“How the fuck did this happen?” I snarled, grabbing Dom’s collar. “They were your soldiers.”
“Let’s calm down.” His face shut down into a stoic mask.
I let him go and turned to Ange. “Where’s Dario?”
The name of my consigliere barely left my mouth when he entered the facility and hustled across the gym. He had my phone and had been screening my calls, so I could concentrate on the fight.
“You have a message.”
It was from an unknown number that asked me to call back. “Can you track Natalya?” I asked.
“She’s not wearing any trackers right now,” Dario said.
“Have you asked for the footage from the salon the girls went to?” Ange asked Dom.
“The camera is broken.”
“All right.” My head spun with possibilities. “Everyone out except Dom and Ange and Dario.” I looked at Matteo. “You can stay.”
My whole body surged with adrenaline. I was so pumped, it was a wonder the phone didn’t crack when Dario handed it to me. My fingers were rubbery when I handled the device and I was all thumbs when I clicked the return call.
The phone rang twice before a familiar voice answered.
“Moretti.”
Carmine. “What the fuck did you do to Natalya?”
“She’s fine. She just needs to help me win some money.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“In a moment. I need some things to be clear to you first.”
“You want me to throw the fight?” That was the first thing that came to me because Ange and I discussed this. Natalya was already free from Orlov when I agreed to the fight. There was no stopping us from using another entity to bet on the underdog and make us a lot of money.
“The odds are now five to one,” Carmine said. “News has spread how much you and your brother have been training and you are going to kick Orlov’s ass, so it’s important that Natalya’s kidnapping should be kept a secret.”
I glanced at Dom, and he nodded. “Everyone’s on gag order.”
Dario said he also issued that directive.
“And if I throw the fight? How will I know you won’t hurt Natalya out of spite?”
“You won’t.”
“I want to see her or I’m not doing this. Call me back with video.”
I ended the call. The urge to hurl the phone against the wall was overwhelming. Rage was running a heated circuit through my body. I wasn’t sure if I could control it and not kill Orlov by accident.
“Whose suggestion was it to go to the salon?” I asked.
The men looked at each other.
Matteo stepped forward. “I only heard Sera mention it. She said Natalya was feeling sorry for her mother and wanted to do something nice for her.”
“Dario, confiscate Elena’s phone and check all her messages.” When my consigliere hadn’t moved a single muscle, I snarled, “Now!”
He bowed his head and excused himself from the huddle. I checked my phone, willing it to ring. I was about to punch the number again, thinking that Carmine’s pride was getting the better of him because I ended the call abruptly when it rang with an incoming video call.
Carmine’s face filled the screen.
“Where the fuck is Natalya?”
“Luca!” a voice cried.
“Natalya.”
“Never. Hang up. On me. Again,” Carmine said coldly.
It took tremendous effort not to spew every derogative name at him. I thought my jaw would crack when I spoke in a calm and respectful tone. “Natalya, per favore.”
“Much better.”
When my wife’s face filled the screen, my knees nearly buckled with relief. It was enough that she was alive for now. “Baby, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She sniffed. “I can’t believe my cousin would do this.”
“He’s not your cousin.”
“I’m sorry you have to throw the fight for me.”
I froze. I hadn’t agreed to it. And this was not the fierce Natalya I knew. I swallowed. “I’ll do anything for you, tesoro. You know this, right?”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Luca.”
Carmine’s face filled the screen again. “There. You have proof of life. Now win me my money. And don’t do it too quickly. It needs to look real. End it in the fourth round.”
“What if Orlov kicks my ass and does it in the first round?”
“You’re stronger than that. Otherwise, they’ll know you threw the fight.”
“One more thing, Carmine. Hurt her and I will make it my mission to hunt you down and make sure your death is slow. There’s no place on this earth you can hide, capisce?”
His smile was full of mockery, and this time, I let him end the call.
Natalya
“I want you to transfer half the money to these and divide the rest between these bets.” Carmine pointed to the screen in front of me.
My stomach knotted in anxiety, not sure if we could pull this off, but I had enough proof that we could. Carmine had changed in the past two years. Physically, his face had acquired lines of ruthlessness I had not seen before, or maybe it was a mask the whole time. I saw him now as a weasel hell-bent on his long con and plan for revenge. No trace remained of the young man who’d been sympathetic to an introverted fourteen-year-old girl. He was a man who had a terrible start in life, and Papà, who believed in him, gave him the opportunity to lead the Galluzo as underboss. The betrayal hurt deeper than I first expected, but I had two weeks to get used to it. To build my hatred for what he had done and feel no remorse for what I was about to do.
“Did you hear me?” He tapped impatiently at the back of my chair.
“I heard you,” I replied tonelessly. “Hundred fifty million spread equally between these numbered accounts. How do you want to place the bets?”
“Put a hundred on Orlov, and fifty that Luca will lose by the fourth round.” He chuckled with villainous glee. “Your husband is going to receive the humiliation of his life.”
Tears pricked my eyes. Hang on, Luca. Just hang on, caro. I will fix this. I couldn’t remember how many times I tried to talk myself out of this. The fight and training occupied Luca’s mind, and he didn’t notice my anxiety. It also helped that Mamma and Papà were here.
As I worked on his money, Carmine continued to rant. “You had to go and have amnesia and ruin my plans.”
My fingers quit typing on the keyboard. “You cost me two years of my life I can never get back.” The screen blurred as I remembered Elias’s first step, of Luca starting to make the turn into putting us first. The image of baby Elias sleeping on Luca’s chest was imprinted on my mind forever. I would never get that time back. And that was why I needed to do this.
Carmine spun my chair around. “And it was thirty years of mine. I deserved everything the Galluzo had to offer, and I almost got it all, but your husband had to go fall in love with you and fight to keep your son.”
At my blank stare, he sneered. “You were supposed to end up hating him when you found out that he was giving up Elias to Vincenzo. You were going to go with your son, divorce his ass, and I would make you my queen.”
I recoiled from Carmine.
“Oh, don’t give me that look.” He straightened and stepped away from me in disgust. “You don’t turn me on sexually at all. I would have allowed you lovers and I would have mine. We would have kept Vincenzo’s legacy alive. Now the Pirellis are taking over and it’s the end of the Conte line.”
The door opened and a red-haired mercenary walked in. Carmine didn’t have any mafia soldiers on his payroll. He depended on private military contractors. They were the ones who took me from the salon.
“The game is about to start. Are all the bets in?” Red asked.
“Yes, they’re in,” I answered. Carmine was going to ask me anyway. I angled the screen in his direction, detailing the clear placements of bets.
“Do you mind if I watch in here, sir?” Red asked.
“Sure, why not? You set up the feed.” Carmine took the chair beside me. “We should have popcorn and champagne, don’t you think?”
By this time, my stomach was a wasteland of bubbling acid, and I didn’t think I could eat anything, least of all popcorn. Even the water tasted sour and only aggravated the bile backing up my throat.
With all eyes riveted on the wide screen on the wall, Red pumped up the volume just as the crowd dressed in suits and cocktail dresses gathered around the twenty-foot octagon. Composed of associates of the Russian and Italian mafia, low crisscross fences surrounded the area preventing them from spilling over. The match was livestreamed globally through a server controlled by Koshkin and he was predicted to make ten billion dollars from the Game of Bosses.
Orlov and Luca were the game openers at six p.m., the only slot available because it was a last-minute addition to the schedule. This served me well because I couldn’t stand the suspense.
“There will be no introduction of the fighters,” the announcer spoke on the loudspeaker. “You all know who they are.” Illegal distribution of the video would be under threat of being hunted down by the Russian mafia, and since the inception of the games in the nineties, not one fight had been leaked. At one point, I wondered why they didn’t wear masks, but the participants were not regular fighters who did this as a living and found the face cover cumbersome and claustrophobic. The tattoos were a dead giveaway anyway.
I identified Luca immediately, and my heart skipped, or rather leapt, extra beats. The filter of the television couldn’t mask the rage on his face. For those who didn’t know his expressions like I did, that wasn’t stoicism. When the camera did a close-up, I could see the fire in his eyes. A muscle was pulsing at his jaw. In his corner were Dom and Ange.
The Russian was more flamboyant, and he was spewing challenges at Luca.
“This is fun. And to think Orlov didn’t know I was doing him a favor,” Carmine made commentary.
Interesting that the referees were the ones wearing masks although it made sense in a way since vendettas were embedded into the DNA of the two men meeting on the mat. The fighters met in the center and listened to the rules. Luca said the rules were just guidelines and kidney punches, eye gouging, and below-the-belt hits were a matter of honor.
When the players moved away from each other to begin the fight, I was close to throwing up.
Red glanced back at me, then over at Carmine, before returning his attention to the screen.
I swallowed, not knowing where to concentrate, but my hand crawled slowly under the desk where a knife was taped to its underside.
On the screen, the fighters stalked each other and all we could hear was cheering and yelling.
The Russian struck first. Luca blocked. They started exchanging blows. Luca was taller and had a longer reach. Orlov looked shorter because he stacked muscles from the way his neck disappeared. He lunged at Luca, sending them crashing to the mat.
They grappled around the mat, and Luca threw Orlov off his back and sprang to his feet.
I kept my eyes on the clock.
When it crossed the three-minute mark, Red pivoted with his gun raised at Carmine.
Goose bumps erupted all over my skin. Gunfire erupted from outside.
“It’s over, Carmine,” Red said. “We’ve locked your accounts.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“A friend of Doriana’s.”
The Friar, aka Dead Poet.
“That bitch.” Carmine stood slowly. I scooted my chair away from him, stood, and walked to Red’s side.
“She begged for her life in the end,” Carmine jeered. “If she knew who you guys were, she would have given you up.” Then he changed tactics. “We can talk about this. We stand to make half a billion from the games. Imagine what you can do with it.”
Carmine was a hypocrite. He said he hated human traffickers, and it was enough we rescued the victims, but he had no problem profiting from the money that came from it. For him, he felt that was owed to him after what happened to his mother.
“Luca will not be humiliated because of you,” I snapped.
The door crashed open. A force knocked me over, and I instinctively crawled away from the source. Fists and grunts and cursing exploded behind me. Pain in my scalp made me cry out as I was yanked to my feet and the cold barrel of a gun poked at my temple.
“I’ll kill her,” Carmine shouted. He backed away with me. Red had neutralized the mercenary who broke into the room. Another mercenary named Trevor appeared. He and Red worked together.
“Take it easy,” Red said. “We’re lowering our weapons…see?” He and Trevor slowly crouched to the floor, but Red’s eyes were level with the knife I had in my hand. A knife Carmine in his panic didn’t realize I possessed.
At the minuscule nod from Red, I went limp in Carmine’s arms. My pulse pounded in my ears, muffling my captor’s shout, I raised my arm and stabbed his thigh and yanked it upward. No remorse. It was him or me.
“Bitch!” Carmine screamed. We both fell to the floor, but before I could gather my wits, Red was already hauling me up and into his arms.
“You’re okay, you’re okay.” He was holding my shaking form. More mercenaries spilled into the room and there were brief status updates. They were on our side, thank God.
I pushed away from Red. “Luca.”
He grinned. “Let’s get you to your husband.”
