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Chapter Seven
-Dante-
MICHAEL FILLED TWOshot glasses from the decanter on his desk.
“I’ll be leaving shortly. I wanted to be here when you arrived, make sure you were settled in. My island is your island for as long as you choose to stay.”
“I appreciate your hospitality, but it will only be for a day or two. I need to get Noemi home, but I have to find some answers first.”
“Like who had the nerve to put out a contract on Dante Calegari?”
“That’s a starting place. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”
Michael frowned, threw back his shot, and poured another. “Nothing specific. Have you been online?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t had the time, or quite frankly, the inclination, to view my death warrant. “But you have?”
Michael nodded slowly. “I was on the circuit, looking for a job.”
“I suppose I should thank you for not taking that particular one.”
It would have been humorous if Michael weren’t a master of his game. If Michael Bianchin had wanted me dead, one: he would have carried out the job himself, not sent those bungling idiots. Two: I’d be dead. Michael didn’t miss. We were the best in our business. The minutiae that would determine which of us was better would be lost in a pool of blood. Yes, he’d probably succeed in killing me, but it would cost him his life as I took him down with me. Fortunately, we had enough mutual respect that it wasn’t an issue.
He sat forward in his chair. “I think you’d be surprised at how many people didn’t want that job or even approved of it being posted in the first place.”
“Yet, someone took it. Who the fuck were they?”
“Hotshots trying to prove themselves. I take it ‘they’ are no longer a concern?”
“Amateurs. Someone let those men get slaughtered.”
“Somebody out there has balls. Do you have any idea who wants you dead?”
I remembered what the first man said as I slid my knife across his throat.“It’s not about you.”
“I don’t think anyone really does.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. He was a master of our game. Very few played it as well. He had as much interest in how the pieces moved as I did. He could very well end up a king on the run himself someday.
“How much am I worth?” As morbid as it was, I needed to know what price had been put on me. That number was another piece of a puzzle that hadn’t revealed its picture yet.
“That’s why this was a joke. A million. It was out there for hours before anyone snapped it up.”
“Because they knew that anyone who had a chance of succeeding wouldn’t take it for such a low price.”
“And that’s why it doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who wanted you out of the way bad enough to actually make the move wouldn’t have put out such a lowball contract.”
“Unless it was never about me to begin with.”
Everything that didn’t make sense made perfect sense. Michael didn’t know the things I knew about Noemi. He didn’t know our past.
“Tell me,” he urged.
“It was meant to be a distraction. The contract. The men sent to kill me. It was to keep me on guard. If I was trying to save my own life—”
“Then you wouldn’t be paying as much attention to her.” Michael was fast and there was no reason to elaborate. “Why the hell does someone want her dead?”
That was where our alliance ended. I had a lifetime of secrets to take to the grave. So, I just didn’t answer him.
