Page 20 of Malevolent Secrets

She looks at me like she doesn’t know what to make of my words.

“My quarrel is not with you and Isobel, Maria. It is with your husband and as you are aware by now, he has been taken off.”

I wait to see grief on her face, but it never shows up. Good, not the weeping kind.

“I may not be a kind man, but I am a fair one and so I am offering you two choices.”

Vincent comes to stand beside me and opens a briefcase. I watch Maria’s eyes go wide as she stares at the cash.

“Two hundred thousand dollars, in cash, right here, right now, and a plane ticket for you and your daughter to go wherever you want. You will be free from the Duretti name, from the family, from me. I have also set up a scholarship fund for your daughter. Whatever schools she chooses to attend someday will be covered by me.”

Her eyes fill with tears.

“The second option is to stay here. Take my name and my protection. We will make sure that your house is in your name. You will be allowed to remarry if that’s what you want. If it isn’t, you will be left alone. You will be given a job where you will be paid well and Isobel will be sent to the best schools by me. The two of you will be under my protection, and none of my people will touch you.”

I crouch in front of her again.

“If you leave, I will not be able to do anything when Raineri sends his people after you. He doesn’t take kindly to traitors and Julio was a chatterbox full of information before he…”

I glance at the girl.

“We won’t talk about that with little ears in the room. Massimo does not operate under the same principles that I do. If he finds you, you will have no help from us. Think about your decision carefully.”

Her eyes move from the cash to my face and to Vincent’s, and she swallows.

“You promise to let us go anywhere we want and leave us alone.”

“Pinky swear,” I say with a smile, and she laughs lightly.

“Isobel is the most precious thing to me. If anything happens to her, I will never forgive myself. Give us your name, give us your protection…Capo.” I exhale, Vincent closes the case, and she bows her head.

“Very well. Dino here will set you up with a job you want, and if you want to marry…”

“Never again,” she says and then curses in Italian.

I smile. “Fine. Dino will also help you with Isobel’s education fund and everything else.”

I look at the man in question, and he nods.

“Welcome to the family, Maria Duretti.”

***

“We need to tighten our security around the docks. We’ve blown the Raineri’s airstrip outside the city, so they’re not going to do anything to us for a few days.”

I nod at Dino, looking at the images that one of my men sent me earlier. They are pictures of the wreckage and mayhem that followed the Kraken’s work and despite knowing that this little stunt will cost us, my smile is wide.

The Kraken makes custom-made explosions for us and deploys them. One of his favorite bombs is a weapon of unparalleled devastation, combining the raw destructive force of high-yield explosives with the insidious, disintegrative power of chemical warfare.

Its detonation obliterates everything in its path, leaving behind a wasteland and a lingering danger from the chemical cloud that lingers long after the smoke has cleared. This makes the Kraken’s technologies not just bombs, but symbols of ultimate destruction and dread.

The Raineri family will be feeling the aftermath for months to come.

“Deploy men to guard the stashes and patrol the walls too. I want people there twenty-four-seven and I want a report by the hour of everything that goes on. Someone sneezes, I want to know, someone picks up an AK-47, I want to know. If someone breathes out of order, I want to know. A war is coming and I refuse to be unprepared for it.”

Once I'm done giving my orders, the men leave and then it’s just Vincent in the room.

“You’re distracted today.” His voice pulls me out of my thoughts and I look up at him.

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