“Jesus Christ,” Connor breathes.
Mariana takes another moment, then shakes her head as if pulling herself from a bad dream. She speaks more briskly, her voice clear and level, but there’s an undercurrent of rage.
“To make a long story short, Reynard went to the docks thinking he was meeting a shipment of stolen paintings, but got the surprise of his life when the workers opened the doors. Somehow the manifests got mixed up, and there we were, a dozen starving, terrified little girls in collars and chains, huddled among corpses.
“Reynard only had enough cash on him to bribe the workers for one of us. They were Capo’s men, of course. The story became that only eleven girls had survived.”
I remember putting a hand around her neck in passion and her stiffly saying “I don’t like to be restrained,” and I have to swallow the bile rising acidly hot in the back of my throat.
“Later I found out that my sister and the others were brutally raped by their transporters before they ever got to Capo. But my sister escaped. She got her hands on one of the men’s guns and blew her brains out. She was lucky, in a way. I understand not one of the other girls made it to sixteen.”
I’m aware that my mouth is open. I’m aware that the silence in the room is one of the most awful sounds I’ve ever heard, filled with the horror of three adults who’ve seen plenty of terrible things in their lives. But I can’t move. I’m frozen. All I can do is stare at Mariana.
She sighs heavily, passing a hand over her face. It’s obvious the toll this tale is taking on her. I wonder if she’s ever spoken about it to anyone before.
“It was another ten years before Capo found out what Reynard had done. I don’t know how. All I know is that one day he came to the shop and said I had a choice to work off Reynard’s debt in one of two ways.”
Her mouth pinches in distaste at some memory. “So instead of becoming Capo’s whore, I became his puppet,” she says, more quietly. “His obedient minion, sent to fetch whatever bauble struck his fancy. I was already an accomplished thief by then. By seven years old I could sneak into any locked room, pinch a wallet or a watch from a man without him knowing it was gone. Reynard only refined my skills. So it made sense for Capo to recruit me, though he would’ve preferred I choose the other path. And all these years later, here we are.”
Mariana looks at Tabby and Connor, both of whom are obviously in the same shock I am. “I’ve wanted to kill him for as long as I can remember. So if there’s anything I can do to help take him down, I’ll do it.”
Tabby and Connor look at me.
“Angel,” I say roughly, hunting for her eyes. When I get them and she looks at me, I say, “Let me kill him for you.”
“If we don’t give the FBI Moreno, she doesn’t get a clean slate,” Connor says quickly.
I’m not really listening. It’s hard enough to concentrate on sitting still when every nerve is screaming for me to go cut off Moreno’s head and present it to Mariana on a silver platter.
I want to destroy him for what he’s done to her. I want to obliterate him. I want to rip him apart with my bare hands and feast on his bones. I’ve never felt such all-consuming fury.
Looking deeply into my eyes, Mariana smiles.
“That might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard, cowboy. Thank you. And please, please don’t take this as an insult, or a lack of faith in your abilities, but the possibility of you getting close enough to kill him is very small.”
When I start to protest, she presses a finger against my lips.
I love it when a woman does that. It silences me instantly.
“He travels everywhere with six assassins. He’s never in a public setting where he could be trapped, surrounded, or caught in a sniper’s crosshairs. No one outside of the assassins—all Sicilians, unimpeachably loyal—knows where he lives.”
She looks at Tabby for confirmation. When Tabby nods regretfully, Mariana turns her attention back to me.
“He’s avoided many different attempts on his life, simply because he’s always expecting the next one. He lives prepared to die. When they invented the term criminal mastermind, they were talking about him. The smartest, most straightforward way to catch him is with bait he already knows and trusts.”
She drops her finger from my lips and speaks with quiet vehemence. “And in my mind, it wouldn’t count as avenging my sister’s death if I had nothing to do with Capo’s demise. I can’t be a spectator, letting everyone else do the work. To use your words from earlier, how would you feel if the situation was reversed?”
I want to answer that the situation is totally different because she’s mine and it’s my job to protect her in any way and every way, but the words are curdling like spoiled milk in my mouth.
Because the truth is that if someone did to one of my sisters what Vincent Moreno did to Mariana’s, to all those nameless girls who were someone’s sisters and daughters and best friends, there’d be no force in heaven or hell that could stop me from getting my revenge.
I swallow hard and think for a long moment, wrestling with my conscience, my ego, and every male instinct in my body.
It might be the hardest battle I’ve ever fought.
Finally, after an eternity of silent debate, the scales tip to one side and I take a deep breath.
“All right.”
I have to force the words past my teeth with an enormous effort of will.
“But if I even get a whiff that things are going sideways, I’m pulling you out and going in myself, guns blazing.” I look at Connor, letting him see the kamikaze warrior in my eyes. “And this plan better be air-fuckin’-tight or I’m not signin’ off on it. You hear me?”
“I hear you, brother,” he says quietly.
I stand, pace around the room a few times, breathing in another few deep breaths as I try to get myself under better control. Everyone watches me, silently waiting.
Eventually I trust myself to talk without blowing up.
“First things first. We need to decide on a place for the meet. It can’t be public, not only because Moreno wouldn’t agree to it, but also because we want to mitigate as much collateral damage as we can if things go south and the guns come out. But it also has to have enough cover for the FBI spooks to hide, and multiple ingress and egress points for them to come in and for us to get out. Somewhere neutral enough that it won’t arouse his suspicions, yet ideally close enough to an airport that he can be moved quickly before his men can regroup and form a counterassault to get him back.”
Mariana’s lips curve into a small, unnerving smile.
“How about an inferno?”
Twenty-Three
Mariana
For the next hour, we talk logistics. Or Connor, Tabby, and I do, while Ryan paces the floor like a caged tiger and tries not to break anything.
His protectiveness shouldn’t surprise me. He’s a soldier, after all. Generally they have no problem putting their lives on the line to protect what they hold dear. He’s trained to think of others first, to focus on the mission first, to focus on goals and outcomes rather than dwelling on feelings and the why.
But his reaction to my story does surprise me. Both his immediate and heartfelt offer to kill Capo for me, and his willingness to swallow his protective urges—and his pride—to allow me to take part in a plan he so obviously doesn’t want me to have anything to do with.
In other words, he’s respecting my wishes. Against his better judgment and what must be a considerable onslaught of testosterone pounding against the inside of his skull. It must be demanding that he lock me in a closet to keep me safe, but he’s going along with what I want. And by the looks of it, it’s killing him to do so.
If I wasn’t already so infatuated with him, that alone would do the trick.
I’ve never met an alpha male who could be described as liberated.
“So just to recap,” I say into a lull in the conversation, “I’ll arrange to meet Capo at the Palace. I’ll come in wearing a wire and an earpiece, which will receive and transmit from an FBI van set up close by. I’ll show Capo the diamond, making sure to mention how he ordered me to take it, like he did with the other jobs. I’ll ask him what my next job will be, make small talk about his business, lead him into discussing our history together or whatever specifics I can to get him to disclose about his criminal activities. If he’s got girls with him, as he usually does, that will be easy. How will I know when you’ve got enough?”
“You’ll hear the agent in charge give the signal to go over your earpiece,” Connor says. “And then all the lights will go out. You need to hit the ground and stay there until we’ve got Moreno in handcuffs.”
“She’ll be a sitting duck!” Ryan interjects hotly. “When the lights go out, he’ll know something’s hinky—and who’s gonna be right there for him to blame it on?”
“I doubt if he’d suspect me, but if he does, I can defend myself. Last time I met with Capo, I walked in wearing half a dozen knives. The main problem is his men. They’re never more than a few feet away from him, and they’re heavily armed.”
“Can you get him alone somehow?” asks Tabby.