Page 53 of Devil's Vows

“Go help Gabriella with the girls, Milana,” I say. “Please. I’ll come read them stories.”

“Sure,” she says with a shrug, and I watch, somewhat dumbstruck as she takes Katya by the hand and lets her guide her to the stairs, following Gabriella and Irisha.

As they walk off, I wait for them to be out of earshot then turn to Yuri. “What the hell happened here?”

Yuri smirks. For this Russian, it’s rare. “What didn’t happen? You watched?”

I nod and indicate for him to go on.

“Milana was pissed. Vodka up to the eyeballs. Gabriella took charge.” He shrugs and waves a hand at the table. “And this is what you get. Milana meek as a lamb. Dinner on the table. The girls ready for bed even after their nap. Same as every day before. She knows kids, that one. And she knows how to cook, thank the fucking Pope.” He smirks at his own little joke. “Sounds like the jackpot to me.”

Sounds liketoo good to be trueto me.

“Tell me what’s off, Yuri. I don’t trust good news.”

“Don’t blame you.” He hands me his phone, unlocked, after he’s opened some app on it. “Read.”

It’s every phone call Gabriella’s made with her brothers, transcribed and translated into Russian. Nothing unexpected. Family chatter. There’s one call, the first one she had with Dominic, where toward the end, she asks about Mother Lucia.

I read through the whole thing again before turning the screen to Yuri.

“What’s this? About Mother Lucia?”

“I did some digging. You say something sounds off? Look at this.” He takes his phone, taps at the screen a few times, and holds it out to me again.

I scan the pages, the witch hunt that seems to be plaguingconvents in Northern Italy, with the last incident being in Potenza. “That’s where she was, wasn’t it? With this Mother Lucia? When her brothers found her?”

Yuri just gives me a hard stare I have no trouble interpreting. Yes, that’s where Gabriella was, and this ‘witch hunt’ has all the classic signs of an assassination, disguised in a swarm of similar incidences. It’s a strategy I’m familiar with and have used in the past. It’s the cleanest dirty way to get rid of someone while keeping your side spotless and the cops guessing.

“Mother Lucia was the last one?”

“Looks like it.”

She could have been the target, or the hunt stopped because they found what they wanted, but what were they looking for? This incident with Mother Lucia happened shortly after Gabriella reconnected with her brothers.

“Keep an eye on this, and keep me posted,” I tell Yuri as I hand his phone back. “What else? Any hits on Randazzo?”

“I have two potential leads. One is a woman known as Mara. A tattoo artist. Does piercings and all that stuff. Used to do work for Randazzo. On hisgirls.”

“You mean his prostitutes?”

“You know he was into human trafficking, Ivan. Don’t make me spell it out for you.”

Girls. Real under-aged girls. Girls like Irisha and Katya. Kidnapped, immigrant children separated from their parents, stolen. “Fuck.” This is the type of thing that puts me in such a rage, I could kill indiscriminately.

“Yeah.”

“Where’s she? This Mara?”

“A man known as The Mole is holding her. Apparently, she was there the day Randazzo’s compound got torched. When Randazzo was killed. Doing work on someone. Everybody thinks she’s dead, but The Mole got her out.”

“And who the fuck’s The Mole?”

“Our enigma. Worked for Randazzo for years, but he was a double agent. In old Don Scalera’s pocket.”

I laugh. Full fucking circle. Probably still works for the new Don, too, Matteo Scalera. What are the chances we flip him to our side? “How much did you pay for this info?”

“Two million dollars. You know Randazzo was in bed with the Russian dirt in Europe for the last fifteen years at least. Drugs and human trafficking. Sex trafficking. I have connections who’ve been watching him for years. This is what I got, but there’ll be more.”