Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Giovanni
“Don.”
Fabiano comes into the study without knocking. He is on the crutch still. The brace on his leg makes him slower than I am comfortable with. I am starting to get fed up. He crosses the room, sets a tablet on my desk, and turns it to face me before he speaks.
“You were right to ask.”
I am at the window with a cigarette I have not yet lit.
I asked for a full file on her three days ago.
It was immediately after she found Lucia, something I hadn’t planned for.
But I didn’t plan to have her in my bed or to enjoy taking her either.
A cascade of errors. Now, she knows about my only weakness, and with how eager she was to pitch help and make a deal that benefited Kirill, I knew I had to make a backup.
Kirill trained her to be his blade after all, and I let her into my home.
Kirill does not put any of his close staff on paper anywhere. It took Fabiano three days working with our men in the state’s database to get anything on her. Kirill already discovered and removed our men from his home. Information about him is harder to get, but not impossible.
I turn from the window, and I sit down behind the desk. I pull the tablet toward me.
“Show me.”
Fabiano taps the screen and turns it so we can both see.
The file is short. It’s a field surveillance photograph, three weeks old, taken in a city I recognize as Bratislava. A man in his late twenties is leaving an apartment building. Tall. The line of the jaw is not quite right but close. All I can clearly make out is dark hair and a thin frame.
Who is this? What does he have to do with her? Was this another man lurking at her side?
Fabiano says. “Kirill has six men on the ground in Bratislava. They have been working in the city for two months. Inquiring about a man matching this physical profile.”
He swipes, and another image appears — the same man at a cafe. Then a third image, closer, the face partially obscured by a hand holding a coffee cup to his mouth.
“The name?” I ask.
And who is he to her? But I decide not to be hasty with that question.
“Christov Volkov.”
I sit with it.
Christov.
She said the name in the study. I have a brother too.
I thought she was lying to get away from my wrath. I guess I was wrong, she does have a brother. A missing brother, Kirill, is helping her to find.
Is this why you’re so loyal to him? I think. It’s quite easy to buy your loyalty, huh?
I look at the photograph again.
“And Kirill is looking for him.”
“On her behalf, I would assume.”
I lean back in the chair.
I take the cigarette out of my mouth without lighting it, and I roll it between my fingers.
So, she had been telling the truth in the study. I do not know what to do with that.
I set the cigarette down on the edge of the desk.
“What else?”
Fabiano hesitates and swipes again. The screen changes to a different layout, a list of database queries, returns, and nulls.
“This is what bothers me, Don Mondi. We pulled every standard registry we have access to. Birth records, citizenship records, tax records, and records from three countries: Italy, America, and Russia. She has no entries. Not a single one.”
I look at him.
“None?”
“None in Russia. Not in any neighboring state. Not under that name, not under any of the seven alternate spellings we tried, not under any patronymic combination consistent with a Christov Volkov. She does not appear to exist.”
I stare at the screen.
“Il Pakhan tiene il suo guinzaglio molto stretto,” I say to myself.
The Pakhan keeps his leash very short.
She is invisible; she has no passport that traces back to a person, no birth certificate, so she has no past anyone can pull on. She is, in every sense, Kirill’s property. He can keep and do away with her as he pleases.
I feel my fingers clench at the thought of this, and Fabiano clears his throat.
“Don Mondi. May I speak?”
“You always speak.”
“With respect.” He shifts his weight on the crutch.
“I think we should let her go. Return her. Let Kirill keep his bodyguard, his secrets, and his Bratislava project. The port is not worth the chain you are putting around your own neck. Kirill is not going to yield easily, and the longer she is in this house, the more unpredictable it is.”
I look at him and hold the look. He is competent. He has always been competent. But this is about Lucia. With what Kirill has, I can earn enough quick money to keep her safe and pain-free for the rest of her life.
“I am taking the port,” I say. “If it means a war, I will have the war. If it means his death, I will have his death. If it means burning his house with him in it, his wife in his arms, and his child between them, I will do that too. Lucia’s treatment is not negotiable.
Kirill is the door to the doctor. The doctor is the door to my sister. I will pay any price that is asked.”
“Yes, Don.”
Kirill said one month. A week has passed; it won’t be long.
“After I have what I want,” I say, “you will get the seat you have been wanting for as long as I have been holding it.”
His face does not move. He is very good at his face. But there is a fraction of a second, just under the surface, where something flickers.
“I have no ambitions, Don Mondi.”
“Of course not.”
I close the tablet.
“Keep following Kirill’s people in Bratislava. I want a name. I want a photograph from the front. I want an address. I want to know who Christov works for, if anyone, and what he does with his days, and whether he knows his sister is alive.”
He nods and pivots on the crutch.
“Fabiano.”
“Yes, Don?”
“Tighten the security here — all of it. Double the men on the gate. Triple them on Lucia’s wing. Gag new men for the corridor outside her room. I want every name run again.”
“Yes, Don.”
“She knows about Lucia. She has not had time to tell anyone, but I am not going to assume Kirill does not have a way to find out. If she knows, he knows. Or he will soon.”
“I will see to it.”
“And one more thing.”
He turns again.
“The doctor in Palermo. The traditional physician.”
“Yes.”
“Have we made contact yet?”
“This morning. That is what I came to tell you before the file.”
“And?”
“He is as you described. He does not take new patients through normal means. The only known way to reach him is through art. He collects rare pieces. He likes it early modern, especially Italian. He grants five private consultations a year and only to collectors he meets at the largest international exhibitions.”
I take a long breath.
“Get me into any art show this season.”
“There is one in two months down here. The Biennale catalog is already finalized, but I can have us added.”
“Add us, whatever it costs.”
“Yes, Don.”
“And Fabiano.”
“Yes.”
“I attend as Giorgio Ferrante.”
“Understood.”
I light the cigarette.
He leaves, and the door closes. The room is quiet.
I sit at the desk and light my cigarette. She comes into my head again.
The image of her in the study three days ago, her back against the wall, and my gun under her jaw. Her hand wraps around the barrel of my gun, and she doesn’t pull it away, just holding it where it was. Her eyes on mine.
Then comes the image of her in the bed that night. Her mouth is swollen from mine. Her body is letting me in the way the rest of her would not.
“Perché mi sei nella testa, lupa russa?”
Why are you in my head, Russian wolf?
I exhale.
I have not been irrational about a woman since I was twenty-one.
She was a waitress in Catania, and I was, briefly, an idiot.
I taught myself out of it. I have not been irrational since.
The capacity for it has been carefully closed off.
But something has come open. I do not know how it opened, and most unnervingly, I do know that it is going to close.
She has loyalty. She has chosen Kirill in every decision she has made since walking into this house. She tried to negotiate for him while standing under my gun. She would have died for him in that study if I had been one degree less interested in her alive.
She is not mine.
She is on loan. I know what should happen. I know it well. There are two doors.
Door one: I return her to Kirill the moment the deal closes. I cut her loose. She goes back to her Pakhan. I will not see her again. I lose nothing. Lucia is treated. I step away from being Don, and life continues.
Door two: I get rid of her. After the deal is signed, Kirill has nothing to take back.
A clean removal, no body found, no story left behind.
She does not officially exist anywhere, so that I can feign confusion.
My story would be that I let her out, and heaven knows what danger befell her.
Kirill would know and would rage. But he would not be able to prove a thing.
He would not start a war over a bodyguard, even his bodyguard, even his most dangerous one.
He has a wife. He has a son. He has too many alliances to spend on her ghost.
I haven’t seen her in three days. I need to know where her head is.
I stand and go through the door.
“Fabiano.”
He turns back from the corridor, and he’s bent over, making a call.
“Send the Russian up. I want her in here.”
“Yes, Don.”
He goes.
I close the door and walk back to the desk.
I will tell her I know about her brother.
And then I will tell her how she will behave for the rest of her stay in this house.
I sit down behind the desk. I lay the tablet face down on the wood.
She moved me. I am willing to say it to myself. She moved me in a way no woman in my adult life has, and I do not know what to do with that.
I will play with her a little more — until a month is up — and then I’ll decide what to do with her. Which door to choose.
A knock comes, and I sit up subconsciously. She came quickly.
“Come in.”
The door opens, but it’s not her.
It is two of Lucia’s maids, with my Lucia in between them.