Malavita (11 page)

“Dario!” When she saw the blood on his knuckles, she raced over and cradled his injured hand in hers. She flexed his fingers, watching him for signs of pain. He winced here and there, but didn’t try to withdraw the hand. “
Idiota
,” she murmured.

“You weren’t listening to me.”

“You have to hurt yourself to make your point?”

He said nothing for a long time. Then finally: “If you’re ever unhappy, if you ever want out of this marriage, say the word, and I’ll free you.”

She kissed his cheek. “
Mille
grazie
.” When he said nothing, she added, “I know this is hard on you, having me leave. But I’ll come visit. And you can visit me.”

His face darkened. “I’ll
never
step foot in that house again. Not after what they did to me.”

She found the stump of his missing finger and stroked it. “Think of what Papà did to
them
,” she whispered. “Think of that.”

He released her. “I have. They still shouldn’t have done it. Papà never would’ve gone so far if they hadn’t taken me.”

She let out a sigh. “Please try to find it in your heart to let it go, Dario.
Per favore
. For me.”

“I don’t forget, Toni. And I don’t forgive.”

He turned and got back in the car. She followed, her heart weeping for him, the way it always had. Her brother continually chose the hardest path. He was more like Papà than he’d ever believe, but she’d be wise to keep that to herself. Dario wouldn’t thank her for the observation.

Perhaps, in time, Dario would come to accept Enrico. But such acceptance would be a long time coming, if ever.

Now that he had the names and his plan with Dom in place, Enrico started his surveillance. His assignments were Luigi Gennaro and Leone Valentino. Because Gennaro lived in a relatively high-security apartment building in a fashionable section of Milan, Enrico concentrated on him first, even though he would be the last hit—the last hit and the most difficult one. Gennaro would be on alert by that time, and that alone would increase the danger and the complexity of the hit.

Enrico spent several days observing who entered and left Gennaro’s apartment building on Viale Monza. The residents appeared to be mostly single and mostly up-and-comers, but some were older people and couples with university-age children, which gave Enrico an idea for how he might get inside without a key to the outer door.

But first he needed to figure out who the manager was and whether that person was easy to fool. He was in the midst of buzzing each apartment and asking for the manager when a burly man in his mid-thirties came up and pulled out his key to unlock the front door. Enrico barely gave him a glance, but something about the man made him take another look.

Enrico had obtained an old mug shot of Gennaro from a
carabinieri
officer on the Lucchesi payroll, and something about this man looked familiar. When he noticed Enrico studying him, the man’s brows lowered, and he stepped close to Enrico, his face an ugly mask. “What are you looking at?” the man demanded.

It was
him
. Enrico’s heart started pounding. “Nothing,” he said and raised his hands up in the air, doing his best to make himself seem nonthreatening. He couldn’t help checking for the tell-tale bulge of a gun under Gennaro’s left armpit, and there it was.
Grazie a Dio
—he hadn’t worn one himself today. The man frisked him with his eyes, and Enrico prayed that Gennaro hadn’t noticed him do the same.

“What are you doing?” Gennaro asked.

“I lost my key to the front door.”

“You tried Signor Agrioli?”

That must be the manager. “He’s not in, and I can’t remember who the off-hours manager is.”

“Signora Passerini in 342.”

“
Grazie
.”

Gennaro inserted his key in the lock to the outer door, and Enrico was about to let out a sigh of relief when the man turned back to look at him. “Which apartment is yours?”

Merda
! Enrico spat out the last number he’d punched. “233.” Gennaro lived on the fourth floor, in 406; the odds were that he didn’t know the people on the second floor.

“So you’re Dottor Tossetti’s boy.”

Sweat broke out on Enrico’s forehead. That hadn’t been the last name beside the number—he
thought
. Hadn’t it been Laterza? Was the man testing him? He shook his head. “No,
signore
. My last name is Laterza.”

Gennaro smiled. “Welcome to the building.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Luigi Gennaro.”

Enrico shook the man’s hand and pasted a smile on his face. “Riccardo Laterza.”

Gennaro released his hand and opened up the door, ushering Enrico inside. As he passed in front of the man, Enrico’s stomach tightened. What if Gennaro knew that he’d lied? Would he even feel the muzzle of the gun as it jabbed in his back, or would it all be over before any of it registered?

A wide stone staircase next to a tiny wire-cage elevator stood across the lobby from the outer vestibule. Enrico headed for the staircase, while Gennaro went for the elevator. “
Ciao
!” Enrico called over his shoulder and waved as he started up the stairs. Gennaro returned the wave as he waited for the old elevator to descend to the ground floor, its gears wheezing in protest.

To his dismay, Enrico discovered that the building featured a central atrium with a glass roof. The apartments ringed the elevator shaft, and the staircase landing branched on each floor to form a gallery of sorts, off which each apartment had a door.

Unfortunately, from the elevator, Gennaro would be able to see Enrico and where he went.

The whole layout was horrible for hitting someone. Not only would he be visible to anyone in the elevator, he’d be visible to everyone on the floor, should they open their doors. And he’d be visible to at least some of the inhabitants of the upper floors as well, if they too happened to venture out and look down.

Merda
,
merda
,
merda
.

But first he had to avoid raising Gennaro’s hackles. He took his time walking the stairs, but the elevator hadn’t yet ascended past him as he reached the second floor. He approached 233 with trepidation, praying that Gennaro would pass him by before he reached it.

The elevator started clanking past, and Enrico willed himself to ignore it. To pretend he couldn’t feel Gennaro’s eyes on his back.

Enrico had just reached 233 when he risked a glance upward and saw the bottom of the elevator cage pass out of his sight. If he couldn’t see Gennaro, Gennaro couldn’t see him.

He waited a few seconds more, then raced back to the staircase and hurried down it, keeping his body pressed to the outer wall so he wouldn’t be visible from the elevator as he descended.

The elevator came to a halt above as Enrico reached the ground floor, and he sprinted for the outer door and slammed outside, startling a young woman with a child as he barreled past them and down the street.

He dashed into a
gelateria
on the corner and caught his breath. That had been close, too bloody close.

What were the odds that he’d have ever shaken hands with one of the monsters who’d shot his family?

And now that Gennaro had seen him, he’d recognize him. That made a difficult job even harder.

But not impossible. He’d just have to be smarter.

Smarter than a trained assassin.

What if he failed? What if he failed to kill Gennaro, Valentino, any of them? There were so many ways Enrico’s plan could go wrong. Such as bumping into Gennaro during his surveillance. So many ways he could die.

He’d been putting off telling Veronica the truth—that he wasn’t coming back any time soon. That he had to marry Antonella Andretti. But he owed Veronica the unvarnished truth. For once.

When he reached Cernobbio, he headed into town instead of going home. He parked near the main piazza and walked to the bank of payphones at one edge of it. He loaded the phone with coins and dialed Veronica’s number in London. It was early evening now, and he should have called Antonella earlier, should have made plans with her. But he’d been putting off talking to her too. Ever since he’d learned that he was trapped, he couldn’t face her. He liked her, yes, he was attracted to her, but he didn’t want to lose his son by marrying her. He didn’t want to give Nico up.

But he had to.

He listened to the phone ring, his finger hovering over the receiver’s cradle, tempted to end the call before it began. But Veronica answered with a tentative hello, and now it was too late.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Rico, is everything okay?”

He almost blurted it out, but that would be cruel. “I just… I missed you. The two of you,” he corrected himself. He didn’t want to give her the wrong impression about his feelings.

“We missed you too,” she said, and a quaver came into her voice. “When are you coming back?”

His throat constricted so painfully he could barely swallow. Ignoring the question, he said, “Is Nico awake? Can you put him on the line?”

“Of course he’s up. The phone woke him.” Nothing but irritation in her voice now. She smacked the phone onto a hard surface and left, muttering something he couldn’t make out, but whose content he could guess.

A minute or so later, she came back on. “Here he is.” Then to Nico: “It’s Papà, baby. Say hi.”

“Papà?”

The joy in Nico’s voice brought tears to Enrico’s eyes. “Papà is here, Nico.”

“Papà! Papà!” Nico happily burbled at him for several minutes, his words a tumbling, babbling mess that resembled speech only in its cadence. When Nico ran out of steam, Veronica took the phone.

“He misses you so much, Rico. He goes to the window or the front door sometimes and then he turns back to me and he says ‘Papà?’ It breaks my heart.”

A tear slipped down Enrico’s cheek and he quickly wiped it away. “I wish I could be there.”

“When, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Last time you said a month.”

His chest tightened. He had to tell her. “Veronica, I cannot get out of the marriage.”

“Oh God,” she said, her breath hitching. “You promised me, you said there was a chance—”

“I did not promise. I said I would try.”

“Just come back here and marry me. There’s nothing your father can do to stop you.”

“My family is in a precarious financial position. I have to marry her.”

“You’re not some eighteenth-century duke. You don’t have to marry for money.”

“I will come as soon as I can. It will have to be at least six weeks. There is the wedding, then the honeymoon—”

“Stop it!” she shrieked, and Nico started wailing. “Stop talking like it’s okay that you’re abandoning us. Abandoning
me
with a child. Do you know how hard it is to take care of him by myself?”

“Veronica, I am sorry. I do not have any choice.” He could hear his voice rising, and he took a deep breath. “Is your mum not helping? She always seemed to want to.”

“She offers. But…”

“But?”

“What if something happens?”

“Veronica, what is going to happen? Sharon raised you and your brother. She can handle Nico for a few hours. Or even a few days.” He heard Veronica’s breathing—fast, rapid, shallow. She was worked up, far too worked up. “Have you been sleeping?” he asked.

“A little.” Her voice broke. “I miss you so much. And every time I hear a noise, I think someone’s breaking in—”

“Shh. You are safe. Nico is safe.” He hummed a few bars of an Italian lullaby that he’d sung to her or to Nico when they hadn’t been able to sleep.

She sniffed back tears several times, then she said, “I’m okay. I’m just so tired.”

“I know.” Suddenly he felt drained, as if he’d never move again. “Please, call your mum. She would love to help. You know she would.”

“You’re right.” She sighed into the phone. “You
will
come back, won’t you? You’re not just telling me what I want to hear?”

“I will visit. I promise, Veronica.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said before hanging up without a goodbye.