Chapter 9
Salvatore
Iwanted to start my life as Yelena’s Daddy straight away, but unfortunately, business got in the way.
And by business, I meant that Yelena wanted to check in with her brother.
By eight the next morning—even though he was on a plane—Yelena had made Kiryl turn in a slow circle twice, lift both sleeves, show the backs of his hands, and tilt his face toward the camera so she could inspect his jaw.
“Closer,” she ordered.
Kiryl leaned toward the secure tablet. He sat in the rear cabin of a plane over the Atlantic, wrapped in an airline blanket and wearing the expression of a young man who had survived his first fight and already regretted telling his older sister about it.
“Other side.”
“Lena.”
“Other side, Kiryusha.”
He obeyed.
There was a faint red mark near his temple. No swelling. No split skin. His pupils appeared equal. His hands shook slightly when he held them toward the camera, but there was no blood under the nails and no bruising across the knuckles.
“You were in a fight.”
“Tonio was in a fight. I participated with equipment.”
From somewhere else on the plane, Tonio shouted, “He was a natural.”
Yelena’s pale eyes cut toward him.
Tonio took a bite of pastry and became deeply interested in chewing.
“Did anyone restrain you?” she asked Kiryl.
“No.”
“Inject you?”
“No.”
“Give you pills?”
“No.”
“Did you eat?”
“On the plane.”
“What?”
Kiryl looked trapped.
“What did you eat?”
I understood the problem. He knew this was a test and had no idea what answer passed.
“Eggs,” he said finally. “Bread. Coffee.”
“Water?”
“Yes.”
“Show me the bottle.”
He held up a half-empty bottle. Only then did her shoulders lower. It was less than an inch. Nobody who had not spent days watching her would have noticed. I did.
She had been sitting rigidly at the dining table since the call connected, one bare foot hooked around the chair leg. Now she released it. Her fingers loosened around the edge of the tablet.
“You’re sure you’re safe?” Kiryl asked.
Her gaze flicked to me.
“I’m safe,” she said.
It landed harder than it should have.
Kiryl caught the glance. His nervous smile turned knowing.
She almost laughed. Her mouth moved, then steadied.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” she said. “Do exactly what they tell you until then.”
“Even Tonio?”
“No. Use judgment with Tonio.”
Tonio entered the shot, put one hand over his heart.
The call ended.
Yelena kept looking at the blank screen for a few seconds. Then she placed it carefully on the table.
The frightened sister disappeared. Not completely. I had learned enough about her by then to know nothing in Yelena disappeared. It went behind armor and waited.
But when Angela turned the wall display to Gianni’s Northbridge records, Yelena straightened and became the pakhan’s daughter again.
Pietro sat next to Angela, silent and watchful. Tonio leaned against the kitchen island with coffee. I stood at the head of the table.
“Gianni began offering money for Yelena’s location six hours after the convoy interception,” Angela said. “He used two intermediaries. One Russian, one attached to Northbridge.”
“How much?” Yelena asked.
“Two hundred thousand for a confirmed sighting. Five hundred for an address.”
“How does he have the fucking money?” Pitero asked.
“He doesn’t,” Angela repllied. “He’ll get her back, seal the marriage, then use his new business to generate the cash.”
“I think he’s worried.” Yelena said.
Angela glanced at her. “That was my conclusion.”
“No,” Pietro countered. “If he were angry, he’d offer one million and make sure everyone knew. Two hundred means he wants volume. Hundreds of cheap reports. He doesn’t trust the people searching.”
Pietro’s eyes shifted to me.
Angela brought up a network diagram. “Northbridge’s tracking system has access to fleet GPS, private aviation bookings, toll records, and several commercial security accounts. It began checking Caruso properties yesterday.”
“Which properties?” I asked.
“Chicago first. Nero. The carriage house. Caruso’s. Dante’s building. Then shell-owned apartments and garages.”
The Astor Street penthouse was held through three layers of companies, but so were several places Gianni had known in Sicily. He understood how our family hid property.
“How close?” I asked.
“Not close enough,” Angela said. “Yet.”
“We take the dispatch office tonight,” Pietro said. “Physical access. Angela enters through the central account while we’re inside.”
“No deaths,” I said.
Tonio sighed. “You take all the joy out of work.”
“You complain when I permit deaths too.”
“Only because I like consistency.”
“What you like is complaining.”
“And I’m completely consistent with that.”
Yelena rose and came around the table. She stopped beside Angela, reading the authorization screen.
“That code is wrong,” she said.
Angela looked up. “It was pulled from a current login.”
“It’s a decoy account.”
She reached for the keyboard, then stopped before touching it. Angela moved the laptop toward her.
Yelena typed six digits.
“Gianni uses his mother’s death date for personal devices,” she said. “He thinks grief makes a password sacred.”
The screen refreshed.
A deeper set of folders appeared.
Tonio whistled.
Yelena pointed to the symbols beside the files. “Red triangle means immediate movement. Black square means financial exposure. A circle means information from somebody he doubts. Two circles mean he intends to verify it personally.”
A row of Caruso properties carried red triangles.
“What does the crown mean?” Pietro asked.
Her face became still.
“Family blood.”
My attention sharpened.
“Target or protection?”
“With Gianni?” she said. “Both.”
She spent the next twenty minutes translating the logic of a man she despised. Not merely language. Ego. Habit. Fear. She showed Angela where he buried false numbers and explained that Gianni marked his most dangerous operations as resolved because he disliked seeing unfinished work.
She was magnificent.
That was the only word for it.
She had been crying in my arms hours earlier. Now she dismantled her intended husband’s intelligence system with a cup of hot chocolate near her elbow and no mercy in her voice.
When the briefing ended, Pietro and Angela left for the carriage house. Tonio followed, carrying enough food for an army and complaining nobody respected logistics when they involved sandwiches.
The door closed.
Yelena remained by the table. Morning light caught the loose strands of her hair. She wore black trousers and a cream sweater. No diamonds. No symbols of ownership.
The agreement lay folded in my inside pocket.
“Yelena.”
She looked at me.
“Do you want the agreement active today?”
Her gaze dropped briefly to my pocket, as if she knew where I carried it. “Yes. I thought it was always active.”
“I need the whole answer.”
Color touched her throat. The formidable operator shifted, not vanishing but letting another part step forward.
“Yes, Daddy.”
The title hit me somewhere deep in the chest, and further down, too.
Desire went through me, but something heavier followed it. Responsibility. The knowledge that she had placed a vulnerable thing in my hands and expected me not to close my fist. Daddy did not mean owner.
It meant I ate after she ate. Slept after she slept. Watched the doors so she did not have to. Held every boundary even when she hated me for it.
Gianni was hunting her.
That fact stood behind everything.
I held out my hand.
She came to me and placed hers in it.
“Then breakfast first, little one,” I said. “After that, we go to work.”
She rolled her eyes.
But she followed.
Ilearned her rhythms in pieces. Every morning began with Kiryl. Yelena never told him she worried. She simply demanded evidence that he was alive. Camera on. Sleeves up. Breakfast described. Location confirmed without naming it.
Kiryl submitted with the patience of somebody who understood he was loved and the guilt of somebody beginning to understand the price she had paid for him.
After the call, she worked.
In business she was always Yelena.
Not little one. Not sweetheart. Never good girl as a method of winning an argument.
She sat beside Angela with spreadsheets reflected in her pale eyes and tore holes in every assumption we made.
“You’ve classified that payment as transport,” she told me the second afternoon.
“It went to a freight company.”
“It went through a freight company. It paid a judge.”
“Evidence?”
“The amount? It’s so large.”
“That is not evidence.”
“It’s vulgar.”
“Maybe, but it’s not evidence.”
She turned the laptop toward me. “Gianni pays labor in round numbers. Politicians get amounts ending in eighty. Police get forty. Judges get twelve because he once heard twelve was lucky in court.”
Angela searched six prior transfers. All six payments ending in twelve led toward legal firms or judicial charities.
Yelena leaned back. “Now that, is evidence.”
I looked at her.
She lifted one eyebrow. “You may say I was right. If you like. It won’t hurt.”
“You were right.”
“Try sounding less devastated.”
“I’m Sicilian. We suffer beautifully. It’s a big skill of ours.”
She laughed five seconds later. I treasured every one of those delayed laughs.
In private, the rhythm changed, although not all at once.
The first time I set lunch in front of her, she looked at the soup as if I had delivered a subpoena.
“I’m working.”
“No, Little One, you’re eating.”
“I can do both.”
“You’ve tried. The spoon has been in your hand for three minutes.”
She looked down.
The spoon was in fact suspended above the bowl.
“I hate surveillance. It’s like living in a police state.”
“Eat.”
She ate.
The first time I reminded her to drink water, she sighed loudly enough for Olimpo to lift his head from the carpet.
“This is tyranny.”
“It’s a glass.”
“Today, a glass. Tomorrow, collectivization.”
“Drink.”
She drank while glaring at me over the rim.
“Good girl.”
Her throat moved around the water.
That evening she sat on the floor with a coloring book Angela had brought and a box of pencils arranged by shade. The picture was a forest scene. Yelena colored every leaf black.