Antonio leaned close to his brother and whispered, “This looks like we can’t handle our own business. We need to take control.”
Giovanni stalked over to the short inspector cowering next to the corner container and pointed a gun at his face. “Who paid you?”
“No one,” the terrified man replied. He pointed to his dead companions. “I overheard them talking about Sicilians. They forced me to come along so I wouldn’t tell you their plans.”
“Southern scum,” Giovanni cursed. “The Sicilians will never be what they once were.”
“Please!” the man yelled. “I tried to warn you.” His eyes flicked to Paul. “You heard me, right?”
Giovanni glanced at Paul questioningly.
The inspector was innocent, so Paul couldn’t let him die. Besides, if Paul saved him now, the man would owe him. A debt like that might save his life one day.
“We have an opportunity here,” Paul said, moving closer to the elder Grimaldi. “The man you bribed tried to kill you, and you had no clue about it.”
Giovanni flashed Paul a look of pure hatred, as if he might kill him for pointing out that he’d screwed up. Paul pushed on. “But if you let this man live, perhaps even promote him to the dead inspector’s position, you’ll have his loyalty. And he will always tell you who tries to betray you.” He looked the inspector in the eyes. “Isn’t that right?”
The man nodded vigorously.
Giovanni used the muzzle of the gun to inch the inspector’s head backward.
“He’s right, Giovanni,” Antonio said, moving next to him. “If we kill him, they’ll just find someone else. But if he lives, he’ll be ours.”
Mateo seemed to have lost interest in kicking the dead man, but anger still scoured his face. Antonio leaned close to his brother and whispered as he gestured to Mateo, “We need to make amends.”
Giovanni left the short inspector and headed back to the SUV. He opened the rear door and brought out a machete. He pushed Mateo aside and hacked the heads off both dead inspectors. It took several swings, and each blow made a wet crunching sound as it pushed through tendon and bone. Blood splattered Giovanni’s face and chest as he held up the heads and said, “We’ll send these to the Sicilians. They’ll know that any more attempts against us will end in their deaths.”
Mateo looked pleased and holstered his guns.
Paul glanced at Antonio. He looked dismayed, as if he would have handled things differently. Paul filed that away. Such information might prove useful later.
“We apologize for the inconvenience,” Antonio said to Mateo. “If you go to the nightclub ‘Myth,’ you’ll find anything and everything you want. We’ll join you later.”
“That is very kind. I look forward to it,” Mateo said, getting in his car. Mexican rap music thumped and boomed as he drove away.
Giovanni grabbed the short inspector’s nametag. “Alesso Vieri. If both of these containers aren’t ready for shipment tonight, you and your family are dead. Make sure no one asks questions.”
The man scrambled away.
When the inspector was out of earshot, Giovanni laughed. “I think he pissed himself.”
The brothers exchanged a look, and some silent communication passed between them. Antonio walked up to Paul and embraced him. “You saved my life. I owe you a debt. I won’t forget it.”
As he disengaged, he abruptly grabbed Paul’s gun.
Giovanni moved to the side and pointed his weapon at Paul’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Antonio said, grabbing a belt and a bloody shirt from one of the dead inspectors. “But there was something wrong about this deal.” He tied Paul’s hands with the belt and wrapped the bloody shirt around his eyes like a blindfold.
One of the Grimaldi brothers pressed the muzzle of a gun against Paul’s head.
Chapter Four
The brothers shoved Paul into what he assumed was their SUV. The door to his left slammed closed. Two other doors opened and the SUV bounced under the weight of the extra people. The engine revved, and the vehicle lurched forward.
“Where are we going?” Paul asked.
“You’ll see when we get there,” Giovanni said.
Judging by the way they turned out of the port, they were heading north, deeper into the Calabria Region, the Grimaldis’ home territory. That could be very bad. The Grimaldis had a secret place where they interrogated and killed informants.
Paul had always prided himself on planning for every possible outcome, but he hadn’t foreseen this. What were they doing? They needed his connections with Los Zetas. He was the only one who could broker the deals. Or so he’d thought.
Maybe someone had betrayed him. That constant fear lived in the back of every agent’s mind. You did everything right, but some corrupt bureaucrat took a bribe or didn’t secure their laptop, and suddenly the bad guys knew who you were.
Regardless of what might have happened, though, Paul was on his own, so he calmed his body and listened. The high-pitched pecks of someone rapidly texting rose above the rumble of cars passing them on both sides of the highway.
Paul rubbed his hands against the restraints biting into his wrists until the skin tore and bled making the retrains slick and easier to slip He ignore the pain.
About thirty minutes later, they turned onto an extremely bumpy road. They drove roughly another mile down this road before they finally stopped. The brothers then pulled him out of the car.
“This way,” Giovanni grumbled.
The first thing Paul noticed was the distant roar of port cranes unloading containers, and the next was the floury odor of low tide mixed with the salty air. He inferred they were on the water, most likely on the northern bank across from the port. But that was all he could determine before they hustled him indoors, across a number of creaky floorboards, and thrust him into a chair.
Someone yanked off the blindfold, and he blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings. Oil lamps hung on the walls, seeping weak light into the room. As his eyes adjusted, he glimpsed an antiquated office. Splotches of what looked like dried blood covered the wooden floorboards beneath his chair. Rusty, corrugated steel walls with old, grimy windows surrounded him. The salty smell of an ocean mixed with diesel fuel burned his nostrils.
Paul glanced out the windows at two covered docks on the far side of the huge waterside warehouse; they were the kind of docks that people used before the modern commercial ports were built. A single trawler lay moored at one of the docks. Four workers were unloading wooden crates while two more were separating the crates into organized piles.
An older gentleman, who’d been poking one of the workers with a golf club, noticed the trio inside the warehouse and casually walked over, swinging the club back and forth as if he was beating grass. As he entered the room, the Grimaldi brothers gave him a look of deep respect.
This was the father, the patriarch of the Grimaldis.
Paolo “Papa” Grimaldi was the first and only cousin of a leader in the Ndrangheta and had made his criminal fortune smuggling drug and weapon shipments into Italy. He was notorious for using a golf club to carve divots out of people’s heads when they displeased him. He was also rumored to have killed eighty people in his life—all with blunt instruments.
One thing Paul had learned about criminals was that dealing with them was very much like dealing with animals. If you showed fear or weakness, you’d end up at the bottom of the pack or eaten.
The older man spoke in a rural Italian dialect. “What are we to make of the fact that we were attacked the day before our big deal?”
He glanced at Antonio and Giovanni. Giovanni seemed to be gauging the men unloading the boat like a manager, while Antonio focused on Paul, as if he wanted to weigh his answer.
Paul hadn’t known anything about the betrayal, but he suspected Eric had organized it as part of his mission to persuade the Sicilians to kill the people who sold the Grimaldis their drugs, thus ensuring they’d use him as a middleman.
“The hazards of the business,” Paul replied. “From what I’ve heard, the Sicilians are trying to encroach on your territory.”
Antonio said, “It’s true, Father…”
Papa held up the golf club as if he was holding up a hand for his son to be quiet.
Antonio piped down.
“I want to hear it from him,” Papa said, prodding Paul’s shoulder with the golf club.
“I used my connection with Los Zetas to broker a deal. Their drugs for your money. You wanted to entice them to buy weapons from you, so you added a free shipment of weapons. I brokered that too. I relied on Los Zetas’ contacts to load the drugs, and your contacts to arrange the time and place for the exchange. I don’t know how the Sicilians found out about the deal. It wasn’t through me.”
That last part was a lie. Paul had told Eric the details of the exchange weeks ago.
Throughout his explanation, Papa prodded him in the shoulder with the golf club and stared into his eyes. Paul knew that if he screwed up, Papa would club his brains across the back wall without a moment’s hesitation
Still, Paul was irritated. He let a hint of sarcasm slip into his voice as he said, “Are you done treating me like a piñata?”
The old man smiled, poked him one last time, and swung the golf club in front of him. He then nodded to Antonio, who gave his own account of the story.
“Giovanni?” Papa prompted after Antonio finished.
Giovanni turned to the old man. “It’s as they say. I think the leak is somewhere on our side.”
“Response?” Papa said, gripping the club with both hands.
Antonio opened his mouth to speak, but when Papa looked at him, he closed it.
“We should kill five of their lieutenants,” Giovanni responded. “Send a message that we will not tolerate this.”
Papa slammed his club against the floor. “And what would that do?”
Giovanni looked puzzled.
Papa’s gaze shifted to Antonio.
“It would start a war,” the younger son said. “Business would be interrupted and we’d lose even more money…”
“Enough,” Papa said.
All three of them glanced at Paul. He guessed they didn’t want him to know how much money they’d lost to the Sicilians encroaching on their territory. Of course, he already knew. He and Eric had planned the whole thing.
Papa poked Giovanni with his club. “You must think. Be more cautious with your actions.”
“But we can be more than this!” Giovanni gestured to the docks. “When I’m head of this family, we will—”
Papa struck the floor with the club yet again. “Before you become the head of this family, you must come to understand the consequences of your actions!” He indicated the crates being unpacked. “Now, go make sure they’re sorting those correctly.”
Giovanni stormed off.
Papa turned back to Paul and asked, “Why diamonds?”
Antonio started to speak, but Papa raised his golf club.
“Money can be traced,” Paul said. “Banks have too many automatically generated records, and you can never pay off enough people to keep them all secret. Uncut diamonds have no serial numbers, the dealers can easily alter purchase records, and I know several dealers that will buy them without question. If a client wishes, for an added fee, I can sell the diamonds, get cash, and give that to my client. They can then launder the cash through bars, restaurants, or other businesses as cash sales. This way, they never get caught. And no matter what they do, the diamonds can’t be traced back to me or anyone that’s done business through me.”
Papa spent some time contemplating Paul’s answer, all the while swinging his golf club back and forth, as if the pendulum-like motion would decide Paul’s fate.
The sound of crashing waves heralded the docking of another trawler. Papa Grimaldi glanced at it, then nodded to Antonio and walked out the door.
As soon as the trawler was moored, Papa started dishing out orders, and a man led two dozen hooded and roped young women out of the hold and onto the warehouse floor. They looked young—too young—and Paul guessed their ages ranged from about eight to eighteen. Those who whimpered or cried out were immediately beaten.
“If they take off their hoods, kill them,” Papa said.
Chapter Five
As Paul stared at the chain gang of girls moving through the warehouse, he noticed the bruises on their legs and arms. The same bruises his mother had often sported. He thought about his mom crying after every beating, the sense of helplessness that emanated from her, and he had a burning urge to free these girls. If he did, however, the Grimaldis would easily figure out it was him. They’d cancel tomorrow’s deal, ruin Paul’s shot at taking the family down, and continue selling countless other girls into slavery.
It took every ounce of willpower Paul had to ignore the girls’ plight. He’d made compromises like this before, and each time, a piece of his soul died.
Papa returned and said, “We’ll continue with tomorrow’s deal. You have your buyer ready?”
“I do,” Paul said.
“Good. Antonio will tell you the time and place shortly before the meet-up. Be ready.”
“My buyer will want to know the location ahead of time so he can prepare.”
“No. Antonio will come pick you up, and then you can call your buyer and tell him where to go. All he needs to do before the exchange is get his money ready.”
“Why the precautions?”
“We won’t be the only ones there. I want to make sure this deal goes smoothly.”
The only other person Paul could imagine Papa inviting to the exchange was his cousin from the Ndrangheta. The one who fronted the money to buy the goods they’d sell to Eric. This was what Paul and Eric had been counting on as they carefully planned this operation for the past two years. If they captured this man, he could flip on the rest of the Ndrangheta leadership and they could take down the entire international organization, as opposed to just the Grimaldis.
“I’ll need to give my buyer more notice than that,” Paul tried again.
“No,” Papa said firmly. “He accepts my rules or the deal’s off.”
Those stipulations meant Paul and Eric couldn’t set up the tactical team in advance, and for a short period of time, they’d be alone and unguarded with the Grimaldis. All this assumed he could contact Eric.
Paul stared out at the chained girls again. While it hurt him deeply that he couldn’t save these girls, in the long run, his actions tomorrow could save countless others. No matter the danger to him, he had to make their sacrifice mean something. “All right. I think I can get him to agree.”
Papa nodded, satisfied, and left the warehouse.
“Now, we celebrate,” Antonio said as he untied Paul.
Paul thought of Portia, waiting for him. “Sorry, I can’t.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “We have to join Mateo and celebrate our new partnership.”
Paul stood and rubbed his wrists. “I have to prepare for tomorrow night.”
Antonio stared at him, suspicious. “No, you have to come with us. After tonight’s betrayal, if Mateo sees us all together, he’ll feel more comfortable dealing with us. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Antonio grabbed the bloody shirt. “Sorry about this,” he said as he tied it around Paul’s eyes again. The man still didn’t trust him. And not joining the brothers and Mateo at the club would only worsen their unease. If they were too suspicious of him, it could compromise the deal tomorrow night, and Paul couldn’t risk that.
He thought about how angry Portia would be when he didn’t show and hoped she wouldn’t do anything rash before he got to her place.
Chapter Six
Paul sat across from Mateo, Giovanni, and Antonio in a private lounge at the brothers’ club, Myth, drinking expensive champagne and liquor. Half-eaten dishes of various appetizers lay scattered around the bottles and glasses like wounded soldiers. Beautiful women sat next to each of them
. Mateo did a line of cocaine off the table and continued his story about their deal earlier.
“He came at me with a gun.” He pulled out his two large gold handguns in plain sight of all the club regulars on the nearby dance floor, but no one seemed to notice. “I shot him,” he said, as he imitated firing the flashy pistols, “and I killed him.” He mimicked the gyrations of a man being shot and fell back onto the couch cushion.
Holstering his weapons, he smiled at the women, then pointed to Paul and Antonio, his gold watch waggling on his wrist. “And then these two,” he continued, “pop up from behind a car and shoot the other one dead.” He laughed and showed a toothy grin, like he was doing Paul and Antonio a favor. “Watch out for these two. They are killers.”
The girls looked at them with desire in their eyes. They were mafia groupies, drawn to the sense of danger. Paul ignored their attention and sipped his liquor, wishing Mateo would shut the hell up so they could end this little get-together. He’d texted Portia, saying that he’d be home later, but she hadn’t texted back.
Paul glanced at Giovanni, who laughed raucously and slapped Mateo on the back, like he approved of retelling the story in the middle of a crowded club. Those two were fast becoming friends.
Antonio surveyed their group and raised one eyebrow at Paul, as if to say, Can you believe how careless they’re being?
He responded with an exasperated look.
Antonio’s eyes flicked behind him. Paul followed his gaze and saw four rough-looking men entering the club. They wore functional clothes: heavy shirts, outdoor jackets, and work pants, the opposite of the thin, expensive attire the rest of Myth’s patrons favored. They stood inside the front doors and scanned the club. One caught sight of their group, then gestured for the other three to follow.
The men moved directly toward their table, pushing past the gyrating dancers, looking like sharks cruising through a storm-tossed sea. Three of the men were unremarkable, but the fourth seemed oddly familiar to Paul. He had a beard and an English newsboy cap pulled low over his eyes.
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