"I don't understand, sir," I say, because this mission sounds insane. Like a joke. Like he's testing me to see if I'll question him.
"I've heard some things. And maybe, shit, there's something going on. Our enemies may not be..."
He trails off.
Silence fills the line again.
"He won't suspect anything from you. Treat it like a normal job. Don't get caught, and bring me the contents, and I'll handle it. I don't want to assume anything."
"Okay, sir," I say, nodding.
"You'll get everything you need soon, but leave now. I want you checked into the hotel tonight," he says, and then the line goes dead.
I check, and this time, he's hung up.
I stand there, my phone still in my hand, staring at the wall in front of me.
Ivan never sounds this conflicted. Jobs to retrieve something, sure, it's mostly those or killing someone, sometimes both, but not on assignments where he doesn't seem sure of things.
Which means whatever he suspects about Dimitri is bad.
Really bad.
But the stakes are the same, maybe even worse for me.
If Dimitri catches me spying on him, if he even suspects I'm there on Ivan's orders, no amount of loyalty will save me. He'll torture me for intel, then kill me slowly, and Ivan won't be able to stop it.
A deep, almost suffocating sense of dread settles in my chest.
I set the phone down and drain the rest of my wine in one long swallow.
Then I start packing.
9
VICTOR
The Mediterranean sun burns through the tinted window of the car, turning the leather seat warm beneath me. I shift, adjusting the collar of my custom linen suit, a pale cream color. The fabric breathes against my skin, light and expensive, nothing like the heavy wool I wear in Bucharest.
Sanremo unfolds outside the window in layers of buildings stacked against the hillside. Palm trees line the streets, swaying in the coastal breeze. The air smells of the sea and a hint of citrus. Better than the exhaust fumes and concrete of Bucharest.
Everything here has a hint of wealth to it, polished and pristine.
My driver, a local hire who speaks very little English and whose only loyalty is to the euros in his pocket, navigates the winding coastal road from my hotel to the casino.
I glance down and check my white gold Patek Philippe, and it reads 1:43 p.m. A little later than I wanted it to be, but it's fine.
I look back out the window and think.
Here, I'm not Victor Ionescu, future politician and fixer for the Romanian underworld. I'm Stefan Radovic, a wealthy investor from Montenegro with too much money and too little sense. The kind of man who throws chips around at baccarat tables and buys bottles of champagne for strangers because he can. The kind of man nobody looks at twice because men like him are everywhere on the Italian Riviera.
The act won't be difficult; it's exactly who I was ten years ago. The memory of that kind of recklessness doesn't sit right with me anymore, so I push it away.
The car passes the harbor, where large yachts bob in the water, their white hulls bright under the sun. I've never seen the appeal of yachts. Spending millions to isolate yourself on the water seems like a failure of imagination when you can control the room from the inside.
We finally pull up to the casino entrance, and I step out into the heat. The building rises high, a masterpiece with ornate balconies and tall arched windows. A doorman in white gloves opens the door, and I nod without speaking.
Inside, the air conditioning hits you so fast you almost shiver. The marble floors gleam under the light of massive crystal chandeliers, each one dripping with thousands of individual pieces that refract the light. The scent of expensive perfume and cigar smoke lingers in the air, mingling with flowers from arrangements like the towering vases near the entrance.
