Chapter 2
TWO
Adriano
Eliza Moretti is not what I expected and it's a big fucking problem. I take a seat farther back from her, on the opposite side of the cabin. I need a moment to get my head straight.
In the three years I hunted this woman, I carried a certain image of her, constructed from a few photos and Gabriele's account, delivered when he was lying in a hospital bed, high on painkillers with his face wrapped in bandages.
He'd told me little about the woman who betrayed him but the way his voice broke when he mentioned her name was enough. It led me to believe she was a cold, calculating opportunist. I thought she was the sort of woman who attaches herself to a powerful man and takes him for all she can get.
It angers me that she latched onto my cousin. Gabriele is different to the rest of us. Even before the attack he was more sensitive than most men in our world. Sure, he acted ruthlessly when he had to, but he preferred to exhaust diplomatic channels first.
Our Nonna always said he was a romantic at heart. A woman looking to take advantage of a good man would have found an easy target in him.
When I walked into that café and saw her up close for the first time, I was surprised by how young she is. Twenty-two now, she was only nineteen when she was with Gabriele. He was twenty-seven and far more worldly.
I guess somewhere at the back of my mind I'd known she was barely a woman when she fucked my cousin over but I buried that, not wanting anything to excuse what she did.
I still don't excuse it now but I suddenly find myself more interested in why she set Gabriele up that night. If there are mitigating circumstances I want to know what they are.
The trouble is, when I find out what motivated her that night, I'm not sure what I'll do with the information.
As the plane speeds down the runway, I rest my head back against the soft leather of the seat but I don't take my eyes off my captive. She's shorter than I expected and thin. I suspect that's not by design. She doesn't eat enough.
If she'd caused me problems, I could easily have thrown her over my shoulder and carried her out of the coffee shop. But she came quietly, resigned to her fate.
Perhaps she's relieved she doesn't have to run anymore. I haven't got a read on her yet. But I will.
The plane tilts to the left as we climb and Eliza's body stiffens. She stretches her legs out in front of her and then relaxes. Is she a nervous flyer? I wouldn't have thought so since she's flown all over the world, evading capture.
I'll need to have a conversation with her about how she managed that for three years. She's traveled under several different names. I want to know where she got the passports. If it was someone in Rome, their head will roll for helping her.
Perhaps it was her Hungarian friends though I doubt it. Their way of dealing with people they no longer have a use for appears to be slitting their throats and dumping them by the Tiber. That's what they did to Eliza's brother a week after Gabriele was attacked.
I'll need to ask her about that as well. With any luck, she'll talk as easily as she cooperated at the café. I know several effective methods for extracting information but I'm loath to use them on Eliza. It’s not like me to want to hold back. I guess I'm a sucker for big brown eyes.
When we reach our cruising altitude, I unfasten my seatbelt. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I answer the incoming call from Paolo.
"How did it go?" he asks.
"We're on the plane."
"She cause any problems?"
"Nope."
He murmurs something, no doubt surprised that after three years of running she didn't resist. He thought retrieving her would get messy but I assured him I could handle it.
Roping Gio in to drive was a last minute decision. I wanted my hands free in case Eliza proved difficult. I didn't explain to my American cousin who she was or that she might have been reluctant to come with me.
Gio wouldn't have been pleased if it all went sideways. His days of abducting women ended the day he put a ring on his own captive's finger.
"Do you need me to come back?"
I grin at the hint of desperation in his voice. Paolo is currently on his first vacation in years with his wife, their three-year-old twin daughters, eighteen-month-old son and their little girl who's just two months old.
I told him to get a vasectomy when he started turning gray from worry over the twins' antics but would he listen?
"No, you relax, enjoy your time off. Twelve days to go, yes?"
Cutting the call before he can finish the inventive curse he was throwing at me, I put my phone back in my pocket. I return my attention to Eliza, who's leaning over to look out of the window. Unsure what she's finding so fascinating, I glance out.
The sky is blue and the cloud formation beneath us is interesting, I guess. I'm not the sort of man who spends hours gazing at a nice view. Unless that nice view is of a petite brunette, it seems, because I'm having trouble taking my eyes off Eliza.
As someone emerges from the galley behind me, I get to my feet. Seeing it's only Francesca, my flight attendant, I relax. I'd completely forgotten she was on board.
"Can I get you anything, Adriano?" she asks. "Champagne, perhaps?"
"No." My response was more abrupt than I intended. Francesca is a good employee and I'd never let a guest on my plane bark at her like that. "Thank you."
"We also have a very nice Barolo from Casa di Lupo."
That is tempting. My cousin Lorenzo, who’s Damiano’s youngest brother, owns a vineyard in Tuscany. He spends almost all of his time there these days, largely relinquishing his mafia responsibilities to my half-brother, Benito, who also seems to have developed a fascination for viniculture.
I swear if Damiano doesn't get a grip up there, everyone will have gone legitimate in a decade. I'm not opposed to the legal aspects of our business, but if you chained me to a desk, I'd go mad with boredom inside of a week.
"Let's save that for another time. Bring me a bottle of water." As she turns to go back to the kitchen, I place a hand on her arm. "On second thoughts I'll get it myself. You put your feet up. Have you finished that thriller you were reading?"
"Yes. I'm on the sequel now." She glances toward the front of the cabin. "What about your guest?"
I shake my head. "She's unworthy of your attention."
It's probably my imagination since it would be hard to hear over the noise of the engines but I think for a moment Eliza lets out a sound of distress. The thought she might have overheard me and been upset bothers me more than it should.
I follow Francesca through the door at the back of the cabin. While she retrieves her book from her bag, I fetch two bottles of water.
"We won't need you again," I tell my pretty blonde flight attendant.
She nods, understanding that I mean for her to stay out of my way.
Francesca is nothing if not discreet. Leaving her, I take the bottles of water to the front of the cabin and go to sit next to Eliza.
She turns to face me, her expression conveying a question I don't have an answer for.
I don't know why I came to sit with her either.
I hold a bottle out to her and she takes it.
“It’s plastic," she says as she taps the side of the bottle. “Were you afraid I’d smash it in your face?"
Her eyes widen as she realizes what she just said.
My jaw tightens. "Like your friends did to Gabriele, you mean?"
She swallows hard. "No, I didn't… Was he hurt badly?"
"He had a broken bottle dragged down his face. What do you think?"
She closes her eyes for several seconds and when she opens them again I see her lashes are damp.
"I didn't know they'd do that to him."
"No? What did you think, that they'd kill him cleanly? A single gunshot to the back of the head and it would all be over?"
Eliza shrinks back in her seat. She shakes her head.
"I didn't think they wanted to kill him."
She's either lying or she's totally fucking naive. What else would two vicious thugs do to a man they believed was standing in their way? Something else to tackle her about later.
"So why did you run?"
"Because when I heard they'd hurt him I couldn't live with it."
I scoff at that. "The evidence says otherwise." When I see she hasn't caught my drift, I add, "You're still here, aren't you?"
She doesn't say anything because there's nothing else she can add. She struggles to unscrew the cap from her bottle with one hand cuffed to the seat but I don't offer to help her. Let her figure it out or die of thirst.
Eventually, she gets the lid off the bottle and takes a long sip. She gulps the water down too fast and coughs violently. I take the bottle from her.
"Don't bother trying to drown yourself. You won't be getting out of it that easily."
It takes a minute for her to get herself under control. Then she looks at me with those fucking doe eyes. I want to blindfold her just so I don't have to acknowledge the sorrow in them.
"Are you going to kill me?”
It’s only natural for her to wonder, so why does it piss me off that she asked.
"No."
Something passes across her face, a mix of relief and confusion. "So what are you going to do with me?"
I stare at her for a long time. "I wish I knew, cara. I wish I fucking knew."