Page 64 of Angelo's Vengeance

Unfortunately, we weren’t here for the pizza, and we weren’t here to play tourist.

Ilias, Conall, Maxim, and I had followed the trail from the blood-stained floorboards of Renzetti’s hideout to this ancient city teeming with ghosts and secrets. The USB drive we’d pried from his safe was a treasure chest—full surveillance logs, old contacts, bank account routing numbers, and, most importantly, receipts. Carlotta may have thought Salvatorewas just a patsy, but he had been hoarding information on her. He’d been suspicious enough to start paying close attention, and that was enough of a trail for Veronica and Kostas to begin picking up threads.

Carlotta wasn’t just hiding. She was thriving. The entire sojourn with Renzetti had been a minor blip on her radar, and we were uncovering the layers. It had only been one move in her game. We still had difficulties figuring out her plans or why she had come to New York to involve us. Initially, I’d wondered if her whole play had involved the Santellis and the blood oath. Her comments to Theo suggested that maybe she was angling for a power dimension that would leverage a play within the Commission or her role as my mother, but it all jangled like an off-key note. There was no love lost between us, and we both knew it. I would never do her any favors.

When Valentino mentioned that she wanted to be a Donna, that made sense to me, too, but now? I was still lost. I’d even floated the idea to Remo that maybe we were related to the Cardonis. Since Frankie’s biological father had been revealed to be Don Vanello, we’d both been ruminating more about whoour bio-dads could be. It was clear she’d been strategic, just as she was with everything. I hadn’t told Remo, but I went so far as to have a DNA test done with Val’s consent for both Remo and me. It was more about understanding Carlotta’s mind and potentially her next move than finding answers to who my father was. I didn’t care about that. In my mind, I was an orphan in more ways than one. My parents didn’t exist to me. Val had the grace to look disappointed when the results were negative, as if he’d like to have me or Remo as a sibling, but we both knew that wasn’t true. He had his own littlefamigliaand wanted to distance himself from our drama as much as possible. He’d been more than accommodating, so I couldn’t fault him.

We knew Carlotta had money and means, but the scale we uncovered was shocking: shell companies tied to arms dealers, mercenaries bought and paid for, and a black-market syndicate operating under her command. She’d been getting money from somewhere, and all of the information we’d uncovered cemented the fact that she’d been operating in the shadows beyond our reach in a startling fashion for longer than we knew. Renzetti wasjust a public face, a sacrificial pawn. When I shot him, it hadn’t ended anything; it had only peeled back the first layer.

And now her web had spread to Ilias’s global shipping empire. Our suspicions led us to believe that her New York antics had all been a distraction—a flashy show to keep Ilias and his brothers from seeing what was happening. Already, Ilias’s enterprises had been hit multiple times. Ilias and his brothers ran smuggling operations worldwide that would be clutch for the sort of shady operations that Carlotta was involved in.

We stopped outside a compound nestled into a cliffside overlooking the sea. We had decided to take this the whole way, regardless of how far we had to go. It seemed as if Carlotta was skipping town, but with a few recent hits on Ilias’s properties lately that we were sure she was responsible for, we knew we couldn’t just let it lie that she was out of New York.

“You guys ready for this?” Maxim grinned over at me. He elbowed Lev and wiggled his eyebrows, thumbing off the safety of his Glock.

He had been manic about tracking downmy mother after he’d found the photos of his wife, son, and sister on the board at the house where Salvatore was staying, not that we blamed him. The others had been on board before, but they were extra motivated now that they knew that the evil bitch had been monitoring people they cared about. We could have compartmentalized it if it had just been us, but adding the women and little Vasily kicked everything up into overdrive.

Conall narrowed his eyes, spinning a knife around his knuckles before slamming it into its sheath. “We’re ready, fecker.”

The property we were at belonged to Nino Barone, an arms broker whose loyalty was known to be swayed by the highest bidder. He was a punk and a low-level dealer who couldn’t have navigated the vast waters of the volume of weapons we dealt with, but we knew he had intel about the mercenaries hired for Carlotta, if not organized them himself. We weren’t here to chat.

The wrought-iron gate loomed as we approached, one of those old things with pillars every eight feet you see on estates. It was impressive if you liked that sort of thing. If I could get away with a fence like that inNew York, I’d totally build one. Two guards, dressed in black and carrying rifles, barely had time to lift them before I fired. One down. Conall shot the other in the knee. The security here was weak to say the least, especially for an arms broker. The guard scrambled for his radio, but he was too slow as we swept forward.

“Keep him breathing,” I snapped even as Ilias rolled his eyes at me. “We’ll need him to talk.” Turning to face the guard, I gripped my brass knuckles and grinned at him as Maxim and Ilias hauled him to his feet and Conall kicked away his weapon. “So, what’s it going to be? You going to tell us what we need to know?” Sending a brutal punch to his ribs, I paused before sending another into his gut.

“What do you want to know?” he grunted out. He was already looking pretty rough, and he didn’t seem as if he were interested in holding out any information, but I still wanted to punch him again. Looked like loyalty was a little scarce in these parts. That’s what you got when you paid for it. Geez, this guy was a pussy. For fun, I nailed him again, rolling my eyes at Conall. “What’s the rest of the security layout?”

The guard’s head lolled on his shoulders, and for a minute I thought he’d spit up blood. “I need a hospital. My knee.” The knee was leaking pretty badly, but he rambled when he didn’t get a response. “Just six guys at the house. Just the two of us at the front. Two at the back. Two at the office door. I won’t say anything. I don’t give a fuck about Barone.Please.”

Ilias shrugged. “I believe him.”

Spinning my brass knuckles on my thumb, I nodded, “Yeah, I believe him, too.” I gave Ilias a wink. I recognized the look on Ilias’s face. “Let him go.” A flash of relief crossed the guard’s face. Dumb fucker. Maxim gave a dark chuckle and released him as the man stumbled on the bum leg, just as Ilias tightened his grip ruthlessly, bringing up a knife and swiping it across his throat.

“Can’t ever be too sure,” he said, stepping away as the body fell.

“Agreed,” Conall chuckled darkly. “Never know. He could have run. I mean … not far.”

Sometimes Conall was a funny fucker. “Wow, security sucks. Maybe he’s broke.”

“I don’t know. Either way. Big mistake.” Maxim’s grin echoed ours as we prowledforward. “Let’s split and meet inside.” It was an easy choice. Four of them left and four of us — perfect. We could split them and take Barone without issue. Maxim and Ilias split off to deal with the ones in the back, while Conall and I handled the ones by the office door.

The villa sprawled with marble and old money, showcasing classic European architecture that took your breath away and made you question your mortality and place in history. Paintings of saints hung on the walls, who wouldn’t save anyone tonight, no matter how hard anyone prayed. The interior was vast, illuminated by low-light wall sconces that provided just enough light as we moved from room to room. True to his word, we weren’t seeing any other guards as we traversed the villa. Before our arrival, we had received a blueprint from Kostas, who was still on the ground in New York, so we had a good idea where we were going.

We moved quickly and efficiently, clearing each room as we went, ensuring they were empty. It seemed unlikely there were no staff, but it was late. By the time we reached the office, Maxim and Ilias had already caught uplike the greedy fuckers they were, but it wasn’t as if we needed any help. The two guards were focused on a television playing what appeared to be an Italian dub ofDie Hard. The two certainly seemed to be into it. It was almost a shame to murder them to such a classic. Almost.

We found Barone in the study, snorting coke off a leather-bound ledger like it was just another Friday, and we hadn’t just slaughtered six of his men. He barely had time to blink before I slammed him into the wall.

“Tell us about New York,” I growled, pressing the barrel of my Glock beneath his chin.

“I don’t—” He blinked blearily at us, as if we were apparitions that had materialized out of thin air.

I pistol-whipped him across the mouth. Blood splattered the white plaster behind him. “You hired out men to disrupt our operations in New York. Paid killers. Mercs. To Carlotta Santelli. Ring a bell?”

“Who are you?” he asked, struggling to his feet.

Conall sneered. “How about telling us the truth? Nobody for miles out here. We can doanything to you that we want. We’ve taken out all your security. Which was shit, by the way.”

“Yeah, pathetic. Come on, Barone. We’ve come all this way.” Maxim prodded Barone’s ribcage with his gun barrel. “You know who we are. You had pictures of us.”

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