“Be sure to roll out the red carpet for me then! Primo snacks and drinks!” She spoke to my back. “If not—the article will reflect how hangry I was. Not sure if hangry is a thing in Italy, but it’s not a good one in America. Just warning you ahead of time,Capitano.”
I grinned, even though she could not see me. I stopped and gave the stewardesses a collective order: whateverSignorinaGirardi wanted or needed, it was hers.
Beni was warming up the 737 as I stashed my suitcase and took my seat. My phone pinged, and Beni looked at me with raised eyebrows. I never left my device on during takeoff or landing. Most of the time not at all.
“The cogs in your mind are working slower today, cousin,” he said in Italian, wiggling his eyebrows at me. “I wonder why?”
It was my brother, Aristide, and my heart stopped beating.
“Brother,” he greeted in Italian after I picked up. “Where are you?”
“Leaving Venice,” I answered in the same language. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong with father. He is still stable. There are other things going on. More war.”
“More war,” I repeated.
“Leandro knows more than me, but the Ponte dei Pugni, it is being attacked as we speak.ZioLuca and his family are fighting for their lives.”
The Ponte dei Pugni. The “bridge of fists.” Without Aristide having to give more details, I knew the bad blood from the night before had run over into daylight. The bridge, and its history, spoke volumes—it was chosen by members of the Faustifamigliafor its symbolism.
“I am coming for you.”
“No, we are safe here.” Aristide sighed and lowered his voice. “I do not know if father and Leandro had a hand in this. It might be a bomb, so to speak, that was prepared to go off if he lost toZioLuca.”
“Where is Leandro?”
“You do not even want to know, brother.”
“Tell me.”
“Malum. He left only a short while ago.”
Malum was a maximum-security prison built by the Faustifamigliato keep in their own that had broken our laws and could not be held in any other way. It was located on a private island out in the Atlantic, surrounded by almost nothing but water. An airstrip had been built on a separate island, and it was the only way in or out, unless by a water vehicle. Food for the guards and inmates had to be flown in and then delivered by boat.
The Faustifamigliahad chosen it for two reasons. Like the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, it was torturous to the inmates to gaze upon God’s finest painting—the water and nature that surrounded it—but never be free to enjoy it. Comparable to Alcatraz, those same waters that surrounded it were as damning as shackles. The location was off the grid, where nature was still wild and untamed enough to not be listed on any maps. The water was testier than not, and sharks were abundant, always looking for a next meal.
My father had complained aboutZioLuca not being sent there. He grumbled about his brother being on vacation in Louisiana for his crimes. But my grandfather had done it for a reason, allowed him to be sentenced by a court other than his, and I thought I had figured out why.
He was close to the woman he had sacrificed it all for but could not reach out and touch her.
Not even Malum could compare to that.
This news was not welcome, though, and it would set my wings in a different direction. If Leandro had gone to Malum, he was going to seek someone out. The only men he would find there were traitors to our family.
Traitors who would welcome death instead of being locked up, surrounded by wild beauty.
These were men who would not hesitate to take the life of an appointed king and cause anarchy among all the factions, making our stable feet wobbly and twisting our insides from within.
Leandro was going to find someone agreeable to endZioLuca’s life, if the battle at the bridge was unsuccessful.
“He is going to cause an entire family war, Nazzareno,” Aristide whispered, “if he is successful.”
I hung up, knowing I had only a little time to get there. I could not make a detour and leave my wild bird in a cage in Rome to be safe.
She would have to fly into rough winds with me.
* * *
