Page 261 of Niccolo

After the virtual tour, Aurelio stood on the chair and hid his camera in the rafters of the bell tower.“So you can watch us destroy them.”

Or watch them destroy YOU,I silently retorted.

“I’m going to turn down the audio halfway, so I won’t be able to hear you with the phone up in the rafters, but I’ll talk to you after it’s all over.”

“Good luck, son,” Fausto said proudly.

“We won’t NEED any luck,”Aurelio said with a smirk.“It’s gonna be a bloodbath.”

Over the next 15 minutes, Fausto and I watched them set up.

Zollner was wearing a ridiculous green alpine hunter’s hat with a feather in the band. Not so ridiculous-looking was the massive rifle he propped up on the railing.

A few minutes later, two thugs in paramilitary gear came up the stairs with a short, young woman wearing a simple white dress.

Lucia Fioretti.

She had a black eye, and she lookedpissed.

Even though she’d been kidnapped and dragged up to the top of a bell tower by a bunch of assholes, there wasn’t an ounce of victimhood in her stare – just anger.

She was a fighter; you could see it in her expression.

I liked her immediately.

Secretly, I sided with Lucia and Niccolo’s family…

And hoped Aurelio was the one who would lose today.

I also hated Aurelio, so that factored into it, too.

Not that I would ever admit it out loud.

108

Niccolo

The first thing I did once Lars was on the road was to place Rachel in a separate room from Dario, Alessandra, and Bianca –

And handcuff her to a chair.

Probably paranoid overkill, but still. If Rachel turned out to be working for Fausto, and this was all a brilliant ploy at getting enough to finish the job, I wasn’t going to be able to forgive myself – so I erred on the side of caution.

Dario fought me on it, but I threw a fit.

He eventually gave in…afterhe apologized to Rachel.

Apologizing to the person who tried to kill you.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I borrowed a Glock from a foot soldier and guarded her myself in the parlor. While I sat there, I texted and made calls to try to secure the speedboats.

Rachel attempted to win me over like any double agent would.

“You can trust me,” she said in surprisingly good Italian, “but I want you to know that I understand and even approve of your suspicion.”

“Is that so,” I replied sarcastically.

---