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“Watch your back,” Lars warned me. “If they went after the Widow, they might not be finished.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said glumly.
“Keep safe,” Dario said, “and let us know when you’re on the way back.”
“Okay,” I agreed, then hung up the phone.
As I’d feared, the situation had gotten a lot worse.
“Bad news?” Roderigo asked.
“You could say that,” I replied. “Those mercenaries back at the palazzo? They’re from the Wagner Group.”
Roderigo shrugged. “So?”
“The Wagner Group?” I said in disbelief. “As in, the guys who did most of the Russian fighting in Ukraine and then almost overthrew Moscow?”
Roderigo smirked. “If you killed them, they can’t be that tough.”
The douchebag was lucky Adriano wasn’t here. My brother would have bit his head off… then tore him a new asshole… then shoved his head up the new asshole.
I just gave him a grim smile. “I didn’t see you in there.”
Roderigo smirked. “Hey – if you can kill them, I can kill them.”
The guy who wanted to go 3 miles an hour on his little putt-putt boat?
Not likely.
But now I saw another fault with the Widow’s men. They assumed that if some stronzo from Tuscany could take out the mercenaries, they must not have been that tough in the first place. The only reason the attackers had gotten as far as they did was because of Giotto’s treachery.
Stupid assumption.
Both that the Wagner guys hadn’t been that dangerous…
And that Giotto had been the only traitor in the Widow’s ranks.
Before I could say anything, Roderigo turned back to steering. “Nobody else is gonna show up. This is all a big to-do about nothing.”
“Famous last words.”
Roderigo snorted in amusement. “We’ll see.”
I double-checked the holster for my Glock, which I’d gotten back when I left the palazzo, and hoped I wouldn’t have to use it.
9
As we pulled up to the pier outside Ca’ Foscari University, one of the Widow’s men jumped out to tie up our boat.
‘Ca’ was short for ‘casa,’ or house. Ca’ Foscari basically meant House of the Foscari family.
However, ‘house’ was a little misleading. Every ‘casa’ was actually a giant palazzo, once owned by some of the richest families in Venetian history.
For instance, the Foscari family had ruled the city in the 15th century. Now their ancient palace housed a university – or at least part of it.
The front of the building was impressive. Four stories of Gothic splendor towered over the Grand Canal. Dozens of elegant, arched windows were framed in lace-like curlicues. The overall effect was both beautiful and whimsical – like Ca’ Foscari was a giant gingerbread house assembled by the greatest architects of the Middle Ages.
As we stepped off the boat onto the dock, I couldn’t help myself: “And we didn’t even run into any police.”
