screams.
After an hour, two men lay crumpled on the stone floor at my feet, pools of red beneath them. They hadn’t talked—but the third one would. I wanted to know why they were on my territory, what Atticus Popov was up to. Everything.
I smiled as I sat down in front of the last Triad soldier. Though he couldn’t move, he jerked against his bindings, trying to get away from me while Giovanni and Ghost continued to play their ridiculous game.
I set my knife on my ruined suit pants, the silver blade now crimson, and the man followed the movement with terror in his eyes.
“Now, are you going to make this difficult like your colleagues”—I gestured to the lumps on the floor—“or will you answer my questions in exchange for a quick death?”
He swallowed hard and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
The Triads believed in honorable, quick deaths, even though their own methods of torture were quite brutal. It was the reason nobody ever wanted to work with them, at least nobody sane. Clearly, Atticus Popov wasn’t sane or smart if he’d managed to get on the Triads’ bad side.
“So,” I continued when he didn’t speak, “you’ll give me some answers, sì ?”
“I swore an oath.”
“I don’t want your organization’s secrets,” I drawled, hiding my fury. “I want them out of Omertà territory. Now, what I want to know is why you are here and what your business is with Atticus Popov.”
He opened his mouth but no words came out. It would seem he needed an extra incentive.
I lunged forward to hold my knife against his throat. “If you have nothing to say, I can begin.”
“No, no, please.”
“I will peel the skin from your bones until you tell me what I wish to know. Then I’ll slice your belly open and pull out your intestines like a pig.”
The prisoner remained silent, terror shaking his body. At some point, he passed out, and Ghost brought over smelling salts, jolting him awake.
I sighed dramatically as I flicked a look at Giovanni and Ghost. “I really didn’t want to touch his balls, but it seems I’ll have to. Fetch the saw, will you, Giovanni? A dull one.”
The second he saw the metal blade, the man began speaking.
“Twenty-three years ago, Atticus screwed over the Triads,” he whimpered.
“Old news,” I deadpanned. “The entire underworld knows the story. He made a business arrangement with the Triads, Albanians, and the Tijuana cartel, smuggling flesh, then he turned around and fucked them over. He’s settled those debts since. Why the sudden interest again by the Triads?”
He let out a sardonic breath. “It wasn’t about the money for us. It was an eye for an eye.”
“Explain.”
“He took something priceless from the Triads. Eleven years ago, a score was settled. Or so we thought.” My brows furrowed. The Omertà had thought the same. “We were fooled. Now the woman will pay, and there’ll be no mistakes about it this time.”
“A woman?”
His lips thinned and I pressed the blade against his throat, cutting through the flesh.
He started crying. “An inside woman who helped him twenty-three years ago. Atticus’s mistress—a woman with connections to the Greek mafia.”
“Who?” It wouldn’t be Lykos’s wife. She was a devout Christian woman who insisted her husband’s organization ended all flesh trading. When he remained silent, I shoved the blade against his balls and repeated, “Who?”
The words were slow and barely audible when he answered, “His sister-in-law.”
I shared a glance with Giovanni and Ghost, whose expressions portrayed equal parts surprise and shock.
“I didn’t know Lykos had a sister-in-law,” Giovanni stated in Italian. “There was never any mention of her.”
I returned my attention to my prisoner. “Do you have a name?”
His teeth chattered, but he managed to spit out the words. “Alexandra Maria Bottelli.”
I… I knew that name. I knew that woman. Yes, it had been over a decade since I’d seen her, but she wasn’t someone you easily forgot. A highly sought-after opera singer.
“You lie,” I gritted.
There was no fucking way that the opera singer was Lykos’s sister-in-law. I could admit that she was skilled when it came to deceiving a paying audience… but involved with Atticus? The Triads? I couldn’t see it.
“She’s the sister of Lykos’s wife,” he insisted, his words choppy. “She was Atticus’s mistress, and after Lykos kicked her out, she went crazy after learning Atticus wouldn’t leave his wife. She went to his house and ended up stealing some cash before setting Atticus’s house in Greece on fire.”
“And then Popov paid you that back, ten times over,” I pointed out.
“He couldn’t repay this,” he hissed. “Eye for an eye.”
I was getting tired of these vague responses.
“Why does eye for an eye matter now, over twenty years later? What did this mistress do?” He remained silent and I shoved the blade against his balls again. “I’m tired of repeating myself. What did she do?”
A heartbeat passed.
“That I will never tell.” His eyes met mine and resolve shone in them. Giovanni and Ghost stopped playing their game and gave the whole scene a long look. “But no matter what you do to me, it will be an eye for an eye for Atticus Popov and Alexandra Maria Kosta, because we know. We. Know. ”
There were many things I could extract from my prisoners, but the unhinged look in the man’s eyes told me he was done.
So I took pity on him and put a bullet between his eyes.
It was time I paid a visit to the opera singer.