Page 99 of Dark Breaker

“Did you kill the alderman, too?”

The Jackal smiles coldly. “No. He still has some use to me. And once he sees what I’ve done to his precious girlfriend, he’ll be begging to obey.”

“What about Rosa?” Massimo asks. “Where is she?”

I feel my chest tighten.

She has to be all right. She has to.

I try dismiss Gina’s lifeless eyes from my mind, but I can’t.

The Jackal arches an eyebrow, then erupts into a chortle. “Is that why you’re here, Moretti? You think I took your sister?” He glances at me. “Yourwife?” He laughs again. “Oh no. No no no. I haven’t taken her. You Morettis and D’Alimontes have more enemies than you know, it seems. I do thank you for presenting yourselves to me, however: yes, I appreciate the gift you’ve given me, in the form of your persons.”

He doesn’t have her?

I’m not sure whether to feel relief or even more anxiety. I glance at Massimo. “If it wasn’t the Jackal, then who?”

Massimo shakes his head, as if to say either “not now” or “I don’t know.”

The Jackal eyes our interaction suspiciously, then paces back and forth in front of us.

“You know why they call me the Jackal? It not because of these.” He indicates his pointed teeth. “I got the name in Tunisia. You see, the prisons there are nothing like the luxurious cells you have in Italy. In Tunisia, the conditions are far more brutal. You’re thrown into a cell with five people and given barely enough food and water for four. Only the strongest survive.

“Sometimes, the guards like to play a game. They deny food and water to a cell for a month. And they bet on the survivor. They chose me to participate in this game repeatedly. I soon became their champion. Because you see, I was always the lone survivor. They called me the Jackal. The carrion eater.”

“What do you want from us?” Luciano asks.

The Jackal scoops up a pair of wire cutters from the table.

“Your families will pay millions for your release,” the Jackal says. “But first, I’ll need proof that I have you.”

“This is my fault,” I say. “I got them into this. If you need to hurt someone, hurt me.”

The Jackal cocks an eyebrow. “How heroic of you.” He comes up to me, and bends over so that his face is inches from mine. “For a gangster, you’re kind of a pretty boy. Let me change that for you.”

“You touch him, our father will rip out your spine and shove it down your throat,” Nicolo growls.

The Jackal glances at Nicolo and smirks. He stands up straight. “Your father was indeed quite brutal in his day. Nothing like you two. Did you know it was me who put him in jail?”

“It wasn’t you,” I tell him. “It was the undercover agents my father mistakenly employed.”

“Who do you think recommended those agents to him?” the Jackal taunts.

“Why?” I ask. “What did he ever do to you?”

“That’s a question for another day,” the Jackal says. “We were talking about what body part you want me to remove…” He opens and closes the cutters menacingly.

“If you want this to work,” I tell him. “Release me and keep these three as collateral. My father will never agree to pay you if you send back a body part. He’s all for negotiating his way out of a crisis, but once you start cutting away pieces of his sons, that crosses a line for him. He’ll team up with the remaining Morettis and Amatos and wipe you off the map. You say you remember how brutal he was in his day? Well, when he finds you, he’ll demonstrate to you firsthand that he hasn’t lost his brutal touch.”

“If I release you as you ask, then what will you do?” the Jackal asks.

“I’ll talk to my father in person. Convince him to pay whatever you ask. I’ll also get him to give you double the protection fee you were asking for on the Sea Wind site.”

“Double?” the Jackal says. “I want ten times what I asked now. For all the trouble you’ve put me through.”

“Then I’ll tell him to pay ten times more,” I assure him.

“And he’ll listen to you?” the Jackal asks dubiously.