Chapter Thirty-Five #2
His round struck the concrete edge as Lelio twisted behind it, sending a burst of pale fragments across the dark lane.
Lelio returned fire blindly enough that one shot passed close to Taddeo's head and another punched into the steel cage beside him, and then both men moved at the same time because the geometry had become too narrow for distance to remain useful.
Lelio came around the opposite side of the platform faster than Taddeo expected.
Taddeo caught the movement and turned, but the older man hit his gun arm with both hands before he could bring the weapon fully across. The pistol discharged into the pavement, the report painfully loud between concrete structures, and Lelio drove his shoulder into Taddeo's injured side.
Pain tore through Taddeo's ribs.
His grip failed.
The gun skidded beneath the loading platform.
Lelio's pistol had fallen somewhere behind them during the collision.
For a moment neither man had a firearm.
Then Lelio struck him.
The punch landed high along Taddeo's cheekbone and snapped his head sideways. Taddeo answered with a short blow beneath Lelio's ribs, caught the man's coat when he folded, and drove him backward into the concrete platform hard enough to knock breath from both of them.
Lelio was older.
He was not fragile.
Years in the Bellandi organization had not been spent exclusively signing papers and telling younger men what to do, and resentment apparently preserved certain forms of violence well.
His elbow caught Taddeo near the wound, then his knee struck Taddeo's thigh as they fought for balance in the narrow lane.
Taddeo stopped thinking about technique.
The fight became ugly in the way real fights always did once clean distance vanished.
Hands caught fabric.
Shoes slipped on wet concrete.
Breathing became louder than speech.
Lelio's ring scraped across Taddeo's jaw when he tried to wrench free, and Taddeo drove him against the platform again before the older man twisted out and reached down toward something near the ground.
Metal flashed.
A small backup pistol.
Taddeo caught Lelio's wrist with both hands before the muzzle cleared his coat.
The gun fired once into the concrete.
The recoil jolted through both of them.
Lelio grunted and tried to turn the weapon inward.
Taddeo slammed the man's wrist against the platform edge.
Once.
Twice.
The pistol dropped.
Lelio kicked it away before Taddeo could reach it.
They separated by less than two feet.
Both breathing hard.
Blood ran from Lelio's mouth now.
Taddeo's side felt wet enough that he knew the earlier wound had reopened badly.
Lelio smiled anyway.
“You still don't know who built it.”
Taddeo stopped.
The words mattered more than the next punch.
Lelio saw that too.
“Twenty-five million doesn't move itself through six jurisdictions because one Crownport capo has a clever accountant.” He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one hand and gave Taddeo a look filled with contemptuous satisfaction.
“You really thought Verri built all those structures? You think I sat in my office designing Cayman entities and Delaware shells between collections?”
Taddeo's attention sharpened.
“Who?”
Lelio laughed. “Now you want to talk.”
“Who helped you?”
“You're still thinking too small.” Lelio leaned one hip against the platform, conserving strength while pretending he was not.
“There are men who understand what Crownport is becoming. Men who look at Cesare and Serevin and the Irish and see the same thing I saw years ago: old families pretending tradition makes them permanent.”
“Names.”
“You'll find names if you're as smart as Cesare keeps telling everyone.” Lelio's eyes glittered in the weak security light.
“Financiers. Advisers. Men who don't need crews standing on corners because they know who owns the buildings, who carries the debt, which politicians need campaign money, and what happens when one family suddenly believes another is stealing from them.”
Serevin.
The false trail.
Venn Meridian.
Taddeo kept his face empty.
Lelio smiled wider. “There. You do know some of it.”
“Were the Serevins involved?”
“Not the way you think.”
Taddeo filed the phrasing.
Lelio's amusement sharpened. “You should have seen how easy it was to point you toward Mauro and then toward the Russians. Criminal families are fucking predictable. Give a man evidence that confirms something he already resents and he will do half the work himself.”
“Who gave you the financial structure?”
Lelio's smile disappeared.
That silence was an answer without being enough.
Taddeo stepped closer.
Lelio straightened. “Men smarter than Cesare.”
“Name them.”
“Why?” Lelio spread one bloodied hand. “So you can run back and save the organization that may throw you out tomorrow? You finally pick a woman over the Family and you're still chasing answers for them like a dog.”
Taddeo thought of the files that remained under Isolde's coat.
Corwin's archive.
The Venn structures threaded through Calder Maritime, East Vey, Delaware services, Cayman administrators.
He did not need Lelio to say Silas's name.
He needed enough to know the conspiracy was larger than the dead man in front of him.
“You were being used too,” Taddeo said.
For the first time, Lelio's composure broke.
“Fuck you.”
The response came too quickly.
Taddeo saw the truth inside it.
Lelio had believed he was a partner.
Perhaps he still did.
“You don't know that,” Lelio snapped as he pushed away from the platform. “You don't know anything about what comes after Cesare.”
“I know you didn't build it.”
Lelio came at him.
The attack was not tactical this time.
It was rage.
Taddeo took the first blow across the injured ribs because avoiding it would have exposed his head, then caught Lelio's coat and turned with the momentum. They hit the edge of the loading platform together, Lelio's shoulder first, and the impact knocked the older man's remaining breath loose.
Taddeo struck him once.
Lelio staggered.
A second blow dropped him to one knee.
Then Lelio's hand went inside his coat.
Taddeo saw the knife before it cleared the fabric.
Lelio drove upward.
Taddeo twisted.
The blade entered high along his left side instead of his abdomen, slicing through shirt and skin before Taddeo trapped Lelio's wrist. Pain flashed hot and immediate, but the angle had failed.
Lelio tried again.
Taddeo broke the wrist.
The knife hit concrete.
Lelio shouted.
Taddeo kicked the blade away and stepped back.
For a brief moment the fight could have ended there.
Lelio knelt against the platform, one wrist hanging wrong, breath ragged, blood darkening the front of his shirt. Taddeo could have waited for Marco's men, taken him alive, put him in front of Cesare, and forced whatever remained of the larger conspiracy out of him.
Taddeo wanted that.
Then Lelio reached behind his back with the uninjured hand.
Taddeo saw the compact pistol tucked at his waistband.
Lelio drew.
Taddeo's fallen weapon lay too far away.
He moved toward the backup pistol Lelio had kicked beneath the edge of the platform, caught it from the wet concrete, and fired as Lelio brought his gun level.
The first round hit Lelio in the chest.
The second stopped his arm from rising again.
Lelio struck the concrete wall behind him and slid down it.
His gun fell from his hand.
Taddeo remained where he was with the pistol raised until he saw the man's body stop attempting to move.
The yard became quiet around them.
Not peaceful.
Simply finished.
Taddeo walked forward carefully and kicked Lelio's weapon farther away before crouching enough to check what he already knew.
Lelio Ardizzi was dying.
His eyes opened once.
There was hatred in them.
There was also something else now.
Surprise, perhaps, that the world intended to continue without giving him the position he had spent years believing would justify everything.
Taddeo leaned close enough to hear if the man offered one final useful word.
Lelio's lips moved.
“You think she's going to stay?”
Of everything he might have said, Taddeo almost laughed.
He looked at the man who had spent years believing love was weakness because every human attachment could be converted into leverage. Lelio had seen Taddeo turn away from pursuit to protect Isolde and interpreted the act as proof Taddeo had become less capable.
He still did not understand.
“I don't know,” Taddeo said.
Lelio's eyes shifted.
Taddeo stood.
That was the answer Lelio could never have accepted.
Isolde might stay.
She might leave.
Taddeo no longer needed certainty badly enough to steal it from her.
By the time Marco's men reached the loading yard, Lelio was dead.
One of the hidden security men approached first with his weapon drawn, then lowered it after seeing the body. His gaze moved to Taddeo's blood-soaked shirt and the cut at his side before he touched his earpiece and called for medical support.
“Not yet.” Taddeo picked his own pistol from beneath the loading platform and checked it before holstering the weapon. “Terminal status?”
The man listened briefly to his receiver. “East side secure. Kallis is dead, Fenzo surrendered once he realized the hidden team had the gate, and Ruggiero is being held until Marco confirms whether he was involved or just substituted as cover.”
“Russo?”
“Alive. Shot through the thigh and shoulder, but alive enough for Orsino to be pleased about it.”
Good.
Russo could talk.
More importantly, the ring Isolde identified had transformed one attacker from a vague connection into a living line between the museum operation and Lelio.
“Corwin?” Taddeo asked.
“Medic has him now. Upper-arm wound, significant blood loss but stable.”
Taddeo exhaled once through his nose. “Isolde?”
The soldier's expression softened fractionally because everybody close to Taddeo had apparently learned that this was the answer he actually wanted.
“With Orsino and Marco at north warehouse. Unhurt.”
Taddeo turned back toward the terminal.