The phone took some time to boot up—and Valerio had nearly forgotten the password for the SIM. He made some failed attempts on his way to the toilet.
At last, the phone was unlocked, and he was annoyed to see that he’d missed a dozen messages.
He tapped on a number he didn’t recognize. Someone had sent him several pictures. It took a moment to register what he was seeing. They were photos of his children—Davide and Gemma. The first two showed them on their way to school. The others were at the school entrance, as they greeted their friends and walked inside. All images had been shot with a telephoto lens.
Valerio was barely aware of himself as he rushed down the hall, down the stairs, and out of the building. It was only as he raced through the streets on his motorbike that he knew where he was going.
—
Luca Errichiello’s home was nearly an hour’s drive northeast from the center of Naples. Fueled with rage, Valerio barely noticed the winter countryside flicking by. He crossed into the depressed outskirts of Caserta, bled dry by the parasitic Camorra. Here, the asphalt was patched and torn, the spray-painted husks of abandoned buildings jutting like shipwrecks from the rising tide of trash.
Beyond these, as he approached the foothills and the compound of Luca Errichiello, doubt worked into him like a shard of glass.
—
Valerio had no excuse. No justification. Federico had warned him.
He owed Luca Errichiello a favor. And he knew what that meant.
He hadn’t exactly forgotten Luca these past months. If anything, he’d been vigilant—hungry to learn any scrap of news or whispered intelligence about Luca’s network and operations. He’d asked questions and listened in on briefings, dove into databases, and read thetranscripts of trials involving Luca’s peripheral network. But this investigator part of him, rabid and ravenous, had somehow quarantined itself from the man he’d been on that frantic summer night when he’d driven this road with Federico. Desperate to know if Gemma was tangled in the web, he’d gone straight to the spider. At that moment, Valerio had been entirely a father—filled with such clarity of purpose, he would have gladly traded his soul for Gemma’s safety.
Until Federico’s appearance this morning, Valerio had barely been conscious of the disconnect between father and investigator. Now, the walls of that separation began to crumble, flooding him with shame.
He keenly experienced the loss of his integrity, the bargain he’d made, and the revolting nature of the man with whom he’d made it. Worse, his decision had not secured the safety of his children.
—
Valerio shook himself. He couldn’t afford to carry this burden through the gates of Luca’s compound or it would get him killed. He needed to be sharp and responsive.
Worry about this moment, he told himself.Only this moment.
—
His approach took him through a vineyard to a high fence and metal gate, and he thought of that other visit months ago, and the armed men he’d seen at Luca’s compound. On that occasion, Federico had called ahead to secure safe passage.
Valerio stopped his bike and called the number used to text him the pictures of his children. When a man answered, he said, “Tell Luca I’m here as he asked. Don’t shoot.”
The man didn’t respond, but the gate slid open. Valerio drove through.
The winding road was picturesque, hemmed in on both sides by fruit trees—lemons and oranges. This far inland, the weather was clear and warm. The air smelled fresh, with a hint of woodsmoke.
Valerio approached another gate and was waved through by two men in combat gear with automatic rifles, and approached a sprawling mansion. It was constructed of grey stone and freshly painted stucco, with iron railing and red metal shutters, tile roof, and whitepillars at the entrance. A square courtyard was formed by Luca’s villa and two outbuildings, and in the center was a Baroque marble fountain, water pouring across the statue of a naked woman and a dolphin.
—
As Valerio drew close to the house, five men in black and carrying weapons came through the front door. The first man, broad-shouldered with sunglasses, pointed a handgun at him.
“Stay where you are,” he ordered. “Turn off the motor. Hands raised.”
Without the growl of the bike engine, the world fell suddenly quiet, the air thick with birdsong and the buzz of insects. Far away, a dog barked.
Valerio slowly raised his hands, and one of the armed men patted him down, removing the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard he kept in his waistband. This was his personal weapon. His service weapon was too bulky to carry without a harness.
“Be careful with that. I’ll need it back,” Valerio snarled as he felt the gun lifted. “Are we done?”
The obvious leader of the group was a lean, muscular man in his late thirties, with broad foreign features, pale mottled skin, and a thick crop of snowy hair. His posture was relaxed and he kept his weapon in his holster—a contrast to the alert tension of the other men, who flexed and gripped theirs. They looked to him, clearly awaiting instruction.
He gestured languidly.
