Page 157 of Dagger in the Sea

Not this time.

46

Turo

In a compact Toyota,Luca and I headed west for Asprópyrgo.

We got off the Elefsina highway and cruised through this neighborhood west of Athens. More like a postindustrial wasteland. Warehouses in ruins. Abandoned factories. Crumbling houses of another age alongside eroded and worn apartment buildings. Squatters, dark-skinned Romany children wandering the streets, their faces not soft in blissful childish unawareness, but focused, hard.

The roads were busy with delivery trucks, garbage trucks. Ratty pickup trucks collecting all sorts of rusty junk, old appliances, fencing, furniture, pipes. Sewage removal trucks battled with fuel trucks at an intersection.

Luca parked the car up a steep hill where we had a full view of the abandoned lot, more like a rocky field. The crooked, twisted street sign with the red and blue X on the left edge of the field was the designated marker.

“Now we wait,” I muttered.

I leaned my head back against the headrest. The sun hit my face, its warmth heating my skin. Heat that poked at memories of light-drenched hours spent on beaches with Adri, not giving a single fuck except for grilled seafood and sun-washed wine, and where were my sunglasses, and holding her hand, and sucking down creamy iced frappés in the heat, and tasting her suntan lotion and the sweat on her skin. And kissing her, kissing her on the harsh rocks of those castle ruins, kissing her in that beach cave, our skin salty, our lips wet. And being inside her.

My fingers went to the inner pocket of my jacket and found the stone there, the smooth white stone she’d found in the beach cave at Vitáli. An ordinary thing, but so pure in its simplicity, like that moment had been, so many moments.

“Here’s something.”

Luca’s grim monotone snapped me back into the present, my gaze following his.

A small, dingy-white Fiat van plowed into the rocky field where the rusty, no through street sign stood tilted. The Fiat jerked to a halt, a thin man dressed in a black hoodie and dark jeans, a black ski mask covering his head, opened the back doors and pulled out a teenage boy. Marko. The kid stumbled, a black scarf covered his eyes, his body hanging.

Had they drugged him?

The kidnapper dropped him at the base of the sign, squatting down and adjusting the scarf over Marko’s eyes and mouth. He pushed the kid face down on the ground, and Marko’s legs flailed in the air. He darted back into the van, where the driver waited for him, and the vehicle kicked into reverse, turned, and swerved off in a cloud of dust.

“Come on, come on…” I muttered under my breath, my eyes trained on the van slowly climbing up the opposite hill, waiting for them to be out of sight before I moved. “Make the call, Luca.”

Luca didn’t reply. The van finally vanished, and I lunged out the door, peeling off down the hill to where Marko lay motionless. A shot rang out and Marko rolled into a ball.

I blinked, my breath hitched painfully. A biting flame lit into my side. Stinging, searing. My stomach tightened. Pain scorched through me.

I’d been shot.

Clutching at my side, I stumbled on the dirt road, turning to see who the fuck—

Luca stood in front of the car, a gun raised.

A gun aimed at me.

“You run too fast,” he said.

Warm goo filled my hands. Blood, my blood. “You’re a lousy shot,” I said. A chill spread over my flesh like watercolor paint soaking paper. “What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled. “Why?” My hand flew behind my back for my own weapon, my heart lurching in my chest.

“Your boss asked me nicely as an offer of compensation to Gennaro,but my uncle doesn’t do this sort of shit, so I’m taking care of it. The things we do for family.”

My own father put a contract on my life?

I gulped in air, rage flushing through me filling my lungs instead. Did this really surprise me? Had I become so much of an irritant, an unreliable factor in Mauro’s Outfit? He’d sent me here on a fool’s errand to kill me out of the country. Any traces of depraved paternal blood guilt on his hands would be far, far away, not in his face, not in his town. No reminders, no traces.

Cold, strategic Mauro. Practical, covering his bases. That was business. Good business. Had I pushed him too far with that last standoff with Valerio? That stupid encounter with Francesca under his own roof? I’d always be a problem for him, no matter what.

All I’d wanted was what was due to me, my piece, the piece I’d worked so hard for. The piece I’d turned my back on my mother for. So many pieces. Something, anything. How fucking pathetic. I didn’t want a seat at his family dinner table, but this—this—

Luca standing there facing me with his gun, the gun he’d just shot me with, my blood filling my hand, told me the undeniable truth.“Actions speak louder than words,”my grandfather’s voice hounded me. My throat cramped, the taste of copper filled my mouth.

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