Chapter 9 - The Ultimatum
The call came at 4:00 a.m. on a secure satellite line that bypassed the civilian trunk lines entirely.
Alessandro stood in his private study on the third floor of the safehouse, the amber desk lamp illuminating the code-wheel of his encrypted terminal.
"Speak," he said in Italian.
"Boss," Luca's voice came through the receiver, thin and compressed by the scrambler. "We picked up three men outside the safehouse perimeter on Mulberry Street. They had European passports and heavy hardware in the trunk of their rental sedan. One of them is a cousin of Jean-Luc Morel."
"And?"
"We took them down before they crossed the alley. No shots fired. They're tied up in the lower garage right now."
Alessandro stared at the reflection of his own face in the dark window glass. The storm had passed, leaving the Manhattan sky a bruised, ink-black purple that was just beginning to turn the color of steel in the east.
"Tell Morel's cousin that if he ever looks in the direction of my daughter again, I will not send him back to Marseille in a box," Alessandro said, his voice dropping into a register that made the secure line hiss with static. "I will send him back piece by piece through the mail."
"Understood, Boss."
"And Luca?"
"Yes, Alessandro?"
"Double the detail around the school on Mott Street. We start her kindergarten enrollment on Monday."
He hung up the phone before Luca could answer.
When he turned around, Camille was standing in the doorway of the study. She was wearing an oversized wool sweater over her pajamas, her bare feet cold against the hardwood floor. She must have heard the low rumble of his voice through the door.
"Is it starting?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Are they here?"
"They were here," Alessandro corrected, walking over to his desk and closing the terminal lid with a soft click. "They are no longer a problem."
"You can't live like this, Alessandro," she said, stepping into the room, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "You can't spend the rest of your life turning every street corner into a battlefield just because you have a target on your back."
"I am not the one who put the target there, Camille."
"No," she said, her voice rising, breaking through the controlled silence of the room. "You put it there twenty years ago when you took your father's ring and swore your life to an organization that eats its own children! And now you want to drag Sophie into that meat grinder too?"
Alessandro crossed the room in three long strides, stopping so close she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"She is already in it, Camille," he said, his eyes burning into hers. "The moment she drew my face in that book, the moment she took my breath away on that airplane, she became a Vitali. There is no safehouse in Paris, no loft in the 6th arrondissement, no gallery in the world that can hide her from the men who want to hurt me. The only place she is safe is behind these walls, beside me."
Camille stared at him, tears spilling over her lashes at last, hot and fast. She reached out and hit him once—hard—against his chest with her closed fist, the sound dull against his wool sweater.
"I hate you," she whispered, her voice cracking into a sob. "I ran to the end of the earth to keep her away from this life, and she walked right into your seat on a Boeing 777."
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Alessandro caught her wrist. Not hard—just firmly enough to stop the blow. He pulled her forward, slowly, inexorably, until her forehead rested against his shoulder, right over the silver cross he wore beneath his shirt.
"You ran six years too late," he murmured into her dark hair, his arms closing around her back with a strength that brooked no argument, no escape, and no more goodbyes. "And you will never run again."
