“Will you deal with this Stadler?”
I nodded again.
“Then take me with you. I want to help. I want to see him face justice.”
I admired her bravery and couldn’t believe that only a short while ago I’d thought she might be in league with her father and responsible for Father Brambilla’s murder.
“What about me?” Antonelli asked.
“Luigi Calio’s farm is over that hill. He has always been loyal. Stay with him and his family until this is over,” Luna replied.
She walked back to the Land Rover and got in the driver’s side.
“Come on,” she said to me.
“What about us?” Antonelli asked pathetically.
“We’ll talk when this is over,” his daughter told him.
He looked broken, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. Luna was right: his dishonesty had cost lives.
I got in the Defender. Luna said nothing as she started the engine. She eyed her father, who seemed much diminished, standing hunched and dejected in the deserted landscape, a dead man lying close by. She kept her eyes fixed on him in the mirror as she turned the car around and we began our return to Rome.
CHAPTER96
WE LEFT THE track and turned onto Via Roma, a winding country road that would eventually take us back to the city. Soon we were making good progress.
“You didn’t know anything about your father’s membership of this group?” I asked.
Luna shook her head. “He never speaks to me about his business activities. He’s always said it’s because he doesn’t want to put me in a difficult position, but maybe it’s because he felt he couldn’t trust me. So there was a big blank space between us. I mean, I had my suspicions. Through my work I have been able to connect some of the dots. His low-life associates and street-level operations are known to me, places like the Pleasure Hall, but this Propaganda Tre connection was kept from me. Or it was until today.”
She sounded convincing, but someone who’d been born intothe mob and had to conceal the truth from her colleagues every single day would be an accomplished liar.
“Must be difficult. You being police. Him doing what he does.”
She nodded. “Very. But families are sent to test us. Love us but test us.”
I smiled. Her expression didn’t soften.
We headed along the valley toward Colle Merulino, a tiny village tucked behind the intersection of two highways. We would join one of them, the Autostrada Roma, and head west into the city.
The country road we were on, the Via di San Vittorino, followed a curve around the shoulder of a tree-covered hill before it narrowed to pass through a tunnel bored through a low cliff. When we emerged into dazzling sunshine, I sensed movement. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the flash of a vehicle speeding beyond some trees, coming along Via Polense toward the intersection we were approaching. It was a large dump truck traveling flat out. The driver showed no intention of slowing. In fact, he was clearly aiming to hit us.
“Luna,” I yelled. “Stop!”
But it was too late. The truck collided with the Defender, mangling the front of the Land Rover, smashing through the engine block, sending us into a terrible, grinding, crashing spin. The cabin filled with smoke, diesel, the stench of burning metal, scorched rubber, and the world went round and round like a Waltzer in a giant hall of mirrors.
My head collided with the side window, which shattered. Everything went distant. I was dimly aware of us bouncing offthe truck but still traveling with it, metal caught and hooked on metal as we spun wildly.
Then stillness.
Suddenly movement, hands pulling me.
Thrown onto my back. Above me, snarling unfamiliar faces, tattoos.
The Dark Fates.
A familiar face.
