“So where are we with that?”
Valerio stretches his arms, his body still riddled with stress and tension. “We got her and her brother one-way tickets to Australia and new identities. In exchange, he gave us some much-needed intel on Giacomo’s… undercover ventures.”
The trafficking. Girls. He’s a truly sick and twisted individual.
“How quickly can we get him out of the city?” I ask. “I want as much distance between him and Beatrice as possible. I don’t even think a new state will be enough. I need him on a different continent.”
Valerio doesn’t miss a beat. “I’ve been working on that.”
He tosses a slim folder onto the table. Inside: flight logs, surveillance shots, forged communications.
“There’s a mess brewing in Marseille,” he says. “Or at least… there will be.”
I raise a brow.
“One of his foreign assets is about to get very nervous,” Valerio adds. “A betrayal. A crack in a deal that funds the majority of his operations. If this deal looks like it’s tanking, he’ll fly to France to handle it personally. This account is one he can’t afford to lose. If he does, he can kiss whatever fraudulent empire he’s built goodbye.”
And this is why you don’t build kingdoms on sand. I always knew the foundation of his empire would never hold.
I flip through the folder. “And how do we make sure he hears about it?”
“I have a guy in his circle. Luca Bellanti. Gambler, drunk, easily bought—nothing a couple thousand won’t fix. He’s going to leak just enough to get Giacomo on a plane by Friday.”
“Too slow,” I mutter.
Valerio smirks. “Then we’ll tell him I’m in France.”
I look at him. “You?”
“I’ll be the phantom problem. Our mole will feed him intel that I’m brokering a deal to poach Marseille out from under him. And you can work your magic here—start the whispers about you securing a major deal with the French. After what you’ve done with the Polynesians and the Irish, I don’t see why people won’t buy it. The French are the one thing Giacomo has over everyone; it’s his one ‘claim to fame,’ so to speak.”
I muse over the idea,and the more I think about it, the more I like it.
“He’ll bite,” Valerio assures me.
“Of course he will. He’s arrogant and he’s possessive. Two things that make men easy to manipulate.” And like I’ve been saying from the beginning, men like Giacomo—greedy and drunk on power—never last in our world.
I lean back in my chair, letting the plan settle into place.
“And how do we ensure he stays put in France? A rumor is one thing, but he needs to get there and find an actual issue. There needs to be some instability.”
“Already working on it.” Valerio reaches for a black folder on the chair beside him and tosses it onto the desk. “Pierre Hadjar. Half-Saudi, half-French. The Le Brisé—a French syndicate based in Nice—have been on edge about the ‘hybrid prince.’ That’s what they call Pierre. We can use him. He hates the Marseille group—old family wounds. He’ll have no problem starting a little war in exchange for us doing business with him.”
Immediately, I’m put off. “You know I don’t want to meddle with the French.”
“A small price to pay. And besides, he’s not full French.” Valerio tries to soften my resistance. “This is our best shot at getting Giacomo out of the city for a long stretch. Think of Beatrice and the baby.”
Bastard. He knows exactly what he’s doing. The moment he mentions those two, my resolve shifts.
“Fine,” I wave him off. “But I want no part of their civil war bleeding into my city.”
“I promise, boss.”
I flip through the file, scanning the documentation. The French have made a mess of things over there, but this is the perfect cover we need.
“How do we ensure we have eyes and ears on the ground?”
Valerio nods. “I’ve got men at the airport. We control the driver. We planted two of our own in his security rotation and a couple more at his place in Paris. All have been bought off—and those who couldn’t be have been threatened successfully. We have the upper hand.”
