Chapter Three
Ciro
I STARE AT the ridiculous creature curled up and sleeping on my plane. I’m still furious. My blood has been burning, acidic and hot, ever since I discovered my father’s subterfuge. This is something that simply cannot be endured.
This…creature, pregnant with my child.
I never wanted a child, but I am not going to leave my flesh and blood to be torn apart by the wolves of this world. It would be unacceptable.
And I will not allow them to be raised by anyone in this life. I fought hard enough to get away from it. I was trying to rescue Vittoria, but she was…she was so stubborn about it. She was so convinced that she could use our father, and his affection for her, to her own gain.
But there is no winning with Lorenzo Corretti. There never has been.
The only real tragedy is that I didn’t kill him, because I would’ve loved to see his face before I put a bullet in it.
The surprise. The betrayal. He knows that I disdain him, and everything that he stands for, but his own pride wouldn’t allow him to kill me.
I would’ve found that amusing. If he were killed, not by his paternal love for me, as he has no paternal love for any of his children, not really.
Except possibly Vittoria.
It would’ve been amusing because he never wanted anyone to know that there was dissension in the ranks. And to have him foiled by that would be sweet.
As the plane descends, Lindsay does not stir.
She gave me her biography before she fell into a fitful sleep, but I already knew it. The last two weeks have been spent exhaustively researching all of the circumstances surrounding her, and her agreement to carry my baby.
My baby.
There shouldn’t be a child with my DNA coming into this world.
I’m more than fucked-up.
I’ve no desire to carry on this legacy. This bloodline.
But much like the power vacuum that Lindsay and I were just discussing, this would simply be another vacuum. Either my enemies would take and kill the child, or they would manipulate them. Change them. Turn them into a weapon to be used against me, against the world.
It’s unacceptable either way.
I’m not interested in her attitude. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a vessel. A beautiful one, but insolent, and more trouble than a woman should ever be. She stirs as the plane lands, and as soon as we stop, I move to scoop her up into my arms.
She’s soft, but I can only ponder that for a moment as she immediately slaps me on the shoulder, fighting against my hold.
“Settle down,” I say, and my voice does not cow her, which is something I confess I have not often experienced.
“Keep your hands off me,” she says.
“Cara, I have no desire to have my hands on you. But I will carry you into the house and use my body to shield you if need be.”
“Are you expecting a sniper attack in the middle of the ocean?”
“I don’t discount anything. Security on this island is heightened. I have men stationed here, and they have been keeping watch. But you can never trust anyone, not entirely.”
“Agreed.” The stairs lower, and I carry her down onto the landing strip.
This island is centered in one of the most beautiful regions in the world.
The water was a clear, cobalt blue, the trees green and abundant, growing thick on the mountainside, providing cover for the compound that I had built here some ten years ago.
It’s as secret as anything can be; not even my father ever knew about it.
There’s a car waiting for us with bulletproof windows.
This place is remote, isolated, tucked into a corner of the world many of my enemies have never been to.
But as I said to her, you can never really trust anyone.
I include my own men in that. They are subject to polygraph tests, often.
Random searches for bugs and wires are always done.
I have been friends with the company that surrounds me since I was a teenager.
Since I decided to leave my father’s empire.
We’re more mercenaries than organized criminals.
Ethical in some ways, depending on how you look at it.
We don’t profit from the death of innocents, though we will kill those who wield power through violence and control. We don’t traffic drugs or humans, though we will traffic weapons—again, to those who lack power and need it.
But everyone has a price, whether it be money or some buried hunger for power. Which is what I assume claimed my right-hand man, Renzo, who disappeared at the same time as my sister.
Went back to his father’s empire.
Took her with him as a pawn.
After I welcomed him into the fold when we were young, and angry, needing to escape the lives we were born into. After I introduced him to sweet Vittoria in the first place.
Everyone has a price.
I trust no one.
I don’t even feel personally betrayed by him. How can I? Everyone does what they must in this world. We are all the authors of our own book of morals. A man can justify anything to get what he wants; I know it well.
Thank God I don’t allow anyone to know the location of my bolt-hole. When my men travel to the safe house they are transported by a man who has worked for my mother’s family for generations, and they do so with no understanding of where they’re going. I’ve even drugged some of them for the journey.
If not for that then I’d have to be concerned about Renzo coming here now. Vittoria knows nothing about this place, so he can’t extract the information from her.
But I have to confront the reality that I trusted him, and was wrong.
That I don’t know him, actually. And he could be capable of anything.
She is glowering beside me, clearly angry, the little fool.
“You would prefer that I had left you?”
“To be honest, I would prefer that my womb hadn’t been hijacked by the Mafia.
That’s what I would prefer. I thought that I was giving a baby to a couple who really wanted one.
I thought that I was helping them, and they were helping me.
But you don’t even want this baby, not because you love it.
You’re just trying to use it for control. And you’re using it to control me too.”
“This is not about control. As I said before, you are simply a vessel to me. I have no investment in you.”
The world has casualties. All the time. If something happened to her, it would be no different than any of those. But my child…
It’s hard to articulate why I care. I don’t even know why. Except that it feels extremely poor that a life has been created as a means to manipulate me. That my father took my DNA, created a human being to trap me. A human being that did not ask to be created.
And perhaps there would be some mercy in snuffing that life out early; I don’t know. There has certainly been very little mercy in my life.
But I’ve decided to go the other way, at all costs. Perhaps someday I’ll have an explanation for that.
I don’t have one now.
I’m not sure that I need one.
When you’re a dangerous man, it’s rare that you’re asked to explain yourself.
I’m a man of action, far more than I’m a man of deep introspection.
And so I refuse to engage in it now.
With her held firmly in my arms, we get out of the car in front of the large, imposing compound that sits there in the middle of the rocky outcropping. The sea is angry all around us. It is more fortress than island. Just as I need it to be.
“This place is cursed,” she says, giving up on fighting me, and instead going limp in my arms, attempting to be deadweight, I assume, since this woman is intent on making all of this difficult.
“It doesn’t exist to charm you. And neither do I. You would do well to remember that.”
“You would do well to remember that if there’s one thing I’ve done from the cradle to now it’s survive. And that isn’t by suffering fools, or brutish behavior.” Her eyes flash, blue with her fury, and I have to admire her futile attempts at shaming me, threatening me and annoying me.
“You will suffer what I command that you suffer,” I say.
“If you leave here, you will die. You have survived against reasonable, familiar elements. You have survived when faced with the passive cruelties of life, I assume. But that is different than surviving when a professional hit man decides to end you.”
“You have no idea what I’ve survived.” She makes her body even more limp, less accommodating if such a thing were possible, as I continue to carry her.
“I’ve survived the advances of meth heads in my parents’ home.
I’ve survived men thinking they can have their way with me on fishing vessels.
I’ve survived everything. And the only reason that you can look at me and think that I don’t know how difficult life is is because you are a man.
You think that you had some unique experience being in organized crime, because there might be danger all around you.
That’s just the experience women have every day.
And look at that, both of us, endangered by men. ”
“There are some very accomplished female assassins.”
“Are any of them high up in these crime families? Do they make the rules? Do they give the order for the trigger to be pulled?”
I look down at her, feeling a strange stirring sensation in my chest. Gender equality is far from my concern in this life. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying myself about whether or not a crime family has an egalitarian structure. It’s all bad.
But she makes a point.
“I don’t suppose it matters the gender of the assailant if the bullet hits you in the right spot.”
“I don’t suppose,” she sniffs.
I walk her to the door of the compound, and it opens quickly. Lucchino, one of my most trusted—which means nothing—is there, obviously waiting for my arrival.
“Have you swept the place entirely?” I ask.
“Yes. We have made sure there is no surveillance, no hidden tricks or traps. We scanned the place with heat-seeking equipment. No hidden bodies. Gibbons and saltwater crocodiles, mainly.”
“Crocodiles?” Lindsay asks, suddenly going a bit more tense in my arms.
Neither of us responds to her question.