Chapter Fifteen #2
Surveillance doesn’t require access. Only patience, distance, and a clear line of sight.
By the second morning, we have found unfamiliar vehicles near two of our businesses and a man watching Angela’s preferred market from a coffee shop across the street.
We pick him up.
He has no identification, no weapon, and nothing on his phone except a collection of photographs he has already sent somewhere else.
He refuses to speak.
Mikhailov still doesn’t call.
The waiting becomes deliberate.
Lucia notices that I check the windows when she crosses a room. She notices that Armando has missed two meals and that the same car follows Angela when she goes to the market.
“Is something wrong?” she asks when she finds me in the conservatory late that afternoon.
Sunlight filters through the glass and catches in her hair. Cut roses are spread across the table between us, their stems leaving trails of water on the wood.
“We’re reviewing security.”
Her eyes narrow.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
“Does this have something to do with Gio and me going into the city?”
She is too observant.
“No one followed you home.”
“That also isn’t an answer.”
I look at her.
If I tell her Petrov saw her, whatever safety she has found here will disappear. She will return to watching the hedges. She will listen for engines outside her window and wonder whether every sound in the night belongs to Mikhailov.
I won’t give that back to him until I have to.
“We’re taking precautions,” I say.
She searches my face, clearly dissatisfied.
Then Angela enters carrying another basket, and the moment passes.
At eight forty that evening, my phone rings.
Blocked number.
Armando and I look at each other across my office.
Two days.
Long enough to identify the people attached to us. Long enough to follow them, photograph them, and learn their routines.
I answer.
“Catenzio.”
Viktor Mikhailov’s voice reaches me across the line.
“I believe we have something to discuss.”
I say nothing.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
I don’t even pretend not to know what he’s talking about.
“She’s a person, not a belonging.”
“I want her back.”
“She doesn’t want to come back.”
Armando’s eyes narrow.
“You will meet with me to discuss terms.”
“I’m listening.”
“Not over the telephone.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Ten o’clock.”
“Where?”
“Vesuvio.”
My restaurant.
A deliberate insult.
“You have a private dining room, I’m told.”
“You’ve used it.”
“Then you’ll remember the way.”
The call ends.
Armando exhales.
“He waited two days.”
“He was working.”
“Doing what?”
I think of the sedan near Dario’s sister’s house. The camera outside the school. The photographs already sent from the man’s phone.
“Preparing.”
“What do you want to do?”
Lucia’s voice carries faintly from somewhere down the hall. She’s laughing at something Gio says.
“Tell Gio I need to see him.”
Armando disappears into the hallway.
Gio enters five minutes later and closes the door behind him.
“Did Mikhailov call?”
“Ten o’clock at Vesuvio.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
My response is immediate.
“Marco.”
“You’re staying here.”
“You don’t walk into a meeting with him alone.”
“Armando will be with me.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I know.
We twins have always been poor at pretending one of us is expendable.
“If he wanted me dead, he wouldn’t request a meeting at Vesuvio.”
“He might if he wanted the restaurant burned with you inside it.”
“Then you’ll inherit the insurance payment.”
“This isn’t funny.”
No. It isn’t.
Gio moves closer to the desk.
“What has he been doing for two days?”
“I intend to ask.”
“We said we’d fight.”
“I remember.”
“Then don’t agree to anything without talking to me.”
I hold his gaze.
“I won’t.”
It isn’t a lie.
I don’t intend to agree to anything tonight.
#
At ten o'clock, I enter the private dining room at Vesuvio.
The restaurant has closed the adjoining section early. No music reaches the room tonight, and no ordinary diners sit close enough to overhear. The table has been cleared except for a carafe of water and Mikhailov’s glass.
Armando remains outside with four of our men.
Mikhailov has brought Petrov and twice that number.
Neutral meetings are rarely neutral.
He sits at the same table Lucia fled a month ago. A glass of vodka waits near his hand, and his tailored black jacket remains buttoned despite the warmth of the room.
Yevgeny occupies the chair to his right.
The viper at his left temple appears to bare its fangs when his mouth curves into a smile.
“Marco Catenzio.”
I take the chair across from Viktor.
“Mikhailov.”
His gaze moves toward the empty seat beside me.
“Your brother didn’t join us?”
“You asked for me.”
“A shame. Yevgeny tells me he and my niece have become close.”
I look at Yevgeny.
He smiles.
“Lunch,” he says. “A bookstore. Very domestic.”
“Following my brother through Boston is a dangerous hobby.”
“Walking around with stolen property is more dangerous.”
“We’ve discussed this. Lucia isn’t property.”
Viktor lifts his glass.
“She is my family.”
“And she left your house voluntarily.”
“She was confused.”
“It sounds like she was imprisoned.”
His expression cools.
“She was protected.”
“I’ve heard that word used creatively before.”
Viktor drinks.
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“In your bed?”
The question is designed to provoke me.
I let it pass.
“No.”
“Your brother’s, then?”
Yevgeny laughs beneath his breath.
I look at him.
He stops.
Viktor folds his hands on the table.
“You will return her.”
“No.”
The word settles between us.
He appears unsurprised.
“You don’t understand the situation.”
“I understand it well enough. Lucia is twenty-three years old. She left your house and chose not to return.”
“She doesn’t know what is best for her.”
“Neither do you.”
His eyes harden.
“I have been responsible for her since Dmitri placed her in my care.”
“You kept her in a locked bedroom.”
“I kept her alive.”
I lean back.
“Name a price.”
Yevgeny shifts, but Viktor remains still.
“You think you can buy my niece?”
“I think money is the only relationship you respect.”
“You insult me in your own restaurant.”
“I’m trying to avoid wasting time.”
The corner of his mouth tightens.
“What are you offering?”
“Her trust remains hers.”
“Then you have nothing I want.”
“I can compensate you for whatever you expected to take from it.”
“The Rossi holdings belong under my control.”
“They belong to Lucia.”
“Maria’s father owed my family.”
“Carlo Rossi is dead. So is the debt.”
“Debts survive.”
“People don’t.”
Yevgeny leans forward.
I don’t look at him.
Viktor studies me.
“You’re prepared to go to war over a woman you barely know?”
“No.”
A hint of satisfaction enters his expression.
“I’m prepared to go to war over the right of anyone under my protection to make their own decisions.”
“You always did inherit your father’s sentimentality.”
“My father would have shot you by now.”
“He considered it once.”
“I’m beginning to understand why.”
Viktor lifts one hand.
Yevgeny places a large envelope on the table and slides it toward me.
I look at it.
Two days of silence.
Two days of cars outside homes, cameras across from schools, and strangers following women who have nothing to do with Lucia.
“What is that?”
“An explanation.”
I open the envelope.
Photographs spill onto the table.
Angela leaving the market yesterday morning, one canvas bag held against her hip.
Dario outside his sister’s house.
Armando walking beside his mother.
Bruno’s granddaughter climbing the steps of her art school, her drawing case strapped across her back.
My blood turns cold.
The final photograph shows a teenage girl with pale eyes and blonde hair entering a car outside Dmitri’s house. A canvas tote hangs from one shoulder.
I know her from Lucia’s file.
Aniya Mikhailova.
Lucia’s half-sister.
I lift my gaze.
Viktor watches me.
“You’ve been busy.”
“I value preparedness.”
“You’re threatening children now?”
“I’m reminding you that war spreads beyond the men who declare it.”
I place Aniya’s photograph on top.
“Where is she?”
“With her father.”
The answer is too easy.
Dmitri and Aniya were both home when our men checked yesterday morning. Neither has been seen since.
“Dmitri’s house is empty.”
Viktor smiles.
“You’ve been busy too.”
“Where are they?”
“Safe.”
The word is deliberate.
“What does Aniya have to do with Lucia?” I ask.
“Lucia has always been fond of her sister.”
“So you’ll hurt one to control the other.”
“I won’t need to.”
Viktor reaches for his vodka.
“Lucia will return when she understands the consequences of refusing.”
I imagine telling her.
A younger sister she hasn’t seen in six years, taken from the only home she knows because Lucia escaped hers.
Lucia would volunteer before I finished explaining.
Viktor knows it.
So do I.
“Give me Aniya,” I say. “I’ll pay you the full value of the Rossi holdings.”
“I already have the means to obtain them once Lucia is home. Why would I trade leverage for money?”
“Because money doesn’t start wars.”
His gaze holds mine.
“Neither does returning what you stole.”
“She came to me.”
“And now you will bring her back.”
“No.”
The answer costs more this time.
Viktor empties his glass.
“Forty-eight hours.”
“Or what?”
His eyes drop to the photographs.
“Or the people who serve you will learn what their loyalty costs.”
I gather the pictures and return them to the envelope.
“If anyone in these photographs is harmed, there will be nowhere you can hide.”
“Then we understand one another.”
I stand.
Yevgeny rises with me.
Viktor remains seated.
“Forty-eight hours, Marco.”
I carry the envelope out of the room.
Armando sees my face and asks no questions until we’re inside the car.
“What did he say?”
I hand him the envelope.
He examines the photographs one by one. The light from the dashboard moves across his face.
His expression changes when he reaches his mother.
“I want to double the protection on every person in those pictures,” I say. “Tonight.”
He reaches Aniya.
“Find her.”
“And if we can’t?”
I look through the window at Vesuvio. Its gold lettering hangs above the entrance, unchanged despite everything that happened inside.
“Find her.”
#