Page 138 of Devil's Vows
He turns the screen to me, and I lean in with Benedict, Matteo, and Yuri to watch footage from Matteo’s elevator. There’s The Mole, calmly standing next to Stan as they descend to the parking garage to get Mara’s clean clothes, then he spins and jams a fist into Stan’s throat. He takes Stan completely by surprise and as Stan bends over, winded, The Mole knees him in the face, making Stan’s bulk crumple to the floor.
“Watch how he presses the emergency stop button at just the right place”—Dominic points to the screen—“knowing he can walk out on the only other floor this elevator is programmed to open doors at.”
“The fucking service floor,” Matteo hisses, turning in the foyer like a caged lion.
“And then disappearing down the fire escape, down to the general lobby, and out onto the street,” Dominic adds, leaning back and groaning into his cupped hands. “He had access to the building’s blueprints or engineers’ installation plans at a minimum to pull this off.”
“So, we have a rogue mole on the fucking loose,” Matteo says, shoving his fists into his pants’ pockets. “Why? How? I fucking trusted him!”
“That isn’t a rogue mole.” Yuri’s heavily accented English cuts through the moment with such authority, every man turns to look at him. “Your mole was recruited, probably years ago.Mara, too, but looking at the new tattoos on her body, they got to her recently.”
“What do you mean,recruited?” Matteo homes in on him, stopping short mere inches, eye to eye.
It would be threatening to anybody else, but Yuri is unfazed and stands his ground as he meets my gaze. I nod. By bringing us here to their medical facility, they’ve opened their world to us. It’s time we do the same, even though we didn’t have time to build all the trust I usually rely on.
“All the signs are there. Chertnikov, our rival?—”
“You mean like inChertnikov, and Gabriella beinghis girl? It’s the same guy?” Matteo cuts in.
“Yes,” Yuri says with a nod. “He failed to take over the Petrov Bratva with a coup in July, via proxy. Now he’s infiltrating the Italian Mafia. He’s looking for Gabriella, and he’ll use every possible means to get to her. I don’t know exactly what happened here this morning, and how everything interlinks, but this was Ivan’s second brush with death in so many months.”
Matteo’s eyebrows shoot up. He steps away and shares a glance with his brothers.
“Also, all our intel suggests that Chiara Bellini, Gabriella’s friend from the convent, has also been recruited by Chertnikov,” I add, repeating the information Yuri sourced over the past few days.
Dominic drops his hands from his face. “Are you sure? She’s missing, her apartment raided as if she was on the run?—”
“I have my sources.” Yuri’s tone says it all. Don’t ask beyond this line.
“Definerecruitedin a Bratva context?” Benedict asks. He’s been playing Lego with the gun Mara built in the washroom and pauses to look up.
“Recruited as spies, or suicide missions. Whichever they deem you fit for. You might not even know which it is, untilyour final assignment,” I say. “Recruitment is rarely by choice, mostly under duress, threatening you with the death of someone else, or whatever they have on you.”
“Some recruits become excellent spies, undercover for years,” Yuri says.
“Which basically means we don’t trust anybody.” But we’ve crossed the divide today. Trust has been forged in the death zone between the Petrov and Scalera families.
“A tale as old as time in organized crime,” Benedict says as he clicks the last piece of the gun into place, points it at the floor, and tests its weight. “This, however, is all new tech. A piece of art.”
The gun that shot my wife. I want to rip it from his hand and destroy it, wishing I could wind back the clock. Wishing I could’ve been faster and thrown myself in front of her, instead of Gabriella protecting me and getting hurt.
“3D printed, not leaving a trace of its origins. Made for close-range shooting, right up to your target for maximum effect, because the bullets are something out of another era. No airport scanner or X-ray is going to trigger a security checkpoint into thinking these are bullets. To be honest, I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he continues. “And the case, look how perfectly everything slots in.”
We look on while he takes the gun apart in seconds and slots the different sections into spaces custom-made in the tattoo artist’s traveling case, making them disappear.
The way he handles the gun, the speed of his fingers, his light touch, tells me everything nobody would guess at first glance about Benedict Scalera. He likes precision, attention to detail, and already has admiration for whoever designed and produced this weapon that got past everyIl Consigliosecurity check.
“Fuck me.” Matteo looks down at the traveling case, at Dominic, then at me. “From where I stand, it looks as if we’vearranged a fucking hit on you in my apartment, Ivan. But this is more layered than I thought.”
“Yeah, the notion came up, but Gabriella—” I break off and let the thought hang. “I reckon there is more at play here than what we see on the surface.”
“My guess is Mara was recruited to find Gabriella.” Yuri sighs. “It could be our fault for enquiring intensively into Randazzo’s affairs, kicking up dust in Europe we shouldn’t have and putting Chertnikov on our scent. We played somewhat into their hand when we lured them here to figure out if she knew who was hunting Gabriella in Italy.”
“You think they were in on the bigger picture? To kill me and take over the Petrov Bratva?”
“I think The Mole has been in on Chertnikov’s plans for some time,” Yuri says. “When they saw you, they knew what they had to do. Gabriella, in that moment, became the side quest, because she wasn’t in the room.”
“They definitely worked as a team,” Dominic says. “If only we could figure out what Mara said to The Mole during her call to him.”
