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I grunt, checking the name. “Sure is,” I tell him, then speak into the phone. “Jack. What you got for me?”
“I traced the last call he made from the point of origin to its destination,” Jack says. His voice is tight. “Your guy fucked up; he didn’t use the usual security protocols. But now you’ve got a problem.”
I sit straight up in the bed. “What’s that?”
“The call was received on a cell phoneinsideAnna-Vittoria’s Villa. Don’t know whose—it’s another burner. I’ll send the number through. But if I were you—”
“On it.” I disconnect and get out of bed immediately. “Bricker. We need to hustle.”
He’s already pulling on his clothes. “What’s the story?”
“Whoever got that call today, they were inside the Villa. So whoever they are…they’re close to Anna-Vittoria.”
He freezes for a moment as the implications hit. “I’ll call her, right—”
“We need to be smart,” I break in. “If anyone overhears you on the phone, it could escalate things.”
He takes a breath, does up his jeans. “We have a coded text message for emergencies, just between us two. Not even the Shadow knows it. That would be safer—right?”
I give a nod, shoving my feet into my shoes. “Send it and let’s go.”
I just hope that by the time we arrive, it’s not too late.
CHAPTER49
BRICKER
I’ve never beenafraid for my mother. Even in the worst of times, she seems so all-powerful, so all-knowing, that it never really occurred to me before that she might someday be in danger. And now, with danger so close to her, and me so far away, I’m not entirely sure how to process it.
Thank God for Max, then, who doesn’t tell me to slow down as I speed through the streets, heading to the Villa. He just holds on tight as I take corners and exits, and the calm confidence that he exudes is sort of similar to my mom’s energy.
Similar enough to quell the rising sense of panic, at least.
We talk it through on the way—what we know, what wethinkwe know, and what we plan to do. So by the time we get to the Villa, I feel a little more prepared.
Everything here is perfectly normal, so far as the guards milling around, and the peaceful silence. Except that Max and I are waved through immediately at the gate, and at the door, the house guards don’t pat us down, merely stand aside.
They’ve been given orders, obviously. From the top.
So for the first time since I left my home here as an eighteen year old recruit headed for Basic, I don’t wait for a guard to lead me through the house to my mother’s salon. I already know she’s there. After all, it’s a workday, isn’t it? I push into the house with Max behind me and we take off at a brisk pace.
“Keep steady,” Max he says to me as we arrive at the doors. But I don’t even hesitate. I throw the doors open, no courtesy knock, just me, bursting through into my mother’s inner sanctum.
I’m met by three pairs of startled eyes and one pair that only narrows at my sudden arrival. “Fabrizio,” my mother says coolly, “we are in a meeting.”
Inside the salon, I’ve interrupted a meeting between my mother, Marty Gargiulo, Giancarlo Barone, and, of course, the Shadow. He stands in the darkest back corner, as usual.
Did she not get my text? But then she gives a flicker of her eyelashes, and I realize she’s playing a part.
And that I need to play one, too.
“Unless it’s an emergency—” she begins.
“It is,” I say at once. Behind me, I hear Max shut the doors. “I’ve come to give a follow-up report on the mole in my crew. I figured it would be of interest to everyone.”
The men seem surprised, but not wary.
“I’m sorry we barged in,” Max says from behind me, “but the fact is, Maestra, I do think it’s important that you hear what Bricker has to say.”
