37. Marco
Marco
After the post office was abandoned eighty years ago, the Council swooped in and claimed it. Even though no one’s used the place in any official capacity for at least a generation, the Council’s connections ensure it will never be destroyed.
Since their inception, the Council has acquired a dozen other warehouses and vacant structures the same way, but the Library is by far the most important.
For most of the public, the aged structure is nothing more than a pretty relic. A stone-faced reminder of when people could still slap a postage stamp on their toddler and send them to Grandma’s along with the rest of her mail.
The interior is less antiquated. According to the schematics I located an hour ago, some of the world’s most advanced technology protects the items housed inside, as Luca mentioned. Fortunately, the hacker he set us up with, Ashley Rey, is a certified genius.
With my wife’s release still fresh on my tongue, I herded her upstairs to get ready while I joined Luca in his command center in the basement of the manor. He’d already connected with Ashley, and a jumble of code she created flew across Luca’s oversized monitors.
“You won’t have much time in there. Twenty, maybe thirty minutes tops before they notice that someone’s hijacked the system.”
Over speakerphone, we could hear her fingers flying across her keyboard while near-deafening metal music played in the background, and every now and then, she paused long enough from typing to crunch on a potato chip.
“You should be careful taking on this type of work. It’ll shorten your lifespan.” I drummed my fingers on Luca’s desk, trying and failing to puzzle out the odd combinations of characters streaking across the screen.
On the other end of the line, Ashley laughed.
“Are you kidding? Why do you think your brother hired me in the first place? I’ve been hacking systems like this one since I was in middle school.
Give me a couple of hours to execute a remote code injection on their optical network terminal, force an automated firmware rollback to bypass their access controls, and spoof the handshake protocol on the local CCTV subnets. It’ll be up to you from there.”
Most of that streaks right over my head, but Luca seems happy. True to her word, my phone buzzes at eleven on the dot.
I study the screen. A thumbs up, followed by a crying-laughing face emoji, followed by an alarm clock.
Is…is this supposed to be the signal?
Bianca, crouched in the alley next to me in black leggings, black combat boots, and a huge black Swarmer hoodie, peers over my shoulder. “She says she’s in and that it was laughably easy. Also wants us to remember that we’re on a time crunch.”
Amused, I pocket my phone. “You never cease to amaze me, principessa.”
According to Luca’s translation of Ashley’s instructions, she’s arranged the security cameras to run on a loop for about an hour.
If the guards are good at their jobs, they’ll notice something is amiss in the first half an hour.
That gives us a window of thirty minutes or less to locate the book and hopefully some information on Silenzio and the bullpup as well.
Bianca and I creep out from behind a truck in the old loading bay. I pull my ski mask over my face, and Bianca does the same. In her all-black outfit, she looks entirely too fuckable.
I’ll have to remember these masks for later.
Gun ready, I lead the way from the truck to the back door, scanning the building for signs of motion.
As soon as we clear the alley, I position myself to act as lookout while Bianca squats next to the lock. She rolls out a black case lined with silver tools, and I spin away before I can get caught up in watching her. In less than a minute, Bianca bypasses the manual locks.
Good, because the clock is already ticking.
Bianca throws open the door. Over her head, I aim my semiautomatic with its silencer into the dark hallway that awaits us on the other side.
Nothing.
After folding up her tool kit, Bianca braces her back against the wall and withdraws her gun from her thigh holster.
The Colt forty-five is a reliable, no-frills firearm that possesses a short recoil. A perfect weapon for her, and one she handles as if it’s an extension of her arm.
We’ve only gone a few yards when we run into the first guard on patrol.
He spots Bianca, and promptly chokes as my knife embeds in the center of his throat.
Bianca grunts as she catches the guard beneath his arms, struggling under his weight in her effort to slow his body’s fall to the floor.
I take a moment to divest him of his gun and snatch a few extra magazines and then drag him into a storage closet.
Bianca watches me clip the walkie-talkie piece to the front of my shirt while she slips the magazines into separate pockets on her holster.
She nods to the rifle slung across my back. “Looks good on you.”
“Right?”
I pose like I’m auditioning for GQ, and she snaps imaginary photos, stopping when approaching footsteps reach our ears.
I lead us forward again, down a side hall to a set of wide marble steps.
We rush down two flights to a basement-level door.
Once more, I serve as lookout while Bianca gets us through the manual locks in record time.
We venture inside, closing the door softly behind us as another guard on patrol rounds the corner outside.
He’s hovering near the door when his walkie-talkie crackles. “Report.”
The guard on the other side of the door pauses, and I grip the handle, holding it still just as he jiggles it. “All clear.”
We wait until the steps retreat before continuing on.
The Library itself is a series of a dozen or so rooms in the basement. Rows and rows of shelves dedicated to files, photographs, government documents, and court transcripts, all organized by a system I have no hope of comprehending.
The same reason the Council doesn’t bother digitizing everything is the same reason they still use physical locks and guards despite having the best security tech available. Getting to the information squirreled away within these walls would be child’s play for someone with the knowledge to do so.
But not everything in the Library is information.
Weapons, artifacts, evidence from crime scenes, blood samples, and fingerprints make up seventy percent of the stock.
There’s a rumor that skin, organs, and semen samples are stored down in the sub-basement in a special freezer, but not even Luca could confirm or deny that one.
Bianca seems to have no trouble finding her way around and guides me straight to a shelf dedicated to Il Silenzio. “Jackpot.”
I snag the first box, and Bianca grabs a second.
We crouch, combing through the contents with the assistance of my phone’s flashlight.
My box is filled with a bunch of random items. A pair of women’s underwear, a magazine clip, an old DVD about mind control, and what looks like a Post-it note with a hastily scribbled recipe.
I blow out a frustrated breath and glance over at Bianca. “Anything?” When all of this is over, I’m going to figure out why the hell the Council has a thong and a recipe for vegan cupcakes stashed away in a box, but for now, this is the opposite of helpful.
Bianca shakes her head. “Not really. There are some jobs the Council hired him for.” She passes me a file that I scan haphazardly.
The documents inside contain a list of names, complete with the method of death and the date of each person’s murder.
Hanging, drowning, car accidents. Apparently, he frequently faked drug overdoses.
I drop the list back in the box in disgust.
Bianca taps my shoulder. “I’m going to hunt for the book.”
I nod and take down a third box as she slips out of this room to head to another.
Five agonizing minutes pass as I search for something—anything—I can use. Finally, completely by accident, I stumble across information on the Desert Tech MDRX bullpup rifle. It’s a log, a list of people the Council has lent the gun to, but there aren’t any dates to cross-check the names with.
With at least a hundred people on the page, I scan the names, trying to memorize as many as possible. Other than Anatoly, the Russian bruiser I questioned a few weeks back, none of these people ring a bell. But one of them has to be the Silenzio impersonator.
Yet another thread to chase. I put the list in my pocket so that I can grip my gun with both hands. Bianca might recognize someone, so I want her to take a peek before we leave. I check the time on my phone. Twenty minutes down and ten to go.
We’re cutting it close.
I check two rooms before locating Bianca in the third. She stands with her back to me, in front of a huge shelving unit full of cardboard boxes. She has a book tucked under one arm as she studies a set of photographs by the light of her phone.
I release a quiet breath of relief. At least we’ve got that. Now we can negotiate Livia’s freedom from Aldo. Then, once Livia is safe, we can steal it back and burn the damn thing, permanently removing it from the board.
Bianca is so engrossed in the images that she doesn’t hear me approach. I stop right before calling out, her name dying in my throat when I spot one of the prints.
The photo shows Bianca and her sister. The two of them appear to be in the coffee shop down the road, and Livia’s surreptitiously palming a vial to my wife over the table.
A date from last week marks the bottom right corner, and my chest clenches.
In an instant, the timeline reconstructs itself.
I recall how, ordered to murder him by her father, she poisoned Elio Bonucci, the fiancé she supposedly loved.
I remember the coldly efficient way Bianca and Livia drugged me on our wedding night, and my wife’s unexplained disappearances to visit her sister at that exact coffee shop.
Aldo was the one who hired Il Silenzio, but if he really wanted to eliminate me, he didn’t need an outside hitman.
He planted an operative willing to follow his every directive under my own roof. In my bed.
The question barrels from my mouth. “Were you going to kill me?”
Bianca starts violently, fumbling the photos with a curse. She whips around, clutching her chest. “Marco?” Shaking her head frantically, she reaches for me, but I dodge her hand. “No, that wasn’t how—”
I sweep up the folder she dropped, my body flushing with rage. “So, your sister didn’t slip you poison so you could murder me on behalf of that piece of shit you call a father?”
“I mean…yes, but I wasn’t going to do it. I swear on Livia’s life. I even told her I couldn’t go through with it at the coffee shop. Marco, please believe me. I—”
When she attempts to touch me again, I smack her hand away. I fucking hate the devastation on her face.
“Why not?” I crowd her, looming over her like a guillotine’s blade. “Do you only kill men you give a damn about, like Elio? Don’t tell me you don’t love me enough to even bother orchestrating my death.”
But no. This entire time, she and Aldo plotted behind my back, while I was too busy falling in love with her like the pathetic bastard I am to notice.
A phantom blade stabs my heart.
She twitches toward me again before curling her hands into fists. “I swear, I only debated it for a moment, okay? Then you defended me in front of Zanni and promised to help me save Livvy. She’s the only reason I even considered it in the first place, and—”
My hands clamp around her throat, and I shove her against the shelf. She whimpers as several boxes crash to the floor around us. One glances off my shoulder, but my focus remains locked on Bianca.
I never increase the pressure, though. Even now, realizing what she’s capable of, I can’t bring myself to bruise her soft flesh or inflict physical pain. “Shut. Up.” My voice cracks and, afraid she’ll register my torment, I release her.
Before I can retreat, Bianca captures my wrist. “Don’t leave.
You promised me you wouldn’t. You told me I was yours.
Marco, please.” I try to jerk away from the reminder of what I whispered to her in the car, but she tightens her grasp.
“Hurt me. Discipline me. If it’ll make you not hate me, you can do whatever you want. ”
Temptation seizes me at her invitation, but I force myself to remain strong.
I can’t believe anything this woman says.
“Discipline implies correction, Bianca. And correction implies you still hold value to my family. But you don’t fix a broken weapon.
You crush the steel and start over.” She flinches, and I manage to free myself.
As I back away, my gaze falls to her trembling lips, and something beneath my rib cage shatters.
“Go back to your father, where you belong. Whatever he does to you or your sister is no longer my concern. I wash my hands of your entire family.”
The walkie-talkie clipped to my shirt crackles. “We’ve got intruders! Everyone spread out and report back.”
I guess our time’s up.
I spin away, stuffing the folder into the waistband of my pants beneath my shirt. There’s no chance to return the paperwork, and once the guards realize what we disturbed, the Contis will be the first family they suspect.
Not my problem anymore.
“Marco—” Her voice, more shattered than I’ve ever heard it, shreds me. That infuriates me even more, and with anger and pain dueling for prominence in my chest, I pivot toward her one last time with a snarl.
I bend over until our noses nearly touch and speak with exaggerated clarity. “I want you out of my house before the sun comes up. If I catch a single glimpse of your face tomorrow, I will handle you the exact same way I handle any other threat.”
The denial and profound misery wrenching her features wreaks havoc on my willpower, so I avert my gaze. I can’t afford to fall into her trap again, and with the way my heart cries out to gather her into my arms and soothe her, the risk grows the longer I remain in her presence.
And giving in to my heart would be the height of foolishness, because the damage is done.
“Please—”
“You’re dead to me, Bianca.”
A dark, sick part of me experiences a wave of relief. Our relationship might have imploded, but for once, it isn’t my fault.
I stalk off, leaving Bianca pleading behind me.
I pray I won’t live to regret letting the enemy who captured my heart survive another day.