In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (14 page)

There is blood running down Lorenzo’s side from the knife that remains rooted somewhere near his kidney. Anselmo shakes his head and grasps at the blade, tugging it out without ceremony or mercy. Lorenzo screams, and it’s a slightly sweet tonic to Anselmo’s ears. It’s curiously unsatisfying, though. It leaves a desire to inflict more pain, but he restrains himself from following that impulse.

“Get on your feet,” Anselmo says, brushing off some of the dust that is plastered to his skin with sweat. The bitch hit him in the eyes as she landed, enough to cause them to feel the squeeze.

Enough to get him to drop Reed Treston.

It’s a primal fury that fills Anselmo, and he knows it well. He takes a breath, looking down to see his bronzed chest inflate with the intake, then deflate as he lets it out. He swipes at the white cobblestone dust that remains matted in his chest hair, but it does little good.

“It hurts,
Capo
,” Lorenzo moans, like a little girl.

Anselmo stoops down and surveys the boy. Then he slaps him in the face, drawing a look of shock. “You whine like a child,” Anselmo says. “Collect yourself and be a man. Have your balls not dropped yet?”

“No,
Capo
,” Lorenzo says, causing Anselmo to raise his eyebrow. “I mean yes. They have.”

Anselmo nods. “Then act like it. Get on your feet.”

Lorenzo does, though it takes a few minutes. Anselmo watches impassively. This is a good lesson for the boy. Anselmo feels a curious mixture of fury and coldness run through him. He has no pity for the lad who has dragged him into this situation, only scorn and a righteous satisfaction at the thought of whatever pains he might be feeling. Lorenzo sniffles, and Anselmo resists the urge to slap him again.

“How do we find them now?” Lorenzo grunts.

“The Treston boy arrived at our location in less than a minute,” Anselmo says, thinking it over. “Less than a minute after you—
idiot
—sent Diana out the window.” He spits this out, compiling a list of all the boy’s failures. “He was close by.”

Lorenzo thinks this over, and Anselmo can see the wheels turning. “We can—we can do a search. A, uhm … a search of several blocks. I have a person who can look at the residential records for that area, perhaps ah—compare—”

Anselmo shakes his head at the lad. “There is stupidity, and then there is you. We have friends in Rome, now, yes?”

Lorenzo blinks. “You mean Don George—”

“Yes,” Anselmo cuts him off. “He has his connections within the Carabinieri. A man goes flying over the rooftops, do you think someone might have seen that?” He narrows his eyes at the moron, Lorenzo. “Do you think that once the Carabinieri have investigated all of this, they might have some idea from whence he came?”

Lorenzo swallows, visibly, heavily, and nods. He reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out his phone. Anselmo watches, waiting to see if he follows the matter to its logical conclusion. The boy dials the phone, and then speaks:

“Don George? It is Lorenzo Benedetti.
Si, si.
I am in Rome, and I have need of your assistance … your friends within the Carabinieri …”

We cross the rooftops for miles. I recognize the Via Nazionale, and we sweep along it on the south side of the road to the Piazza della Repubblica, pausing on the rooftop above the plaza. I help Diana along with the wind as needed, but every once in a while she surprises me by parkouring her way up a building face. We keep moving by unspoken agreement; it’s a measure of how scared she is by what just happened that we feel no compulsion to stop running until we’re miles from the incident.

When we reach the end of the roof, we stop. It’s nothing but empty air in front of us, all the way down to some church building below. She gives me a look like a cornered cat, just for a second, and then it passes and she looks almost human. “Do you know who that was?”

“The guy with a skin of iron?” I ask. “Not a clue.”

“His name is Anselmo Serafini,” she says, clearly thinking me the idiot for not being aware of this. “He’s a
capo
from Firenze.”

I do the translating in my head. “Mob boss from Florence.” She gives me a subtle, slightly disgusted nod, like it’s a concession for having to speak in my language. “He’s running with a rough crowd.”

She snorts. “Lorenzo and Fintan? There are worse.”

“There’s always someone badder,” I say, throwing out one of my sister’s favorite quotes. “Do you know what they’re up to?”

“No good,” Diana says.

“Other than that?”

“I don’t need to know,” she says, more than a little defensively. “When I work, I do it for money. This is how it has been for a thousand years. I don’t get involved in these—
squabbles
.” She says the last word as the worst sort of curse, and her face is twisted with rage.

“You saved my life in my hotel room,” I say, not considering that this might enflame her further. It doesn’t. Yay.

She does, however, close her eyes and look even more disgusted. She lowers her voice. “I felt some residual string of loyalty to my brother—Janus—and through him, to you. It was foolish. It was against my better judgment. It was—perhaps just the smallest bit—influenced by my long association with Giuseppe.” She opens her eyes, and I see a weariness on her face. “Now even he is gone.”

“Times change,” I say, not really sure what else to say. I didn’t even know Janus had a sister. It’s not like we were ever close, though.

She makes a low note of disgust and uses her hand to sweep and indicate the church-like building before us. “This I know. Those used to be the Diocletian baths. Now it is the Basilica de Santa Maria or some such shit, one of countless.” She points over my head back down the Via Nazionale. “Over there is the Pantheon, yes? You have heard of this thing?” She spits her contempt. “These were our places, and they have been changed—disassembled—co-opted into the symbols of Christianity. You need not lecture me about ‘change,’” she says with barely restrained fury. “I am familiar with change; more familiar than you, upstart.”

“I’m guessing pretty much everyone is an upstart after you’ve lived a few thousand years,” I quip, but I take some of the sting out of it by softening my voice. “Or a whippersnapper.” Maybe not with that.

She seems to take no offense. “The thing I have learned over my years is that everyone has their problems. You have problems. Anselmo has problems.” She gestures to the people passing on the sidewalk below. “Every one of them has problems, surely.” She stands upon the edge of the building, and it looks like she’s going to drop. “I don’t want your problems. I don’t want to be involved.”

“You’re doing a really lousy job of staying uninvolved,” I say.

“This only proves my point,” she says. “Had I stayed away from Giuseppe, had I let you go to your fate, I would have no problem now.” She looks sullen. “I need to leave this town, go into the hills for a while.”

She has answers, dammit. Answers I need. And she’s about to walk away. “I need help,” I say, like that’s some kind of compelling argument to a woman who wants zero entanglements. If ever I’ve met a commitment-phobe, this is her.

“This does not concern me,” she says, stone-faced.

“People are going to die,” I say.

She frowns. “How do you know?”

“When guys like Anselmo are running the show, people always die,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s highly unlikely that this preemptive bid to kill us is going to culminate in a philanthropic exercise. They’re looking to squelch information and kill powerful people that might get in their way.” I extend my hands out, palm-up. “Explain to me how that ends in anything other than a dastardly plan.”

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head.

“You said this Anselmo is a
capo
,” I say. “Do you see him up to anything other than criminal mischief?”

Her eyes flash. “No.”

I give her a moment to marinate in that thought while I change tacks. “What is he?”

“An Achilles,” she says, loosening slightly. “His skin is invulnerable to attack.”

“Except his heel?” I suggest hopefully.

She shakes her head. “That is a myth, propagated because the real Achilles was tripped in battle and then piled upon by ten strong metas who eventually managed to break his neck.” She gives me a look that can only be described as warning. “I would not suggest trying that. He is far stronger than you and will separate your head from your shoulders with his bare hands.”

“Can’t damage him physically,” I say. “Got it. How’d you get him to let me go?”

She hesitates. “His eyes are slightly weaker than the rest of his body. I landed my fingers,” she holds up her forefinger and middle, “in his eyes and it staggered him for a moment, purely by protective instinct. It is unlikely it did him any actual harm. I did the same when I threw the rubble in his eyes. He can be blinded, temporarily.”

“Still, good to know,” I say, mulling on that one. “He’s not completely invulnerable.”

She dropped the middle finger and wagged her index at me. “But you have nowhere to take the attack after that; there is no follow-up move save to run.” She stiffens again. “Which I would suggest you do.” She stands there, almost limp, and sighs. “Whatever he is up to, you cannot stop him by yourself.”

“I can call in some pretty compelling help, you know,” I say with a smile.

“Then I would suggest you do so,” she says without a smile and starts to drop over the side of the building, “because if you attempt to take him on alone …” She doesn’t even finish, she just shakes her head and disappears over the side. I don’t hear her land, but I can hear the faint sounds of someone climbing down the building at speed, making her retreat as I stand there and ponder my next move.

It’s a short walk after they get the call from Don George. Anselmo leads the way up the stairs, into the darkened hallway of a three-story building that has a lovely gelato shop on the first floor. Anselmo ponders having some, but decides to go straight to the sweeter promise first, climbing the stairs in the building’s residence.

The whole place smells faintly sweet; a perfume of some sort, he thinks. Jasmine? He cannot name the different scents, and has little care for any of them in truth, much preferring the skin and the pleasures offered by the lovely creatures who apply them. He makes his footsteps quiet as he can, listening to Lorenzo shuffle along behind him. The boy is still hurting, but he makes no sound. The grimaces on his face are unmanly, but that is an issue for another time.

Anselmo puts his head against the door, standing outside an apartment for the second time this day. He listens and hears a television blaring inside, and waits until he hears something else.

A soft, feminine cough.

Without another thought, Anselmo smashes the door, knocking it off its hinges. He stands there, bare-chested, staring across an open living room at a woman upon the couch. She is beautiful, classically good looking with sharp features and long, dark hair. He experiences a moment of doubt, wonders if he is in the right place.

Then he sees a planter upon the balcony, knocked asunder as if blown by a particularly strong breeze, and he smiles.
“Buongiorno,”
he says and advances into the apartment slowly, knowing that she has nowhere to run.

“Sienna, where the hell are you?”

My sister is still not answering, which is really damned annoying. I’m swallowing my pride, calling for help, admitting she’s bigger and badder than me, and she’s unreachable. Seriously unreachable. Her cell goes to voicemail, and I leave a hurried message. Then I call the agency, and her assistant is a preening little asshat to me. I make a note to get him fired when I get home. What a little prick.

I sweep over the rooftops of the Via Nazionale, trying to remember how to get back to the apartment. I make another call while I go.

Father Emmanuel answers in a quiet voice on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Father,” I say, “it has been my entire life since my last confession, and I think there are a few things I should probably come clean about.” I jump a gap and catch my footing on a lower rooftop, the shock running through my weary body. “First of all, it was me that took the candy off Ms. Hutchen’s desk in first grade—”

“I can’t talk right now,” hisses Father Emmanuel.

“Hey, listen,” I say, “you dragged me into this thing”—sorta true—“you can’t just bail now.” Absolutely a lie. He’s already out of the boat, and I’m trying to pull him back in as he’s telling me he’d rather swim.

“Giuseppe is dead,” Emmanuel says, “and I have no actual proof of any wrongdoing on the behalf of this Fintan O’Niall. Perhaps I was wrong about him. Perhaps he had a messy encounter with a—” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “I am not his priest, and he is not my responsibility.”

“Evil thrives when good men do nothing,” I say. I wonder if he appreciates the irony of me saying that to a priest.

“I don’t know that he is evil,” Emmanuel says, and I can feel his frustration through the phone. “He could be misguided, he could be misunderstood, he could be afraid—it is not my task to judge the man.”

“Well, he’s not exactly out there doing the Lord’s work,” I say. “Unless—never mind.” I filter myself, keeping from making an unnecessarily nasty Old Testament joke. It’s low-hanging fruit in any case.

“I am sorry about Giuseppe,” Emmanuel says, “and I’m sorry about whatever you’re going through. Truly, my prayers are with you—”

“I don’t need your prayers,” I say, snapping, “I need your help.”

“I cannot help you,” he says, and I catch a hint of sadness. “I am a man of peace. Violence is not … it’s not what I am supposed to do with my gifts.”

“You’re not supposed to protect the flock with your gifts?” I ask.

“I’m supposed to turn the other cheek,” he says.

“Easy to say when it’s only you getting slapped,” I fire back. I don’t even wait for his response. I just hang up.

I continue on my not-so-merry way. I can still hear sirens in the distance, and I wonder if they’re related to the strike gone wrong this morning or just the usual city madness. I don’t even know that I care, but I let them fade into the background as I think through what’s happened so far.