Chapter Forty-Three Tom #3
I nodded slowly. “Alex isn’t privy to his plan. Slava wants to bait the Camorra, attack you, seize the shipment, and get you arrested with the bodies still warm on the ground. Then he wants to go back to Vegas victorious, overthrow Alex, and conquer New York.”
Silence.
“You don’t seem surprised,” I said finally.
As if remembering he had a role to play, Luca tossed his head back, laughing at the ceiling. I waited for him to let it out of his system. He looked straight at me. “What happens if we don’t show up?”
“Well.” I laced my fingers together, sitting forward. “If you don’t show up, Slava will still be there, with his soldiers, his shipment, and his drugs. I’ll have no choice but to arrest them on those charges, of course.”
“Of course.” Luca grinned indulgently. “What’s the catch?”
“Arresting my own informant is verboten, so I’m going to have to arrest his men and somehow let him go. You’ll have to get rid of him for me before he opens his mouth.”
The implication of the words settled between us, a living, breathing thing.
The Camorra would have to kill Slava before he started complaining about what I’d done.
It’d still leave me to clean up the mess with Zeke, Sully, and rest of the FBI, who’d be asking questions, but it would eliminate the immediate threat of my being exposed as a dirty fed collaborating with the Camorra.
“Consider it done,” Luca said.
“Does this mean you’ll stick it out and not flee?” I studied him. “Despite Sofia.”
“Will the FBI finally get off our backs?”
“If I botch this operation, the case will be dead for a long time,” I admitted. “Years, at least.”
“I’ll stick it out, then. I’ll win Sofia back one way or the other.”
I applauded his newfound optimism, because from everything I’d seen, it didn’t look like his wife would agree to be in the same state with him, never mind house.
“Now can I ask a question?” he said.
“That you haven’t so far surprises me.” I leaned back in my seat.
“What’s in it for you? I tried to recruit you before. You said you were incorruptible.”
“I’m in love with your brother. And I plan on being with him. In the open. Marry him. Start a family with him.” If he’ll have me. “It’d be easier if his family accepts me.”
“Why should I believe that this is real and not another setup?” Luca furrowed his brow. “You just solved two of my three problems—the FBI and Bratva. When something seems too good to be true, it’s usually because it is.”
“I haven’t fixed your Bratva issue. My sources say Alex is pissed and eager to retaliate,” I pointed out. “But me and Enzo? It’s real.”
“Prove it.”
I raised my hand between us, showing him the bracelet Enzo had gifted me. I hadn’t taken it off once since our weekend at the lake house. Never would. I knew I’d be buried with it, too. It was a piece of my butterfly, and I wanted it with me at all times.
Luca closed his eyes, cursing softly in Italian.
“My brother…”
“Yes?”
“He is a romantic.”
“I know.”
“You break his heart, I break your spine. You understand me?”
“Clear as day.”
“You’ll treat him right.”
“The world will be his oyster. No happier man will ever walk this earth,” I promised.
“Then you have my blessing.”
“I didn’t ask for it, but thank you.” I frowned at the board, suddenly remembering I’d forgotten to ask Enzo the very question that’d most troubled me in the past three years I’d been working on the Ferrante case. “Luca?”
“Yes?”
“I know your father gave each of you a chess piece. You’re a king, Achilles is a knight. What is Enzo?”
He smiled at the chess pieces, lost in thought.
“A rook.” He brushed his fingers over the piece contemplatively. “Enzo’s role is defensive. He was not born to rule, but to govern. This is why he is the enforcer. His job, like the rook’s, is to protect the leadership. Put it behind robust walls.”
I sucked in a breath. I couldn’t believe I’d been idiotic enough to think the man who dedicated his life to guarding his family would actually take a plea deal and leave it behind. Even with all my love for him, I had still underestimated him.
“Where does it leave you, after we execute our plan?” Luca asked, flicking his Zippo open and shut with his thumb.
“Depends on how fast you can silence Slava,” I admitted. “Could be looking at prison time, or I could avoid the consequences altogether.”
For now. If I wanted to be with Enzo, which I did, I couldn’t keep my job and be with the Camorra’s enforcer. But I’d give up my career for him. Easiest sacrifice I’d ever have to make.
“Enzo will deal with Slava.” The corners of Luca’s lips tugged derisively. “It’s his call. He’ll kill him before the ship anchors.”
At the sound of his name, something tugged at my chest, unfurling and spreading warmth inside it. That he’d do something for me pleased me, even if it was murder. Moreover, I knew that he would follow through. That despite how things had ended, he would kill for those he loved.
And maybe he didn’t love me, but he loved Luca. He’d see this task through.
“Do not be at that port on Wednesday,” I said, standing. Luca remained seated.
“Rothwell…”
I stopped. Turned toward him.
“Now that you’ve switched sides, does this mean I can persuade you to work with the Camorra?”
My mouth tightened. I’d known Luca would ask this of me. It was only natural, since I had become a renegade. My loyalty was to Enzo now, and, by extension, to the Camorra.
“I can’t,” I said honestly. “On the off chance I’ll get to keep my job—a prospect I’m not hanging my hopes on—I couldn’t be with your brother in any real capacity and still keep working in this department. My days in the organized crime unit are numbered.”
“I’m not asking you to work for us from the inside; I’m asking you to keep your finger on the pulse while you pursue other ventures in the bureau.”
“If I stay in the bureau.”
He stared at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. I mulled it over.
“I don’t like you,” I admitted.
“Join the fucking club. My wife’s the president, by the way.” When he didn’t produce a smile out of me, he sighed. “Any reason in particular?”
“You’re unnecessarily cruel, and though you are loyal to your family, you are unpredictable and too deep inside your own world.”
“And yet I am your best option. If you work with me, I will make sure I bore the FBI to tears. I am the don, and it is my responsibility to take care of my people, my community, my legacy. I will never hurt innocents. This is not how I run my business.”
“A dictator seldom knows he’s a dictator; he thinks he is an idealist, and that the ends justify the means. You are your father’s son, Luca.”
“His son, yes. His carbon copy, no. The sins of the father are not visited upon his children, Rothwell. Not in this case. Know how I know?”
“How?”
“You fell madly in love with one of them.”
I smiled, then, pleased with his ingenious logic. He was very rational indeed. It was probably what had driven his wife away.
“Give it a think,” Luca coaxed. “I’ll make you and your future husband very rich.
Very happy, too. And remember—I am the moral choice.
By helping me stay in power, you’ll do the world good.
If not me, then Achilles. And if Achilles runs the show, these streets will be filled with rivers of blood.
There are not enough coroners in the state to handle my brother’s insatiable brutality. ”
“If I strike a deal with you, I want your word that no innocents will be harmed under your rule.”
“You have my word,” Luca said. “I am the lesser evil.”
“Still evil.”
“Monsters deserve to live, too. We’re a part of the ecosystem.”
“How so?”
“We devour one another, doing some of your work for you.”
I thought about what Slava had said about gods and mortals. How they did not mix.
Perhaps they did not. But I would gladly become a human sacrifice to save my deity.
“Goodbye, Luca,” I said.
“Arrivederci, Tom.” It was the first time he didn’t call me Agent Rothwell.
I slid into the shadows of the night, making my way to my apartment.
We’d never finished the game.
But somehow, still, I’d won.