Page 96 of Dangerous King
Stephano raises a brow but doesn't comment. He doesn't have to. His cool silence carries enough weight.
Fuck, he's right. "You're right. I should've called. But in all fairness, I didn't know Kingsley was a target until now. I only got confirmation from Stephano yesterday about the man in the photo."
Marcello's eyes narrow, but he gives a brief nod, accepting the apology the way men like us do: silently and without sentiment.
I nod to Stephano. "Tell him."
In a steely voice that reminds me of a scalpel slicing through bone, Stephano fills him in, "The man in the photo with Kingsley? His name's Alaric Bastian. At least, that's the one he uses most often. He's got over fifty aliases that we know of, probably more. I can't find any traceable records of him. No prints. No financials. Just whispers. He's not on any international database. Doesn't exist on paper. Neither is he in any of the… darker databases I have access to."
Marcello scoffs, incredulous. "And yet you're telling me that this Ledyanoy Prizrak was standing next to Kingsley in Manhattan last week?"
Stephano doesn't miss a beat. "If I say it's him, it's him."
I cut in before the testosterone fog gets too thick. "And if itishim, we've got a problem that makes our other problems look like schoolyard bullies."
Stephano nods once. "Alaric isn't some street-level trigger man. He's a phantom, the kind hired when the price doesn't matter and witnesses aren't an option. High-value, zero-fail. If he's in New York, someone's paying a king's ransom to shift the entire board."
"Kingsley is being targeted for a reason." I point out.
Marcello stares at the man in question, who stops his pacing to ask, "What?"
Marcello ignores him. "Kingsley was about to sign a bill. A bill that would limit, if not completely destroy, human trafficking and child porn."
Stephano snorts, "Politicians, the worst hypocrites in the world."
He's got that right. Somehow, Kingsley seems to think it's okay to beat up women but draws the line at human trafficking.
"Whatever gets the votes," Marcello adds. "So somebody, with a lot of money, doesn't like that bill and has hired…Ledyanoy Prizrak," he rolls his eyes and waves his hands in a mock scared gesture, "to stop Kingsley before he can put the bill to a vote?"
Stephano nods, "It would seem so."
"So we need to find out who profits from human trafficking the most," Marcello nods.
"That's a long list," I say, shaking my head as names roll through it. A very fucking long list. Kingsley's bill doesn't only affect New York; it would spread like wildfire through the whole of the US, probably further. But what if… what if it was just somebody in New York who didn't want it to go through?
Simultaneously, Stephano and I say, "Giovanni."
For the first time, I'm not thrilled that I killed that bastard; it looks like I have more questions for him. Unlike Ledyanoy Prizrak, I don't think he's coming back from the dead, though.
The Giordanos would lose a lot of revenue.
Marcello shakes his head. "This doesn't make any sense. Giovanni wouldn't stage his own death…" Stephano and I watch him as the wheels in his head turn. "Unless someone in his family or in La Famiglia wanted it to look like Giovanni ordered the hit on Kingsley but didn't want to face the fallout."
He's right. Not that we care much about fallout in our line of business—wearethe fallout. But ordering a hit on a sitting US senator would cause some raised eyebrows. Stir up things that are better not stirred up. Unless it were put to a vote, nobody would dare a hit like this.
"The old adage,follow the money, is there for a reason," Marcello concludes, "who in our La Famiglia has the most money to lose if Kingsley's bill goes through?"
I know Stephano and I are standing on the same side: against human trafficking, and it seems so is Marcello—another thing we have in common.
"Besides the obvious, the Giordanos?" Stephano asks, then answers his own question, "Edoardo, he gets a nice little percentage from it."
"So do we all," I put in. Toni's family's part is to launder the money going through; he gets a certain percentage of the money he cleans. During that process, he invests like seventy percent of all the family's income in the stock market. Since it would be impossible for him to track all that money, our grandfathers decided long ago to throw all that into one pot. At the end ofevery month, Toni pays out the interest on the earnings. This would result in a substantial loss for each family should the Giordano side of the business be shut down.
"So every family had a motive," Marcello concludes.
"It wasn't mine," I say with conviction. My father and I might not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but both of us were in agreement that stopping human trafficking, forced prostitution, and child porn would be worth the financial hit.
Stephano tilts his head. "I'll talk to my old man, but I don't think it was him."
