During my massage, I sprang up, scaring the masseuse almost half to death. She slapped a hand over her heart and saidin a panic, “Is everything okay, Mrs. Fausti?!” All of us had only women masseuses. Guido checked himself. Even for his wife.
“No!” I held the blanket tight to my chest, rushing to my purse. “I need my phone!”
At the same time, Scarlett came barreling into the room, holding her phone to her ear. “Something’s not right!”
“You have Brando?” I asked, dialing Rocco.
“Yes,” she said, her head almost bobbing, like she couldn’t control her muscles.
Rocco answered on the first ring. “Amora.” It sounded like he was already moving.
“That man!” I almost yelled. “Get him out of the house. Now! I know where I’ve seen him before.”
I told my husband exactly where I’d seen him.
In my nightmares.
Chapter 6
Tick. Tick. Tick. Goes the Time
Rocco
My ears were still ringing from the shot my brother took after the sister of my heart called and warned him about the dead man slumped next to Dennis Fyodorov. Yet I still heard my wife clear enough when she called and warned me aboutDennis Fyodorov himself.
He was the man from her nightmares.
The man who wanted my heart dead.
The moment my eyes found mine, the world was separated into two sides.
Safe for her and unsafe for her.
Dennis Fyodorov would soon be dead.
He had just finished a speech. How I should understand why my wife had stirred up suspicion when she wrote a book about criminal dealings that was too close to the truth.
It was all truth my wife’s father had given her. From what Mac had found from his research, my father-in-law had died from a rare condition of the brain that the health department had not yet put a name to. It was not cancer, but similar in the way it spread and the damage it caused.
The untitled sickness ate away at the cells as if it was acid. From what was known about it, it started with a parasite—aparasite he had contracted from swimming in a foreign country. Which was why my wife thought he had shared with her the premise of the story in the first place. He had been almost feverish at the time—talking so fast she almost had not been able to understand him. All that he’d shared with my wife about Dennis Fyodorov’scriminal dealings had been true. True enough to send men after her.
I understood Fyodorov’s point, however, when it came to women, we did not frighten them only to obtain information. We spoke to them, true, but unless our wives or our lives were in direct danger, we did not resort to such lame techniques. Women in our business were not the norm, and when situations did arise, it was agrigio—grey—area. Unless these women were wives, and we were feuding amongst family.
My grandmother, Grazia, had gone to war for my grandfather, the same way the sister of my heart had gone to war for my brother.
My wife had been frightened by this Fyodorov. Scared from her home. Even though he had sent her directly to me, and that caused me to show some leniency to the boy, Remy Mestengo,I would not show it to this threat. His people had wanted my niece dead and the same with my wife.
Without hesitation, I pulled my gun and shot him once in the head and once in the heart. Perhaps he knew ahead of time he would die. If we did not kill him, his own association would for allowing the situation to get this far out of hand.
Fyodorov would not speak of his operation, but Lev knew it was only a matter of time before a new boss would take the dead one’s place, and another warehouse along the docks would become a fraudulent front for what the suppliers were bringing into the country.
One dies.
Four more could spring up in its place.
Lev and his government wanted the drug off the streets. It was spreading as fast as the drug itself into the body of the earth. It had become personal to my family since it was used against my niece as a weapon of war. The main players would die, the strong arm of the Fausti family suffocating them. Lev had already left to meet his men at the docks. It was not always clear how the boats were hiding the drugs.
My nephew, Matteo, who had a personal stake in this war as well—his wife had been held captive by the Russians and French since she was a young woman because she could dance—had arrived right after Lev had dropped the warehouse boss off to me. Matteo had taken his wife to the hotel to relax with our wives before.
