Antonelli smiled.
“I could never refuse my girl. I am a founding member of Propaganda Tre. It was started after the fall of the Berlin Wall to protect this country against anti-Christian socialist ideologies.”
“Oh, Papà,” Luna said, her disappointment so intense I could almost feel it in the air around us.
“I’m sorry, Luna. I was young. I thought I knew what was good for Italy. For Rome. For us. I found myself allied to wicked men with ambitions and plans they did not share with me. Secret plans. Dishonest plans. I thought our group would be different—not like Propaganda Due—but it wasn’t. We lost our way.”
His voice trailed off.
“And?” I prompted.
“We got involved with espionage, extremist groups. Like our predecessors, we laundered money, financed terror all around the world, drifting further and further toward an ideology I didn’t recognize. Not left or right, but one that worships only money.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Luna asked.
“Because he was worried you’d feel it was your duty to investigate,” I replied for him. “And that would have put your life in danger.”
Antonelli nodded. “I swore an oath of loyalty,” he said. “A blood oath. Any betrayal or attempt to leave the organization will result in death. Not just for the renegade, but for everyone they love.”
“So, what’s happening here in Rome? Why the power play? Why have so many died—some of them men of God?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s the thing—I just don’t know what’s going on. I asked Trotta to pay Milan Verde a visit, to see if he could find out who the Dark Fates are working for. Milan is a psychopath. He’s ruthless but doesn’t have the ambition to play at this level, so he’s working for someone higher up.”
“Do you know the other members of Propaganda Tre?” I asked.
“Only the ones in my chapter,” Antonelli replied. “Now Trotta is dead, so is Christian Altmer, and—”
“Altmer?” I exclaimed. “He was in Propaganda Tre?”
Antonelli nodded. “As is his boss, Joseph Stadler.”
I was dumbfounded and took a moment to absorb this revelation.
“What about Cardinal Vito Peralta?” I asked when I found my voice.
“Yes. The Church is represented.”
I paced around for a moment. “What if Stadler didn’t hire Private to solve the case? What if he hired us in order to keep tabs on what we were doing? He knew I’d look into Father Brambilla’s death and I represented a risk to the organization if I was doing things they weren’t aware of. By hiring us he could share what we found, enabling him to gauge the threat of Propaganda Tre being exposed.”
I hadn’t had the chance to make any formal interim reports to Stadler, but I looked back on my informal meetings with our client and thought about all the useful information he would have gleaned from them. Each meeting with him had happened before an attack or an encounter with someone who’d led me into a trap. After our first meeting, Luna and I were shot at by the assassin who tried to kill us out near Poli. I hadn’t made the connection before, but if Stadler was behind everything, those incidents hadn’t been coincidences.
I took out the new phone Mo-bot had given me and connected to Private’s secure server. I sent a message to Justine, Mo-bot, and Sci.
We need to meet. Parco di Monte Ciocci, near Vatican City. Two hours.
I pocketed the phone and turned to Antonelli.
“You could have saved us a lot of time if you’d shared the truth of your involvement with this group sooner.”
“I’m sorry. The oath… They would kill me and my daughter. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could—”
Luna cut him off. “Could what? Kill someone? Buy someone off? How can we share the same blood? These are bad things. The way you live your life, the way you make your money, the people you associate with, the things you’ve done…”
“Luna,” Antonelli pleaded, but she left him nowhere to go.
“I’m sorry, Papà. I can’t look away anymore. I can’t pretend. Your business goes against God and man,” she said. “To be under your protection is to be aligned with you. I cannot agree to live my life like that.” She faced me. “Are you going back to Rome?”
I nodded.
