Yakob #2
"Done,” Liam says.
I flick back to the image of the vineyard; the few visible men spotted around the compound. "How many men does Ramunno keep on-site?"
"Between twelve and eighteen, depending on the day. More during shift changes."
I nod. Twelve to eighteen. A fortified compound. A hostage who's been in captivity for two days. Cosa Nostra territory, which means local law enforcement is compromised, local infrastructure is hostile, and any extraction has to account for pursuit across unfamiliar ground.
A normal operation would require a team. Five men minimum, support vehicles, communication infrastructure, a safe house on the ground, a mobile medical team standing by.
I run through the rolodex in my head, picking out names of people who may be able to help if I need it.
"I'll be on the ground in Sicily within twenty-four hours. I need seventy-two after that to run surveillance and plan the extraction. If the intelligence is accurate, I'll have her out within the week. Ten days max."
“Ten days?” Connor demands, like I’m the one being unreasonable. “They could be doing anything to her!”
I nod my head once. “Presumably, she has her wits about her,” I say, my meaning clear. They should have taught her to protect herself. I look at the photo of Iris Orlova again. “I’ll bring her back.”
The room changes. Something shifts in the air, a collective exhale that none of them would admit to.
Hope. Dangerous, fragile, corrosive hope.
I've seen it before in the faces of people who hire me. They mistake competence for certainty. They think because I've never failed, I never will.
I don't correct them. It's not my job to manage their emotions. My job is the extraction.
"What do you need from us?" Liam asks.
"Stay out of my way. No communication unless I initiate it, no matter how much you want to know what’s happening. No men on the ground. No surveillance. Nothing that could make Ramunno aware that someone is coming for her."
"You're asking us to do nothing," Connor says. His voice is low and steady, but there's iron beneath it.
"You’re paying me to do my job, so let me work."
Connor holds my gaze for a long moment, then his expression softens into regret and he nods.
Killian doesn't nod. Killian looks like he wants to put his fist through my nose. But Liam cuts him a look, and Killian swallows whatever he was about to say and turns back to the window.
"I'll bring her home," I say.
Liam searches my face. I don't know what he's looking for. Sincerity, maybe. Proof that I'm more than the empty reputation that precedes me. He won't find it. My face doesn't give things away. I stopped allowing that years ago.
"If anything happens to her..." he starts, but can’t find the words to finish the sentence.
"I've never lost a target,” I say. “Your sister won’t be the first."
Rafferty's head comes up. Killian turns from the window. Even Aidan shifts from behind his chair.
I know I've said something wrong. I've reduced their sister to an operational noun, and every man in this room wants to kill me for it.
I don't amend or soften the statement. Softening is a luxury for people who traffic in comfort, and I am not in that business. I'm in the business of retrieval. Of elimination. Of making problems disappear so quickly and quietly that the world never knows they existed in the first place.
That's what I am. A solution. A tool.
The Bratva Ghost.
The door slams open beside me, my hand instantly going to the weapon I have concealed at my side. It’s a knife, but it would get the job done.
“Is this him?” The woman demands, gathering her shaking frame and standing tall.
“Yes, ma. You should be resting.” It’s Rafferty who says it, calm and soothing even though the tension in the room is palpable.
The woman turns to face me fully. Her hair is dark with streaks of russet and white. There are lines on her face that don’t look like they belong there. Her eyes are so starkly green they don’t look real.
“You will bring my daughter home,” she says on an exhale, like speaking costs her too much energy, so she steals it from her breath. From the one bodily function that doesn’t stop in the darkest hours of your life.
Oddly, I want to reach out to this woman and touch her. Give her comfort, even if it’s just a pat on her arm. Her eyes narrow at me as her nostrils flare with the exertion of pulling in another breath.
“Yes,” I say, noticing the deeper shades of green in her eyes. I imagine what she must look like in the sunshine, when she isn’t being ripped apart by the fear of her only daughter being kidnapped by the Mafia. I wonder if Iris’s eyes are the same as her mother’s.
Then she reaches out and holds each of my shoulders in her hands, closing the minimal distance between us and bringing her face right up to mine.
“You will bring my daughter home.”
It’s not a question. She is stating it. Weaving her will into the fabric of time so that no other outcome is possible.
I wonder what it costs her. But I suppose there’s not a lot a mother wouldn’t do for her children, even when those children are grown.
She releases me, dropping her hands from my shoulders and stepping back. But she doesn’t take her eyes from mine. Not until I nod my head and break the eye contact to nod at Liam. A sign of respect, and also confirmation that I’m taking the job.
I leave the estate the same way I arrived. Quietly. The driver takes me to the airstrip where I board a different plane, this one heading to Europe. I sit in the same position. Still. Silent. Running the operation in my head.
The compound. The guard rotations. The approach vectors. The extraction routes. I plan and discard and replan, building the operation in my mind the way an architect builds a sky scraper, testing every joint, every load-bearing wall, every point of failure.
I don't think about the photograph.
I don't think about auburn hair and green eyes and a laugh that looked like it could fill a room.
I don't think about the way Liam said her name like a plea. Like a wound that might never heal.
I don't think about any of it.
She is a contract. Coordinates, a floor plan, a guard rotation and an exit strategy. She is a job.
That's all she is.
The plane banks south over the Alps. Below, the mountains are sharp and white and indifferent. I watch them pass and think about the contacts I need to reach out to. Contacts I haven’t needed for years. Some of them might not even still be alive.
I close my eyes and wait for the plane to deliver me to Sicily, where a woman I've never met is waiting for someone to come for her.