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JOAO

I ’m sitting on my yellow couch with a beer, my black cat Mimi on my lap, trying to find something to watch on TV, when I get a summons from Antonio Moretti to meet him at Casanova.

That’s unusual. I saw the padrino at headquarters earlier today when I delivered a report on our smuggling operations. He was in a good mood, joking about his wife’s pregnancy cravings. “Her checkup went well, and the nausea is easing, thank heavens.” He made a face. “Never get someone you love pregnant, Joao. It’s hell watching Lucia suffer and knowing there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”

Casanova is a sex club. Why are we meeting there, of all the places?

My boss doesn’t like to be kept waiting, so I grab a jacket and head out. It’s an unusually warm October evening and Venice bustles with tourists. No surprise there. I live in Giudecca, which is typically a little quieter than the mainland, but not by much. Every year, the island gets more crowded as people discover its charms. The art galleries are thrilled by this, as are the restaurateurs.

Me, not so much. There are too many people and too many threats, and I know from experience that an attack could come from anywhere.

My senses tingle as I walk to the boat launch, threading past the clusters of tourists dining al fresco, lingering over their dessert and coffee.

I was kidnapped from my home as a child and trained to be an assassin. In one particularly memorable training exercise when I was ten, my team was set loose in a simulated city square to find our target, and a member of the opposing team nearly knifed me. In those days, I still foolishly trusted kindly authority figures, and she’d been dressed as a nun.

Stefi had rescued me by throwing a brick at the nun’s head. And it was a hard throw. The nun went down, and even as I blinked in confusion, this girl with red hair in two fat pigtails darted over to me and grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she said, her green eyes flashing impatiently. “She won’t stay down long. Let’s get out of here.”

Stefi’s been dead for eight long years, but even now, I only have to close my eyes, and she’s there. As real to me as when she was alive and we were together, her eyes laughing, her long hair mussed on a pillow. My wife loved warm nights in October. If we were between jobs, we would sneak away to Prague or Valencia or Dubrovnik, and she’d drag me to a square where we would drink cold beer or cheap wine in a small cafe. “This weather is a gift from the summer gods,” she would say, throwing out her arms expansively. “We can’t reject their gift.”

Henrik Bach, the man who took us from our homes when we were children and molded us into killers, never liked for his trainees to get too friendly with each other. If we banded together, we would become a threat to his authority. If he knew we got married in secret, he would have killed us both.

Despite the risks, whenever Stefi called, I would be there. I could never say no to her. I never wanted to.

I push those memories down, jump into my speedboat, and cross the lagoon. Enough time has passed that I should be able to remember the happy times without an influx of pain. But even now, even after all these years, every time I think about Stefi, it feels like someone is shoving a red-hot poker into my heart.

It hurts less to keep the memories buried.

Less than thirty minutes after I received the padrino’s text message, I walk into Casanova.

Antonio is in a private room, his wife Lucia snuggled next to him on a couch littered with throw pillows. My eyebrows creep up when I see her there. “This is awkward,” I quip. It’s weird enough that he wanted to meet me at a sex club, but why is his wife here? Something is going on, and my first response is to make a joke about it. “The padrino said something about strange cravings earlier, but I thought he was talking about food. I’m flattered, of course, Signora Moretti, but?—”

Antonio’s face draws into a frown. Lucia snort-laughs and throws a pillow at me. I catch it in mid-air, set it back down on the couch, and give my irritated boss a placating smile. “You know people are going to gossip.”

Antonio Moretti is the most powerful man in the city, and every move he makes is thoroughly scrutinized. Even though Casanova has rules about maintaining the anonymity of their guests, by tomorrow morning, everyone who is anyone will believe that the padrino and his wife had an intimate rendezvous with an unknown man.

“It can’t be helped. If Lucia wasn’t here, people would gossip that I was cheating on my pregnant wife, and I will not have that.” He gestures to a chair, and I lower myself into it. “I wanted to talk to you privately, and this is one of the most secure places in the city. Drink?”

“No, thank you.” What does he have to say that we couldn’t discuss at headquarters? It can’t be a job—if it were, Lucia wouldn’t be here. The padrino doesn’t keep secrets from his wife, but especially now, he’s careful not to upset her.

I study him as he pours Lucia a glass of sparkling water with a lime wedge. He smiles at his wife as he hands her the drink, but his eyes stay hooded.

Something’s bothering him. The look he’s giving me. . . It’s almost as if he’s afraid of me. No, not afraid—Lucia wouldn’t be here if he was—but he’s definitely wary.

He settles back on the couch and fixes me with a hard stare. “When you joined my organization, Joao, we made a deal,” he says. “Every time I asked you to kill, you had the right to ask why, and you had the right to say no. And in exchange, I wanted the truth. Complete honesty about your past.”

“I remember.”

“Cecilia d’Este sent me this.” He pushes a large brown envelope across the coffee table, keeping his eyes on my face. “This is a file on Gemma, the woman who came after Tomas’s fiancée.”

Tomas is our money guy, and Alina is his fiancée. A couple of weeks ago, her estranged father hired a professional to abduct her from Venice. Gemma, or whatever her name really is, walked into Alina’s gym and befriended her. She took her out to dinner, drugged her during that meal, and left Ali on a deserted dock for two petty criminals to pick up.

Thankfully, Tomas intercepted the men before they could remove Ali from Venice. Less ideally, he killed them before I could question them. An understandable reaction but a strategic mistake because we still haven’t been able to track down this Gemma . She’s hidden her tracks very well, and while there are cameras in Ali’s gym, every time Gemma was there, she kept her head down. She even paid the men in cash, so there’s no paper trail to follow.

She came to Venice to abduct Ali, and she almost succeeded. I should have guessed the padrino wouldn’t let it go.

She walked into Venice and threatened one of us.

A response must be made.

And now Antonio seems to have a lead on her. Anticipation sharpens my focus as I open the envelope in front of me. Gemma is going to discover it was a very bad idea to cross us.

A photo falls out of a woman with honey-blonde hair.

I take one look at it, and shock ricochets through me.

Her hair is a different color now, blonde instead of a red as warm as fire. Her eyes are brown in this picture, not a green so bright it reminded me of a forest. Her nose is different. She’s smiling in this picture, but the dimple in her chin, the one I kissed a thousand times, is gone.

But Stefi is etched deep into my soul, and I’d know her anywhere.

“The woman who almost abducted Alina is an assassin who goes by the name of Stefania Freitas,” Antonio says, his voice hard. “And, according to Cici, she’s your wife. Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Joao?”