Chapter 1
Ethan
My eyes were stinging from my deep dive into the financial dealings of Tony Petruzzi Sr. and his scumbag business associates.
I stopped just long enough to rub them, and turned back to the screen.
Triple and quadruple-checking everything I had moved into place.
I might be taking my life in my hands. Certainly my love life, knowing how angry Kat would be when she found out.
My algorithm, SmokeScreen, was doing just what I needed it to do. Which was highly illegal, but whatever. I was dealing with cold, ruthless, parasitical criminals. Standard rules of law and good conduct didn’t apply in this case.
It was ironic, for me to be using SmokeScreen after all my arrogant posturing about how dangerous it was, how unethical its applications could be.
I’d never intended to use it at all, or let it be used by anyone else.
Once I’d realized what it could do in the wrong hands, I’d tried like hell to bury it.
But the genie had gotten out of the bottle.
My younger brother had been kidnapped for it, and was still missing.
My sister, my friends, my little niece, the love of my life—all of them had been nearly tortured and murdered, because of the assholes slavering for SmokeScreen and the power it could give them.
I’d been all up on my high horse about how SmokeScreen could be a devastating, civilization-destroying weapon, but look at me now. When I needed to fuck around with a mobster asshole who had hurt the woman that I loved, well. Bring it the fuck on. Suddenly, Smokescreen was the best thing ever.
I was a great big hypocrite—and I didn’t care.
A guy had to do what a guy had to do. With the next click of my cursor, twenty-five million dollars would disappear from one of the secret offshore bank accounts of one of Tony Petruzzi, Sr.’s business associates, a shithead sex trafficker.
I’d done the same with his drug suppliers and arms dealers, and I’d left a trail that led back to the Petruzzis.
A subtle one, but these guys had the money to hire accountants capable of following those bread crumbs.
The money I had taken would never made it back to Tony Sr.’s own bank accounts, of course.
And those had been drained, too. I had dumped all of Big Tony’s money into thousands of philanthropic organizations.
A few thousand here, a few thousand there.
Lost forever. And there were no bread crumbs to follow, unless I wanted them to be there. That was the magic of SmokeScreen.
I’d conceived of this algo as an intelligence gathering tool for defense purposes.
My brother Shane and I had slowly begun to realize what we had on our hands while testing it.
I hadn’t written the program to be immensely powerful at stealing money, spying, or hacking.
It was just a random side effect of the way I’d designed it.
An aspect that had seized the attention of some very bad people, to the great detriment of my family’s safety and well-being.
I clicked the cursor…yes. Money started draining from the trafficker’s Cayman Island account. The plan was in motion, and could not be undone.
Time to monitor Big Tony Petruzzi’s lair.
I had flown a couple of Shane’s tiny, unobtrusive gray Moth drones into the Petruzzi headquarters in Jersey City.
I’d opted for just audio, for the sake of size and discretion.
I had perched a Moth on the top of the Venetian blinds in Big Tony’s private office and another in his war room.
Since I’d started nudging Petruzzi’s criminal organization into the crossfire of his ruthless associates, making it look like Tony was cheating and stealing, Big Tony’s lair had been pandemonium.
Screaming, accusations, even a couple of summary executions, when Big Tony lost his shit and jumped to conclusions.
That was startling, but damn. These guys had chosen to associate with people who had no impulse control.
I bore no responsibility for their poor life choices.
In just a couple of days, Tony Jr was walking out of prison after fourteen years of incarceration for the murder of Kat’s sisters.
I could not fucking wait. But for now, all I had to do was watch the show, and somehow keep Kat from knowing that I had put it all in motion.
She had expressly forbidden me to stick my nose in.
Too bad. She could forbid until her throat cracked.
I was taking this burden from her. Being saddled with the vengeful rage of a mobster asshole was a poor use of the magnificent resource that was Kat Banner.
She needed to soar free of these Petruzzi shitheads.
She deserved to figure out what her destiny was without having to drag those assholes around behind her. My mind was made up.
My phone buzzed. Joe Sciancalepore, the display said. Excellent. Another piece of my plan was falling into place.
I picked up the call. “Hi, Joe,” I said. “Glad you got back to me. Have you made a decision?”
“Oh, this ain’t Joe.” It was an elderly lady’s voice, froggy and quavering. “This is Joe’s mamma. Agata Sciancalepore.”
“Ah, I see. Hello, Mrs. Sciancalepore. I was expecting to hear from Joe.”
“Yeah, I know. Call me Mrs. S., eh? Sciancalepore is a mouthful. And Joe’s nervous, but I ain’t. So I was just callin’ to tell you that I’m up for it. Count me in.”
Whoa. I was disconcerted, considering what I had in mind for Tony, Jr. Mrs. S.
was in her late seventies, and built like a truck, with a fondness for flower-spattered caftan blouses with glitter accents.
She didn’t fit my picture of what needed to happen when Tony Jr. came home.
I had hand-picked the people for that event very carefully.
They needed to be relatively young, and tough, mentally and physically.
And yet, Mrs. S. had more skin in the game than most. She was the woman who had run the Italian restaurant where Raffi, Kat’s sister, met Tony Petruzzi.
Shortly before Tony Jr. went to prison, her grandson Joey’s boxing career had been cut short when Joey refused to throw a match.
Tony had beaten young Joey until he could barely walk. He still used crutches to move around.
“So Joe isn’t convinced?” I asked.
“Oh, he will be, if he knows what’s good for him,” she said darkly.
“He went to St. Benedict’s to pray to the Madonna for guidance.
And guts, I think. I’ll give him the guts.
Or I’ll kick his ass. No son of mine’s gonna miss a chance like this.
Joey’s his only kid. My only grandson, and his life was ruined. Joe has to do this. He has to.”
“Don’t pressure him,” I urged her. “I would understand if he had second thoughts. You two are not obligated to do anything at all. You can just sit back and wait, and you can trust that justice will be done, one way or another.”
“Hell no,” Mrs. S. said grimly. “I ain’t sittin’ back and trustin’ nothin’.
I’m gettin’ a whack at that son of a bitch myself while I have the chance.
That bastard smashed my little Joey’s kneecaps.
Joey wasn’t no genius and he shoulda known better, but he was just too proud to throw that match.
And poor Raffi, shot through the heart. Little Gabri, too.
I was so happy when Joe told me that middle girl, Franci, is still alive!
I figured Tony’s dad woulda tracked her down and killed her long ago.
And now she’s your girlfriend, eh? How about that! ”
“Yeah, she’s amazing. She calls herself Kat now, though. Not Franci.”
“She’s a pistol, that one. You’re a lucky man.
But no, me and Joe, we ain’t sittin’ this one out.
You put us on that list, and call us when that testa di cazzo’s comin’ home.
I woulda called you before, but my cat just had a litter of kittens, and I was busy runnin’ around after them little devils.
They’re the grand-nieces and nephews of the kitty I gave to Raffi, if I remember right.
And the girl kitties are calico, just like Raffi’s cat.
But anyhow, you put us on that list, capisci? ”
“You’ll be on the list,” I assured her.
“I’ll be waitin’ for that call,” she warned. “Don’t you disappoint me!”
“I won’t,” I assured you. “I promise. I’ll call you.”
I set the phone down, ran the audio through yet another set of filters to try and reduce the buzz and muttering that covered up Big Tony’s harangue.
“…but who? It’s thirty-two fucking million dollars! You don’t lose thirty-two million! Someone took it, and you no-good shit-for-brains assholes are gonna tell me who, or I’ll start trimming body parts!”
“We’re on your side, boss.” The filtering program identified that anxious, soothing as Carmine Lamonza, one of Tony’s lieutenants.
“The boys in accounting are shitting themselves. It isn’t Donny or the others.
He’s not dumb, and he’s not a traitor. Plus he don’t have the balls to steal millions of bucks from you. ”
“Don’t have the balls to protect it, either, does he?”
“It ain’t him, boss. And it ain’t us. Someone’s trying to fuck us up, and we can’t play their game and start shooting our own right when we—”
“It ain’t a coincidence this happens right when Tony Jr.’s getting’ out of prison.” Tony Sr. said darkly. “Someone’s sending a message. I want to send one back.”
I gasped sharply as a strong arm clamped across my throat, Steely, powerful, with a familiar hot flowery scent. I pulled off my noise canceling headphones.
“Kat,” I said, my voice strangled behind the pressure of her arm, clad in a damp terrycloth bathrobe.
“Woolgathering, eh?” There was laughter in her voice. “What happened to Mr. Eternal Vigilance? You were zoned out, buddy. I could have totally taken you!”
“You already have taken me,” I reminded her. “How many times do you want me to surrender? You’ve already got me on my knees, tongue at the ready.”