Wicked Intentions: The Wicked Games Series, Book 3

by Geissinger, J. T.

  His lips curve upward. “Mari. You made it.”

  His gaze flicks over me, taking in my tangled hair, rumpled clothing, and bare feet. “Though worse for wear, it would appear.” His gaze slices to the three assassins, who’ve taken up positions against the wall to my left and stand with hands clasped behind their backs, faces impassive.

  He wanders across the room, in no particular hurry, stopping midway to inspect a bowl of green grapes set out on a glass coffee table. He selects a few, then continues toward me, popping a grape into his mouth.

  My hands shake so hard with the urge to curl around his throat that I have to flex them open to get them to stop.

  When Capo’s within arm’s reach, he pauses. He lifts his chin at the manservant, who bows and silently backs from the room, closing the doors behind him. Then he stands looking at me for a while, obviously relishing the moment.

  “Were you treated well by my men?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  A fleeting frown crosses his face. I can’t decide if it’s irritation or something else.

  “I asked you a question, Mariana. Answer it.”

  It serves no point to bicker or refuse, so I do as he instructs and glance at the row of assassins behind me. I point at the one closest. “That one called me a bitch and hurt my arm.” I point at the one on the other end. “And that one said he wanted first dibs on me.”

  In the middle of bringing a grape to his mouth, Capo pauses. He looks at the men. “Santino. Fabrizio. Is this true?”

  Neither man hesitates to answer. In unison, they say, “Si, Capo.”

  In the next instant, Capo pulls a silver handgun from under his jacket and fires off two rounds, one in each of the assassin’s foreheads. Blood and brain matter splatter the wall in a lurid, chunky pattern of red.

  I jump and scream as the assassins crumple to the ground.

  “What about Salvatore?” Capo calmly asks, casually waving the gun at the assassin who’s still standing. “Did he behave?”

  Salvatore hasn’t moved, not even to look at the bodies of his compatriots on the floor. Blood—not his own—drips down his cheek.

  “H-he didn’t do anything,” I whisper, my stomach violently churning.

  “Good.” Capo slides the pistol back into its holster inside his jacket and pops the grape into his mouth.

  I manage to make it to a wastebasket near the potted palm to my right before I vomit.

  In between heaves, I catch a glimpse of a small, round object at the bottom of the trash can, glinting metallically among the putrid yellow bile.

  Thirty

  Mariana

  “All right now,” Capo says in a soothing voice, gently patting my shoulder. “Take it easy. Just breathe.”

  I rock back to my heels, wipe the back of my hand across my mouth. “Don’t touch me!” I say hoarsely.

  His sigh sounds disappointed. “Oh, Mari. You always were a bleeding heart. So easy to hurt. So quick to love.” His voice changes, hardens somehow. “That was your downfall, you know.”

  My downfall? What’s he talking about? I stagger to my feet, shrugging off his hand in disgust and contempt, and turn to look at him, keeping my gaze off the floor and the widening pools of red around the lifeless bodies. “I’ve brought the diamond. Where’s Reynard?”

  Capo gazes at me for a long time, a strange, probing expression in his eyes that’s especially unnerving because it’s a look I don’t recognize. Without glancing away from me, he instructs Salvatore to leave us alone.

  “Si, Capo.” Salvatore ignores the bodies on the floor and exits through the mahogany doors as if nothing is amiss.

  Maybe it isn’t. Maybe this is situation normal and bodies aboard the Sea Fox drop like flies.

  Something about the name of the yacht bothers me, but I’ve got bigger problems to think about. When Capo just stands there staring at me, I ask again. “Where is he?” A touch of hysteria raises my voice.

  Capo wordlessly holds out his hand and makes a “give me” gesture. I pull the Hope from the pocket of my hoodie where I’ve been carrying it and set it into his open palm.

  He looks down at it. “What’s on it?” he asks with a curled lip.

  “Dried milk.”

  He cocks one dark brow at me and waits for more of an explanation. When it doesn’t come, he shrugs, removes a jeweler’s loupe from under his coat, then holds the diamond up to the light and peers at it through the magnifier. Satisfied, he makes a low sound in his throat.

  He pulls a silk handkerchief from another pocket, wraps the diamond in it, and returns it to his pocket. “Have you ever wondered, Mariana,” he asks thoughtfully, “what stayed my hand all these years?”

  His eyes are dark brown, like mine, only his reflect no glimmer of light or mercy.

  “Stayed your hand?” I repeat in confusion, resisting a primal urge to back up.

  Haltingly, as if he can’t help himself, he reaches out and touches my hair. I notice his hand is slightly trembling. Now there is a light in his eyes, but it’s got nothing to do with mercy.

  “From what I’ve always wanted,” he whispers. “From what I’ve always really wanted from you.” His fingers tighten around a strand and pull.

  My swallow is a loud gulp. The taste of vomit is sharp in my mouth, stinging the back of my throat. There’s a rancid stench in my nose I can’t get rid of. I jerk my head to free my hair, but he doesn’t let go, and so several strands are torn from the root. He stands there gazing at them in a weird kind of fascination while I curse and press a hand to my stinging scalp.

  “Where is Reynard?” I say loudly, hanging on to my control by the slimmest of threads.

  “Where I’ve always been, my darling,” says a familiar voice to my right. “Wherever you needed me.”

  I whip my head around. There he stands in his typical blue suit, smiling his typical warm smile, healthy and whole, not a mark on him.

  “Reynard!” I sob in relief and fly into his outstretched arms, slamming into him so hard, he staggers back a few steps.

  Chuckling, he holds me tight against his chest, rocking me and reassuring me he’s all right, everything is all right, everything is going to be so much better from now on.

  Only his words are wrong, all wrong, so wrong that my sweet relief quickly turns to bitter, choking ashes in my mouth.

  Because the words he speaks are in Italian.

  A language Reynard doesn’t know.

  I pull away abruptly and stare at his face. His smiling, uninjured face.

  The Sea Fox.

  Reynard, who borrowed his name from the trickster fox from medieval fables.

  Reynard…the fox.

  “No,” I whisper in blossoming horror.

  Reynard cradles my face in his hands. “What was the most valuable lesson I taught you, my darling?” he asks gently. “The one lesson you never could have eluded your enemies without?”

  The answer burbles up from inside me on a wave of dizziness that almost makes me fall. “Disguise.”

  Reynard nods slowly, holding my gaze, the meaning in his eyes unmistakable, and all that I am or ever thought I was is gone with an intake of breath.

  I push him away, screaming, “NO!”

  “I told you she’d overreact,” Capo says, moving around me to stand beside Reynard. Standing next to each other like that, looking at me with identical expressions of calm inevitability, the resemblance is clear.

  If I hadn’t just regurgitated the contents of my stomach, I’d do it now.

  “Impossible. Impossible.” I keep repeating it in a ragged whisper as I back away, my mind going a million miles per hour in a desperate quest to make sense of this insanity.

  Reynard takes a step toward me. “Mariana—”

  “You saved me from him!” I scream, pointing at Capo.

  “Yes,” he replies calmly. “I did. Were it not for me, you’d have been chewed up and spit out years ago, like all the others. Like your sister would’ve b
een, had she not taken her own life.”

  The tears are coming now. I can’t stop them, or the ugly way my voice breaks, betrayal and disbelief warping my words as they’re coursing like poison through my body. “This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. You raised me like your own daughter!”

  Reynard nods, and his eyes are kind. “I always wanted a daughter. My wife died giving birth to our only child.”

  He lifts his hand and rests it on Capo’s shoulder.

  The sound I make is one of pure anguish, ripping from my throat the way my heart is being ripped right out of my chest. I stagger backward, my hands pressed to my ears, shaking my head and sobbing.

  Aroused by my distress, Capo licks his lips. He takes a step forward, but Reynard stops him with an arm held out over Capo’s chest.

  “Have you ever wondered what stayed my hand all these years?”

  Here, then, is the answer.

  Reynard, who isn’t Reynard, but Vincent Moreno’s father, the real capo di tutti capi, boss of all bosses. He’s the head of the snake, the power behind the throne, the secret leader of an international empire of human and drug trafficking. A master of disguise and the man I have loved my entire life.

  The man responsible for my sister’s death and oceans of human suffering.

  Tears stream down my cheeks, blurring my vision and dripping from my jaw. My chest heaves with my hitching breaths. I’m hot and cold, sick with rage and heartbreak, everything inside me screaming NO! straight down to the marrow of my bones.

  I bump against the glass coffee table with the bowl of grapes. I pick up the bowl—it’s crystal, heavy—and hurl it at Reynard with a guttural roar of pain.

  He and Capo jump aside, easily avoiding the bowl and the flying grapes. With a crash, it shatters into a million glinting splinters on the marble floor. Reynard sighs as if I’m testing his patience. “I want you to listen to me now, Mariana—”

  “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you save me and raise me and pretend to love me?”

  He blinks at my screamed accusation, genuinely surprised. “I do love you, my darling. I’ve always loved you, from the moment you were dropped at my feet. You looked up at me with those huge brown eyes like I was a god, like I was your savior, and I was moved. I’d never felt a thing for any of the other girls in my stable, but you touched me.”

  When I groan at the way he refers to his victims as stock—like horses, only less valuable—his expression hardens.

  “Your problem, my darling—aside from a ridiculous sentimental streak I was never able to train out of you despite my determined efforts—is that you think only in terms of black and white. Good and bad. People aren’t black or white, and neither is life. It’s like the title of that book, Fifty Shades of Grey. Everything is a sliding scale of gray, some paler, some darker, but nothing pitch black or pure white. Those extremes don’t exist, except in your mind. Take me, for example. Haven’t I cared for you? Haven’t I shown you love, given you skills, a job, a life?”

  “Lies,” I whisper, breaking apart, piece by jagged piece. “All of it was lies.”

  “No,” he says firmly, shaking his head. “It was real. And when you get over this little shock, you’ll realize it.”

  “Little shock?” I repeat, a crazy laugh bubbling out of me. “Little fucking shock?”

  He makes a dismissive motion with his hand, like he’s tiring of the conversation and my lack of cooperation in moving it along. “You took an oath years ago, and now by bringing us the Hope, your marker is honored. Don’t pull that face at the mention of honor, Mariana. It’s second only to family in importance to me. I grant that the blood oath you took was under clouded circumstances—”

  “I thought I was saving your life!”

  He smiles. “But in reality, you were saving your life. You were proving your loyalty to me and your worth to the organization. You were earning your spot at the table.”

  I have an inkling where he’s going with this and I can’t help but stare at him, speechless, powerless to grasp the real scope of his plan. But he lays it all out for me neatly so my battered brain doesn’t have to do any work at all.

  “Outsiders aren’t allowed to do business with the family, except in very rare circumstances where their loyalty and value can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once you’d grown to adulthood and I’d seen countless times how clever you were, how quickly you learned and mastered all the tasks I set before you, I decided it was time to see if you could be trusted. Not trusted the way thieves or criminals trust each other, trusted the way family is trusted.”

  Trust. Fucking trust. I think if I ever hear that word again, I’ll lose my mind.

  His tone slightly more somber, he continues. “But there are rules that govern these things. Even I must abide by them. So an oath was made and your name was entered into the logbook. Now there’s only one final thing you must do to close the log and satisfy the marker, and properly join the family. Only blood can pay for blood.”

  When I just stare at him, he says, “You need to kill your American.”

  My mouth falls open. Every drop of color drains from my face.

  Capo chuckles. “God, look at her. She didn’t see that coming.”

  “Prove your loyalty to me,” murmurs Reynard, his gaze hypnotic, “and inherit an empire.”

  “You’re insane,” I whisper.

  He flips his hand. “Hardly. I’m a businessman. You know me, Mariana. This is me.”

  I snap. “Yes, I do know you! And you’re nothing but a pimp and a liar and a despicable piece of shit!”

  He strides toward me. Before I can lift my arm to defend myself, he slaps me hard across the face.

  It’s so sudden and violent, I lose my footing and fall on my ass, the breath knocked out of my lungs in a gust. Shocked, I touch my fingers to my nose. They come away bloody.

  Looming over me with a red face and wild eyes, Reynard thunders, “Show some respect for your father!”

  Behind him, Capo is excited by seeing me stricken and bleeding on the floor. He reaches between his legs and fondles himself, stroking his growing erection through his trousers.

  Something inside my mind snaps.

  I feel it go, like a tether unwinding and pulling free, a spool abruptly spinning out of thread. In an instant, I’m blank and emotionless, a robot with no heart or soul, no past or future, no hope or love or fear. I look up into Reynard’s face, feeling as calm as morning.

  “I’ll show you the same respect you showed my sister, Dad.”

  I curl my hand around the gun shoved into the waistband of my jeans, in the small of my back, hidden under my sweatshirt. I pinched it from the assassin on the plane when he forced me to press against him and point it now at the chest of the man who taught me how to expertly steal things right off people’s bodies without them ever knowing.

  Capo screams, “No!” and lunges at me.

  Without a breath of hesitation, I pull the trigger.

  Thirty-One

  Ryan

  I’m an hour behind her. Only a single hour, but sixty minutes has never felt so goddamn long.

  I’m at the rinky-dink airport in Abruzzo, Italy, where Mariana touched down briefly before taking off again, heading east. I hitched a ride out of New York with an old military buddy I once took a belly of lead for in a firefight against insurgents in Iraq, who now flies a transatlantic run for FedEx. But this is as far as his route goes, and I need another plane.

  Fast.

  “She’s on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea, just off the island of Vis, in Croatia,” Connor tells me over the sat phone. “We’ve got it up on the satellite now. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

  “A yacht? Fuck.”

  “Yep,” says Connor, sounding grim. “You’re gonna have to jump in. And watch your six, brother, because some of these big-ass megayachts like the one we’re looking at are equipped with surface-to-air missiles.”

  “Jesus! Why the hell would you need a
missile defense system on a nonmilitary boat?”

  “Because, as a for instance, you’re the paranoid head of an international criminal empire and lots of people would like to see you dead.”

  “Good point.”

  “Even if there aren’t missiles, there will definitely be a bunch of hired guns. Wait there for the rest of the team, I don’t want you going in alone. They’ll be to you in less than—”

  “No.”

  Connor growls. “Goddammit, Ryan—”

  “Twelve guys in combat gear parachuting out of a plane’s gonna get a lot more attention than one. I’m going in alone. Have the team rally on Vis and wait for my call.”

  He’s silent for a moment. I know he’s pissed I insisted on taking off on my own before the rest of the team was assembled, because that’s not how we do things, but this is one time I wouldn’t—couldn’t—wait.

  My woman’s in danger. If God himself told me to wait, I’d tell him to suck my dick.

  “Copy that,” Connor finally says. “But when you get back, we’re gonna have a chat about teamwork, Rambo.”

  “If you’re done lecturing me, Grandma, can you send me the number of the nearest skydiving outfit? I’m gonna need to rent a rig.”

  “This shit is so much easier in the movies,” Connor mutters.

  “You’re tellin’ me.”

  “Tabby’s pulling up the info. The number’s on the way.”

  “Thanks, brother.”

  “No problem. And Ryan?”

  “Yeah?”

  There’s a pause before he speaks. “Keep frosty, brother. This guy Moreno’s a real piece of work.”

  “I will, brother. See you soon.”

  I disconnect the call, thumb over to my texts, and click the link to the phone number of Skydive Italia that just popped up on my screen.

  Thirty-Two