Chapter Fourteen

Campbell

I’VE DONE EVERYTHING possible to ensure Mr. Costa doesn’t get killed because of what I’m about to do, but on this kind of timeline, it’s more of a hope than a guarantee.

The gardener drives through La Rosa’s gate as he does every day, oblivious as I follow him in on foot. His rearview mirror has a new tilt of half an inch, enough to put a blind spot over the back right corner of the van—one of several modifications I made to the vehicle last night, but arguably the most subtle.

Costa is a remarkably unremarkable man, with no connections to organized crime save for his regular attendance of La Rosa’s garden. Enrico told me he was born in Queens and started working in landscape maintenance as a teenager, eventually taking out a small business loan to found his own company. A love of uncommon plants got him recommended to some millionaire or another with dreams of a green thumb. One of them must have passed along his name to La Rosa because he’s been Costa’s first stop in the morning ever since.

His utter lack of suspicion makes his presence an impeccable disguise. As the gate closes behind Costa, I duck off into the forest. The cameras here are already on loop, but I need Protego’s resident goons to get a nice clean view of the van coming up to the house before making my move.

“He’s halfway up the drive,” Enrico says, whisper-soft through the device tucked against my ear. “You can move toward the east wall.”

I start picking my way through the trees, keeping an eye out for anyone La Rosa might not have on the public payroll. “Miceli doesn’t have dogs or anything, does he?”

“No way.” Enrico’s laugh flares to static. “He hates animals on principle, but that’s because they hate him too.”

“A childhood fear or something?” Some assassins enjoy siccing a well-trained hound on targets, but that’s not my style. The beasts deserve better, and predatory instinct doesn’t always line up from species to species. One day, we get bitten like the rest.

“Nah. He thinks they’re dirty nuisances.” The emphasis on the last few words tells me Enrico is quoting directly. “My uncle Liuni had a bulldog, this big happy girl. Never made a sound in her life. Brought her to a family meeting, and she wouldn’t stop snapping and snarling at La Rosa until they put her outside.”

“Dogs are smart.” Part of why I prefer not to deal with them. “I see the east wall. Can I move in?”

“Costa is coming through the house gate now.” He’s right; I hear the subtle creak of hinges about thirty feet from me. “But there’s a guard on the other side of the wall. Stay put. I’ll give you a countdown to push the button.”

I crouch onto one knee and reach into my pocket for the key fob. It’s a cheap plastic one, but an RFID writer can put the radio signal from any key onto a copy with a few minutes’ work. I’ve used the same trick to copy cards for hotel rooms and private gyms when I know a target will be alone. When records show they were the only person who went inside, it’s that much easier for police to believe someone has befallen a tragic accident.

“Okay.” Enrico clears his throat. “Three, two, one…”

Click.

The alarm on Costa’s van starts blaring, ten times louder than it should. Cranking up the shock sensor under the dashboard did the trick, and the sound is like a raid siren, crushing every other noise by sheer force.

Thankfully, the headset Enrico gave me dampens the worst of it.

“Okay, guards are running for the van—” he says quickly, “get over the wall. Back of the estate is totally empty.”

The concrete barrier is a solid ten feet, but with a running start, I catch the tiled edge, hoist myself over, and drop onto the other side with a brief whisper of grass. A few shouts break through the alarm, but they’re coming from the opposite corner of the house, so no one involved will see me.

La Rosa’s house is one of those modern monstrosities of glass and black steel, bragging to anyone who approaches how much he pays to keep the windows clean and that he can protect everything inside. I’m about to make an argument against the latter.

His front door makes a bank vault look fragile, but the back door slides, which is a common mistake. An aesthetic without hinges looks pretty and clean, but even the best latch locks only need a proper application of torque to pop open. The invention of the four-inch pry bar, with a strong curve of steel that fits in any pocket, is the best gift to breaking and entering from the last few decades.

I brace mine against the lock. “At the back. Inside alarm details, now.”

“The keypad should be two feet to your left when you step inside. Its code changes every thirty seconds, and you have fifteen to do the input before Protego gets a ping that someone’s in the house.”

Simple enough. “At the next thirty mark, give me what you got.”

“Go,” he says.

With a firm press against the bar, the latch shoots up and open. I slip in through the door and slide it shut, scanning for the keypad. The little black alarm is embedded in a column of steel, attempting to blend into the interior while making it difficult to sabotage. Luckily, inside info means I don’t need access to the wiring.

Enrico starts rattling off, “5-0-2-3-9-1,” and I tap each number with a gloved thumb. “6-6-3-0.”

A ten-digit code in fifteen seconds is cutting it close, but when I hit the enter key, the alarm gently chirps and falls silent. “Done. How’s Costa?”

“Still desperately trying to turn off the alarm. The guards look more annoyed than anything else.” I put cameras in the wheel wells of the van to make sure Enrico could keep an eye on everyone assembled; it wouldn’t do for one of them to peel off and notice me inside. “House feeds are on loop. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

So do I. With new targets, it’s never clear what I’m looking for until I actually find it. Every house is dangerous in its own unique way, although the obscenely rich tend to have more toys and tech to sabotage.

La Rosa, however, has put his money into art. Each room is framed around entire series of paintings, although whether he paired the furniture’s aesthetic to their color scheme or the other way around isn’t clear. A museum-grade dehumidifier marks each doorway, minding the temperature and air quality to ensure there’s no stress on the canvas. The house sits at a cool sixty-five degrees and utterly silent, breathlessly waiting for its master to return.

I leave my shoes on the stone tile of the kitchen. Sweeping up particulates is easier on a smooth surface, and the rest of this place is plush with carpet. Thus far, La Rosa’s only tell is an obsession with the abstract and surreal; most of the paintings have a bloody and unsettling aura, like the artist gut themself in every stroke. Swathes of black are broken up by drips of white and rainwater-gray as crimson shapes crawl out from the center, vivid red matched to everything from the floor to the couch cushions.

His bathroom tells me nothing, which is a shame. Most people give away their whole lives in medicine cabinets, but the only prescription on the shelf belongs to his wife, and it’s run-of-the-mill Percocet. I could poison La Rosa’s multivitamin, but unless I spiked the entire container, he might miss it for days, and the potency would wear down fast. Nowhere near reliable enough for a limited schedule.

I step into La Rosa’s bedroom next. These two rooms are the only part of the house that aren’t exposed by massive panes of glass, and the single large window has telltale signs of impact and gunfire reinforcement. His bed could fit four people, but beyond the mussed state of the sheets, I don’t find anything interesting. The maid arrives in two hours, so everything will be spotless by the time he gets home.

His office is a different story. Both walls flanking the doorway are filled floor-to-ceiling with books and files, most of them with custom binding. They don’t list any author, but the spines are dated, spanning over forty years. Journals, maybe, or meeting notes. La Rosa strikes me as the type of man who keeps as much evidence on his friends as he does his enemies; this room could probably convict half the capos in the city.

I bypass those for his desk. A huge window behind it offers the perfect view into his garden and greenhouse, which means it’s the first place Costa will go once his van stops deafening everyone in half a mile.

The decorations seem unimportant—two overly expensive pens and a small marble replica of Rodin’s La Porte de l’Enfer—so I start tugging at the drawers. No less than seven of them are locked; I have my lockpick kit in my back pocket, but that could waste an impressive amount of time if their contents aren’t useful.

Except the eighth drawer, closest to his right hand, slides open with ease. When I see what’s inside, I smile. “Jackpot.”

“Jesus.” Enrico sounds startled. “You haven’t made a sound in so long I thought the signal went out.”

“Focus,” I say, tracing a finger down vital yellow plastic. “La Rosa keeps an epinephrine pen in his desk. In fact…” Pushing the first one aside, I feel along the back of the drawer and find a second. “He has a backup on hand. What the hell is he so allergic to?”

“I have no idea. Let me check something.” He types for a solid minute. “Nothing in the Protego file. They keep meticulous medical records on their clients, too, in case of emergencies.”

A weakness so severe he doesn’t even want his security team knowing about it. This is Christmas and my birthday wrapped up in one lethal package. “There’s one person he can’t hide it from. EpiPens are restricted. You need a doctor to sign off on the scrip. Short shelf life, so he would need new ones on the regular.”

Enrico snorts. “He’s a mob boss, Campbell. He can get drugs without a prescription.”

“You think the guy that doesn’t trust his own bodyguards to know he has an allergy would give another criminal that info, just to buy epinephrine at a jacked-up price? Doctors are covered by privilege. Corner dealers aren’t.”

When his voice comes back on the line, Enrico sounds a little embarrassed. “I’ll find out who his MD is. Then I’ll be able to crack the records. Hospitals are super vulnerable to ransomware.”

“Try not to kill anyone waiting in the ER while you’re at it,” I note, then freeze.

One of the locks on La Rosa’s desk has a nick. A subtle line where brass was pushed a bit too hard, nigh invisible if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Except I’m quite familiar with what a slipped lockpick looks like, and once I’m focused, two more jump out from different locks. The drag is recent too; there’s no discoloration on the metal from the constant touch of time. Someone was in here trying to break into La Rosa’s desk.

I doubt it’s his wife. She would have a much easier time getting the real keys. When I scour the rest of the room for anything out of place, a book on the third shelf jumps out. A day’s worth of dust is cut through from someone pulling the book out and sliding it back in. The date on the spine is thirty-six years ago, but I don’t want to risk drawing more attention to the brief theft. La Rosa’s maid is in here daily; the intruder had to have come in last night or very, very early this morning.

“Is my way out clear?” I ask Enrico. “The house is compromised.”

“What? No one’s anywhere near you.”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Just tell me whether or not I can leave.”

His fingers crash on the keyboard, typing quickly. “Uh, yeah. Go ahead. Nix the alarm once you’re over the wall.”

After recovering my shoes from the kitchen, I wipe the floor and head out the sliding door. Despite Enrico’s suggestion, I wait until I’m halfway into the woods to tap the key fob again. The sudden silence feels like a threat of its own, but at least it doesn’t seem like anyone is inclined to shoot Costa over the incident.

“Campbell—” Enrico begins.

“Someone else was in La Rosa’s house yesterday. You told me you were watching his camera feeds, so when exactly did that happen?”

“They…” The typing turns frenzied. “Can you give me a window?”

“Housekeeping leaves at four in the afternoon, so between then and whenever La Rosa got home last night. Unless they managed to pull it off in the hour before I got here, and none of the guards noticed. Either way, they broke into La Rosa’s desk and went through his books.”

“Shit.” Enrico’s hands go still. “There’s another camera loop at five thirty. It runs for an hour and then goes back to normal.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the sun was going down right around then. Easiest way to spot a loop is a sudden change in the shadows on screen. Add up the differences between light and color, and it’s pretty obvious.” He sighs. “Sorry. I was paying way more attention to the guards since their boss was out of the house.”

The apology isn’t necessary; I didn’t expect there to be another player in the game either. “I need to call Sofia. If Stefano sent more than one killer after La Rosa, this could get beyond messy.”

“What’s she going to tell you if she’s tied up?”

“Don’t underestimate your cousin, Enrico.” I stop in front of the gate, just out of camera range. “Let me out and wipe the sensor logs. I want those medical records by the time I’m off the phone with her.”

He obeys, sounding even more apologetic, and I disconnect the earpiece before pulling out my phone. Once I’m a good two blocks from the estate, I tap Sofia’s number on speed dial.

It takes four rings, but she does pick up. “Hey, Campbell.”

“If you have company, don’t give them a hint of what I’m saying,” I start, then add, “Someone else is after La Rosa. Do you know anything about that?”

“Shit.” She sighs. “No. Not a word.”

“Could it be another family? Besides Stefano, outside the Galici circle?”

“Listen, he’s already being the most reckless son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” Her chair creaks as she leans back. “So the chances are real low. This is the kind of thing that gets every finger clipped off with a cigar cutter before they put a shotgun in your mouth.”

If she’s right—and I have no reason to doubt her intuition—then the threat is that much more of a concern. I could intimidate Stefano into getting rid of my competition, but if he’s not in control, this could be anyone. Another family, a thief who doesn’t know who he’s robbing, or, well—

I certainly hope it’s not the police. Faking cameras and breaking and entering is the kind of thing feds do when they’re closing in on a target. They could have wired up his whole place; I didn’t have time to check the phones.

Planning for the worst-case scenario is always in my best interest, which means La Rosa’s house is off-limits. I’ll need to catch him on the outside and set up a death that won’t come to pass until I’m well out of siren range.

I have an idea. Problem is, it might put everyone I care about six feet under.