I help launder the money, I’m good with the business side of illegal activities. Some may think I’m a geek, but I have my strong suits when called upon to do whatever must be done.
When things go sideways, the middleman might pay the ultimate price. And right now, Francesca is a woman on her own without a family. Without a doubt, her brother set her up to get into the Calabreses' good graces. With Francesca out of the picture, Mario and Fausto have everything to gain. I should have seen it coming and I’m beating myself up as if they’ve captured her already.
Matteo returns from Francesca’s room with a board of pictures who are the players and note cards with information tacked to it.
“Here, she works on this at night.” He hands me a cork board with pictures and pins and locations all labeled.
“She did this? She’s left us the keys to the kingdom.” I marvel as I study her layout. She has written ‘Girls’ next to a picture of shipping containers located at the port.
“So, the girls must come in on that dock.” I point to the area designated on the map. “And if they come in that way, they can leave from there or be transported in vans to other locations. By the looks of this, they are moving them in both directions. But they can be anywhere by now.” My voice falls off.
“That’s a large percentage of their revenue stream, and if Francesca wanted to shut that down, it would have screwed up her brothers’ chances to take over after Gio died,” Matteo adds.
“This would explain why they want her dead. It’s always about money, or power. Plus, Francesca’s share of Gio’s estate would then go to the brothers. It’s clear from looking at this board, she has a lot of information on their business dealings. Amazing insight considering she has no position inside their organization and only some security expertise.”
“If she built their security, she would know how to break it,” Matteo adds.
But his words bring no comfort to me. “It also means that they know the same and may have already made changes. This has been planned out for some time,” I answer, rubbing my hand over my chin in thought. “I think they want us to look bad and no doubt cut us out of the port all together, but I don’t know how.”
I go to make an espresso and find a handwritten note next to the machine.
I needed your car. Hope you don’t mind. Francesca
“We need to go,” I yell to Matteo. It’s not like he’s that far from me, I’m just that keyed up.
No one is going to lay a hand on Francesca while I’m alive.
Matteo finds another car on the property, and we head south with the trunk packed with tons of fire power, and bags of cash. One can never go wrong with untraceable Euros, greed is a powerful motivator, and most can’t resist, especially in the mafia and the outer players who will never be part of the family and are used and discarded like the paper wrapper around meat from the deli.
I have guns and explosives, but I know Marchello’s group will have more.
From the map Francesca left behind, it appears her family is heavily involved in supplying most of the syndicates with their drugs. Fausto could have shown her a bank account with money in it and our names on it. I would never know. Money buys access and documents can be forged.
As a result, our family has been pulled into a war we never wanted to fight. We were lulled into a false sense of security with the Calabrese’s taking over instead of the eldest son of Gio Conti.
So maybe interrupting their supply of women and drugs will slow them down. Cutting off the influx of money is an effective way to fuck up any organization. When men don’t get paid and deals fall through because of negative cash flow, they get pissed off. These men have connections and small armies because every syndicate has a need for them.
It’s no secret the Contis have been our sworn enemies for three generations. Unfortunately, our feud didn’t end with Gio’s death. Now, it appears it just made things worse. It seems he raised his sons to hate us until the end of our days.
Little do they know their days are numbered and Francesca has sided with us. I can’t imagine what Francesca has in store for them. I hope she’s still alive. She’s too beautiful to go through the type of torture they will use on her.
17
Francesca
One thing I remember Dad saying is that cocaine’s current and future market is in Europe, and he made a fortune by effectively smuggling tons of it from South America and Mexico through his port.
Some gets cut when it gets here, the rest comes ready for the street. It’s a cheap drug at its origin but when it's shipped overseas, it becomes very lucrative, and his foresight built our empire.
Europe is just now catching on to the drug trends that the Americans have more or less abandoned. The don has to know these things in advance to avoid showing up too late to a party that started without him, unable to move his product and out millions in lost revenue.
I might be just one person, but I can fuck up their operation before they catch me. And hopefully, I can find the girls and set them free before they are moved further from the compound. Assuming they are still there. It’s a great red herring to send me on a wild goose chase and then use that to put a hit on me.
It makes sense that if cocaine is worth more shipped to another European port, the girls might be as well. I recounted details I heard here and there and decided there is no better place to hide them than under my nose. My bet is that they are still there.
Dad did business all over Europe, but Germany has the highest number of trafficked women so I think that might be where they are going.
Dad, a true narcissist and psycho. He never thought much of anyone, and he hated all women. It’s a no brainer that Juliet chose Dante over him. I hear she was between a rock and a hard spot from tiny comments Matteo made when we occasionally talk.