Chapter 43
Twenty-seven hours of keystrokes, cold espresso, and the kind of focused fury that could burn through firewalls like tissue paper was what it had taken to dismantle Vincenzo Falcone's entire empire.
Giana rolled her shoulders as the SUV wound through the Veneto countryside, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across vineyards stripped bare for winter.
Beside her, Rodrigo had his eyes fixed on the landscape around them, his hand resting on her thigh. It was warm and grounding in a way that still made her heart skip. She couldn't wait until this shit with Vincenzo was over so she could kiss him as much as she wanted without being interrupted.
In the seats behind them, Dario was playing a game on his phone. Athena had her feet propped up on the back of Giana's seat, humming 'Black Thunder' by The Hu. Kon sat beside her, eyes closed, conserving energy for whatever came next. Silas drove, silent and watchful.
The gūl had collapsed an hour after the assault ended, thirty rotting corpses dropping where they stood like marionettes with severed strings. The cleanup had been a nightmare of logistics until Dario brought out a backhoe from the large sheds and dug a pit.
They had pushed the bodies into it, set the whole thing on fire, and covered them in salt just to be sure they didn't reanimate. Giana wasn't sorry that she had been too busy to participate in that part.
Leo and Iz had offered to help her track Vincenzo's escape, but Giana had declined.
This was something she needed to do herself.
Every frozen account, every turned ally, every piece of damning evidence distributed to his enemies…
She wanted her fingerprints on all of it.
She wanted everyone to know that she was the one who had taken him down.
Vincenzo had put her in a cage and intended to do it to her again. He had ordered her teeth cracked, her nails torn, her body broken. He had tried to shame her in front of all the dons in Sicily.
Now, Giana was going to watch him realize that the woman he dismissed as a pawn would become the architect of his complete annihilation.
"You're smiling," Rodrigo observed, his thumb tracing circles on her thigh.
"Am I?" she said, batting her eyelashes at him playfully.
"It's a terrifying smile," he replied, his eyes crinkling before his mouth twitched. "I like it."
Giana leaned her head against his shoulder. "I was just thinking about how much I've learned in the past few weeks."
"About how to break cybersecurity?" Rodrigo rubbed his lips over the top of her ear and whispered hotly, "Or something else?"
"About revenge." Giana elbowed him in the ribs. "Behave yourself."
Dario snorted from the back seat. "I like her, Rodrigo. She's gotten so mean."
"She's perfect," Rodrigo corrected, and the simple certainty in his voice made Giana's heart flutter.
The villa appeared around a bend in the road, a grand Palladian structure that had clearly seen better centuries.
Its white stone facade was stained with age and neglect, the gardens overgrown, and the fountains dry.
Once, it had probably hosted parties for Venetian nobility. Now, it was a rat's final hiding hole.
"How is the perimeter looking?" Rodrigo asked.
"Clear," Silas replied. "Whatever men he had left abandoned him hours ago. Iz has a satellite on him and confirmed he's alone."
Giana had made sure of that. She had sent each of Vincenzo's remaining soldiers proof of his failures, his debts, his broken promises. She had shown them exactly how worthless their loyalty had become. By the time she was done, they had all fled like roaches from a burning building.
The SUV stopped at the end of the gravel drive. They exited in silence, weapons drawn.
Giana had her own gun now, a Sig Sauer P365 that Frederica had helped her choose.
It was small enough to conceal but deadly enough to matter.
She hoped she wouldn't need it. This wasn't about violence, not entirely.
This was about ruin. She wanted Vincenzo to feel as powerless as she had in that fucking cage.
The villa's front door hung open, creaking in the evening breeze. Inside, the grand foyer smelled of dust and spilled alcohol. Expensive furniture sat beneath white sheets like ghosts of former grandeur.
They found Vincenzo Falcone in what had once been a study.
He sat slumped in a leather chair, a bottle of whiskey dangling from one hand. His suit was rumpled and stained. His hair, usually slicked back, hung lank and greasy around his face.
He looked up as they entered, and Giana barely recognized him. This wasn't the smug predator who had ordered her kidnapped, and who had smiled on the conference call. This was something broken.
"Ah," Vincenzo said, his words slurring. "The happy couple. Come to finish me off?"
Rodrigo raised his gun, the barrel aimed directly at Vincenzo's forehead.
"Wait." The word left Giana's mouth before he could squeeze the trigger. Rodrigo's dark eyes flicked to her, questioning. "I want to talk to him first, amore mio."
A muscle ticked in Rodrigo's jaw. She could see the desire in his eyes to end the man who hurt her, fighting with the need to give her whatever she asked.
He lowered his weapon. "Anything for you."
"How sweet," Vincenzo crooned. "She must have an amazing pussy to have leashed Il Mostro so effectively."
Rodrigo's fist lashed out, and Vincenzo's nose broke with a crunch of bone and blood. Giana tsked, but Rodrigo just gave her a look that said, He's lucky I love you.
Giana stepped forward, her boots silent on the old carpet.
She stopped three feet from Vincenzo's chair, close enough to see the burst blood vessels in his eyes and the ring on his right hand, a band of black iron set with a fire opal that seemed to pulse with an inner light.
The fingers beneath it were blackened and blistered, the skin cracked and weeping.
"The djinn ring," she said, gesturing to it. "Serapis taught you to use it, or did he only use you as a vessel during the attack?"
Vincenzo laughed, a wet, broken sound. "Used me.
Burned through me. Left me to cook from the inside out while he played his games with you.
" He held up his ruined hand, the movement making him wince.
"Can't get it off. The fucking thing is fused to me, and every time I try to remove it, the djinn screams. I can hear its voice in my head now, even in my dreams."
Giana felt no pity or satisfaction at his suffering. Just a cold hatred. "Do you know what I've been doing for the past twenty-seven hours, Vincenzo?"
He squinted at her with bloodshot eyes. "Fucking Rodrigo and his brothers, I assume. One big Colleoni gang bang."
Behind her, Dario made a disgusted sound. "I swear it's like he wants us to flay him at the gates. Do you still have Mama's filleting knife, Rodrigo?"
"I got one in the car if you need it," Athena said cheerfully.
Giana grinned and turned back to Vincenzo. "I've been dismantling everything you have and what you thought you would become."
She began to pace, circling his chair in measured steps.
"Your accounts, including the ones in the Caymans you thought no one knew about, have been emptied.
The funds have been redistributed to your victims. The families of the men you had killed and the businesses you extorted.
The women you…" She paused, let the silence fill with implication.
"Well, they've been compensated and then some. "
Vincenzo's face went pale beneath the flush of alcohol. "You were the one who did this to me…"
"As for your allies," Giana continued, "they have received detailed documentation of every time you betrayed them.
Every deal you broke. Every promise you made and discarded when it suited you.
The Calabrians know about the shipment you intercepted.
The Neapolitans know about the informant you planted. The Sicilian families know everything."
"You're lying." His voice cracked.
"Am I? Check your phone. Oh, wait, you can't. I bricked it. But I'm sure you've noticed how quiet it's been. How none of your 'friends' have returned your calls?"
She stopped in front of him, looking down at the wreck of a man who had once made her feel so powerless.
"The Falcone family's legacy, your grandfather's work, your father's sacrifices, everything they built, I've sent the documentation to Interpol, the Guardia di Finanza, and three rival families who have been waiting for an excuse to move on your territory.
By this time tomorrow, the Falcone name will be synonymous with failure. "
Vincenzo lurched forward in his chair, whiskey sloshing. "You bitch…"
"I'm not finished." The ice in Giana's voice had him pulling back.
"The recordings of every conversation you've had on a compromised line for the past three months.
Your tantrums. Your threats. That charming little speech you gave about how you were going to 'break' me…
I've distributed them across every underworld network I could access.
By now, half of Europe has heard you crying to your mother about how Rodrigo Colleoni stole me away and that he was going to try and kill you. "
Vincenzo's face contorted with rage and humiliation. He tried to rise, but his legs gave out, dumping him back into the chair.
Giana straightened, looking down at him with nothing but contempt.
"You wanted to own me and to reduce me to a bargaining chip, a trophy, a thing. Instead, all you gave me was the motivation to destroy everything you are. I'm not going to kill you, Vincenzo. That would be too quick. Too merciful."
She walked toward Rodrigo, toward the door, toward the life waiting for her outside this rotting mausoleum.
"Your debtors know where you are, and your enemies know you're defenseless. The people you've wronged know you're all alone." She paused at the threshold, not bothering to look back. "I'm leaving you to them."