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We didn’t talk. Instead, I used the opportunity to look at the beautiful hills, vineyards, and olive groves. Despite all my world travels, I had never been to Tuscany. I considered pushing my flight until the next day so I could rent a car and explore. One of the perks of not working for the Man anymore was that I could do whatever the hell I wanted.
After 45 minutes of driving through the countryside, the BMW turned down a small road and reached a guardhouse with metal gates. The man inside the booth came out and manually opened the gates for us, and we drove on through.
A minute later, we reached a two-story villa – a McMansion built within the last 30 years. Its primary goal seemed to be to flaunt the owner’s wealth rather than his taste.
The BMW stopped in the round driveway outside the front door. The driver got out and escorted me inside.
As we walked down the halls, we passed multiple men with pistols holstered underneath their suit jackets. All of them watched me with a mix of hostility and curiosity.
When we reached two large wooden doors, the driver knocked.
From the other side, a cultured voice said in English, “Come in.”
The driver gestured at the doors as though to say, You’re on your own from here and walked away.
I opened the door and quickly scanned the room.
It was a library with high ceilings and massive mahogany bookcases. Like the house, the room felt like it was primarily for show. Most of the books on the shelves were leather-bound and fairly new. I figured they had been purchased to complete the room’s ‘look’; furthermore, I would have bet good money that 95% of them had never been opened.
At the far end of the room, a middle-aged man sat behind a desk. His most prominent features were his grey-flecked mustache and goatee, which made him look a bit like the devil – if the devil were a fifty-something Italian male. He was powerfully built, but had a gut that came with age and too much good food. His piercing eyes sparkled with intelligence, and he wore an immaculately tailored three-piece suit that displayed far more taste than the rest of the house combined.
A much younger man stood off to the side amongst the bookcases. I was betting he was the older guy’s son. They had very similar features, although the younger man was clean-shaven. He was tall and wiry beneath his expensive suit. No tie or vest, though, unlike his father. He was handsome, but his face seemed frozen in a perpetual scowl.
In my job with MI6, I had run across a lot of sadistic bastards – warlords, terrorists, torturers. The younger man had the same look of cruelty they all shared.
And finally, a young, pretty woman was sitting in a chair apart from the other two. She had long brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses that made her look studious. She wore modest, neutral designer clothes, and her expression was calm but serious. Nothing about her features suggested a familial connection to the two men.
“Ah,” said the middle-aged man in a deep voice, “our guest. Welcome, Diana.”
“Thank you,” I said. I kept my distance so I could watch all three of them at the same time.
“Please, sit,” my client said, gesturing to one of several chairs across from his desk.
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
He chuckled, then turned to the younger man and woman. “Sit over here by me, you two, so she can keep an eye on you.”
The younger man looked pissed, but he went over and sat down as ordered. The woman did the same without any hint of complaint.
“Better?” my client asked, an amused smile on his face.
“Much,” I said, then pulled the third chair back far enough from the others that I would have plenty of time to react if someone pulled a gun.
Only then did I sit.
“Thank you for meeting me in person,” the devilish man said.
“You’re welcome.”
“As I made clear in my earlier communications, you’re under no obligation to accept the job. But here,” he said as he slid a folder across the desk, “is the target I need you to eliminate.”
I picked it up and looked inside. There were multiple photos of a man in his late 20s or early 30s with model-like looks.
His facial features looked fairly similar to my client.
I looked up and quirked one eyebrow.
The older man smiled. “Dario Rosolini is a distant cousin of mine. He’s also a mafia don who just got out of prison. I want him gone.”
