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“Are you alright?” Dario asked. “You weren’t hurt in the attack?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“More importantly,” Niccolo joked, “is the Widow alright?”
“Thanks,” I said sardonically. “And yes, she’s fine.”
“Did you happen to save her bony ass in a grand display of heroics?”
“I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”
“Then I hope she’s suitably grateful.”
“That part’s going well.”
“Excellent,” Dario said.
“Any word on the attackers?”
“My source has identified two of them. He’s still checking on the others.”
“And?”
“They’re Wagner Group.”
I stared straight ahead in shock. “…shit.”
“Yeah.”
The Wagner Group was a paramilitary organization originally headed up by Yevgeny Prigozhin – once the right-hand man of Vladimir Putin. That is, until Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of backstabbing his troops as they fought on the front lines of the Ukraine War.
In June 2023, Prigozhin and 25,000 of his mercenaries mutinied and advanced on Moscow. With enemy troops less than 200 miles away, Putin held a nationwide broadcast and said that Prigozhin had betrayed Russia. Prigozhin claimed it wasn’t true, that he just wanted to oust two of his enemies in the Kremlin who had stabbed the Wagner Group in the back.
Back-channel negotiations ensued, and Prigozhin ended up calling off the insurrection. Wagner mercenaries left Russia and took up residence in Belarus, a former Soviet satellite and current Russian ally.
Two months later, Prigozhin ‘mysteriously’ died in a plane crash.
The Kremlin denied any involvement, but it was determined that the crash had resulted from a midair explosion – probably a bomb planted before takeoff.
Since Prigozhin’s death, Wagner members had started looking for freelance work wherever they could find it.
I guess they’d found it with Uncle Fausto.
The Wagner Group became infamous for committing war crimes while they were fighting in Ukraine. Rape, torture, mass executions…
Not to mention that in the early stages of the war, Prigozhin had recruited murderers from Russian prisons to join Wagner’s ranks – in exchange for full pardons for their crimes.
In short, the Wagner Group was a nasty piece of business… and it seemed Fausto had hired some of them to go after the Widow.
“You think it was a coincidence they attacked her when I was there?” I asked.
Niccolo laughed bitterly. “I think you mean, ‘How the fuck did they know I was in Venice?’ It was either a bug in the house or moles. We’re looking into it.”
“Okay… so what do we do?”
Dario answered. “Deliver the Widow’s granddaughter to her safely, then get back home. We’re figuring out the rest right now.”
“Alright.”
