All Chapters of HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS): Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

128 Chapters

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

"THE TRUTH ALWAYS FINDS ITS WAY OUT. THE ONLY QUESTION IS HOW MUCH DAMAGE IT DOES GETTING THERE."DANTEMarco hasn't moved since I turned around.He is standing in the cockpit doorway with his hand still on the frame and his face doing the thing it does when Marco Valentino is genuinely caught off guard — which is almost nothing, almost completely composed, except for the eyes which are doing considerably more than the rest of his face is admitting to.I keep the gun level.Nico keeps flying."Sit down Marco," I say.His jaw tightens."I said sit down."He sits. In the small jump seat behind the cockpit, the one the crew uses. He sits and he looks at me and he is doing the calculation — I can see it happening behind his eyes, the same way I have watched Marco do calculations his entire life. Assessing. Measuring. Trying to find the angle that works.There is no angle that works.I think some part of him already knows that."You should be dead," he says. His voice is even. Almost impre

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

SO IT DOES BOTH AT ONCE."SOFIAThe morning is quieter than most.That is the thing I notice first when I wake up. The particular quality of the light coming through the curtains and the sounds of the house settling around me — Elena moving somewhere downstairs, Isabella's voice talking to one of her stuffed animals in the next room, the ordinary domestic rhythm of a morning that is not an emergency.I have learned to appreciate ordinary mornings.After everything that has happened in the past weeks I have learned that ordinary is not nothing. Ordinary is actually everything. Ordinary is Isabella's voice through a wall and coffee being made somewhere below and the ability to lie in bed for three minutes before the day begins without being afraid of what the day is going to bring.I sit up slowly.The nausea hits immediately.Not dramatically. Just a low persistent wave that rolls through me and settles somewhere in the back of my throat and stays there. I press my lips together and br

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

"THE MOMENT YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON IS THE MOMENT THE WORLD REMINDS YOU THAT YOU HAVEN'T."DANTEThe safe house sits on twelve acres outside the city.Most people would not call it a safe house if they knew what the back half of the property was used for. Safe house implies protection, refuge, somewhere you go when the world is trying to get you.This place is somewhere you go when you are the thing the world should be afraid of.The front is a large unremarkable building. Stone exterior. Small windows. The kind of place that looks like a disused industrial property from the road and has looked that way deliberately for eleven years. Nico designed the exterior specifically to be forgotten — to be the kind of thing the eye slides off without registering.The back is something else.Forty trees in neat rows on the far end of the property.I planted the first one when I was twenty three. Coming back from Colombia with nothing but rage and a list of names and the particular cold patience o

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR

"THE LONGEST DRIVES ARE THE ONES WHERE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DRIVING TOWARD."DANTEI don't remember getting to the car.One moment I am in the corridor of the safe house with Elena's voice still in my ear and the next I am in the passenger seat and Luca is driving and the city is moving past the windows at a speed that would get us pulled over if anyone tried and I cannot find it in me to care about that even slightly.My phone is in my hand.Elena called four minutes ago.I have replayed those three sentences approximately one hundred times since then.Sofia. Hospital. Critical condition.Critical.I keep getting stuck on that word. Turning it over. Trying to find an angle where it means something less than what it means and not finding one because critical is critical and there is no softer version of it and Sofia is in a hospital right now and I am twenty minutes away and twenty minutes has never felt so long in my entire life."Talk to me," Luca says from the driver's seat.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE

"THE MOMENT YOU THINK YOU HAVE SECURED EVERYTHING IS THE MOMENT YOU FIND OUT WHAT YOU MISSED."DANTEI call Nico at seven forty three.It rings.Once. Twice. Three times.Voicemail.I pull the phone from my ear and look at the screen like it has personally offended me and call again.Rings.Voicemail.Nico does not miss calls.That is not a personality quirk or a preference. It is a professional standard he has maintained for eleven years without a single exception. In all the time I have known Nico Barbieri I have called him in every situation imaginable and he has missed exactly zero of them. Not once. Not from dangerous rooms. Not from the middle of operations. Not at three in the morning.He answers.Always.His phone going to voicemail twice in a row is not Nico being busy.His phone going to voicemail twice in a row is something wrong.I call a third time.Voicemail.—------------------I find Luca in the cafeteria.He is sitting across from Isabella with a piece of chocolate ca

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIX

"SOMETIMES THE ANSWER YOU NEED IS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU WANT TO LOOK."DANTE"Shadow is an assassin," he says. "Has been operating in high level circles for about six years. Nobody knows the identity. Not the gender. Not the nationality. Not the face." He pauses. "What we know is the work. The style. Very specific. Very precise. Only takes contracts from people with serious money and serious reach." He looks at Marco's back again. "The six cuts are a calling card. Anyone who has seen Shadow's work before recognizes it.""And who hired Shadow to do this," I say."That is what makes no sense," Caruso says. He looks genuinely puzzled in a way that men who have seen most things do not often look. "Shadow does not do jobs like this. Shadow kills. Clean and complete and final every single time. Six years of contracts and not one target has ever walked away. Not one." He gestures toward Marco. "This—" He stops. Shakes his head. "This is not a kill. This is a message. Shadow doesn't send mess

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN

"RUSSIA DOESN'T WELCOME ANYONE. IT SIMPLY DECIDES HOW HARD TO MAKE YOU WORK FOR WHAT YOU CAME FOR."DANTERussia in winter is not a place that wants you there.That is the first thing I always think when I land here and I have landed here enough times to have formed a consistent opinion about it. The cold is not the polite cold of other places — the kind that inconveniences you slightly and retreats when you find shelter. This is the kind of cold that follows you inside. That gets into the car with you and sits in the back seat and reminds you it is there every time you breathe.The private jet touches down at a small airfield outside the city at four in the morning local time.Four in the morning in Russia.Which means somewhere behind us across the ocean it is still yesterday and Sofia is in a hospital bed and Elena is fighting with tools that are not enough and a clock is running that I cannot hear but cannot stop thinking about.I step off the plane into the cold.Luca is right be

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT

"The most dangerous questions are the ones you never thought to ask."NICOMy head. A dull insistent throb that tells me I was hit and tells me approximately how hard by how much it costs to open my eyes.I open them anyway.The room is dim. Stone walls as I suspected. A single light source — a lamp in the corner, warm and low, the kind of lighting that is almost deliberately unthreatening. A table. Two chairs. Mine, and one across from me that is currently empty.I assess the exits.One door. Behind me and to the left. Closed. The draft from under it tells me there is corridor on the other side rather than open space.I assess my restraints.Solid. I test them once with controlled pressure. Not testing to break them — not yet. Just mapping them. Understanding what I am working with.I assess myself.Head pain. Some stiffness in my left shoulder from however I was transported here. Otherwise functional. No significant injuries beyond the hit that put me under.Someone wanted me consci

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINE

"Some gifts arrive from hands you cannot see. The question is whether you trust them."DANTEThe car is cold.Everything in Moscow is cold but the car has its own particular cold — the residual chill of a vehicle that has been sitting in Russian winter air for longer than its heating system can fully argue with. We have been in Moscow for forty seven minutes.Forty seven minutes of driving through dark streets and cold air and the particular helplessness of being in the right city with the wrong information. I know Dmitriev is here. I know he has Bratva connections. I know he has been waiting for Nico's call for three weeks.What I do not have is his direct number because Nico's contact management system — characteristically, infuriatingly Nico — is encrypted in a way that requires a specific code that only Nico knows and that Luca does not have and that I do not have and that is currently sitting inside whatever situation Nico is inside and is therefore not available to us.I am wor

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TEN

"THE LONGEST WAIT IS THE ONE WHERE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WAITING FOR."DANTEThe jet lands at five forty two in the morning.I know the exact time because I have been watching the clock on my phone for the entire flight in the particular obsessive way of a person who cannot do anything useful and cannot stop themselves from tracking the time anyway. Every minute logged. Every minute felt.The bottle is in my jacket pocket.I have checked it approximately every twenty minutes since Moscow. Taken it out. Looked at it. Put it back. Like checking will somehow confirm it is still real and still intact and still what we think it is.It is still real. Still intact. Still sealed the way it was when we found it in the car.It is the only thing I am certain of right now.Everything else is questions without answers and a clock running and the image of Sofia's face in a hospital bed that I cannot get out of my head no matter what else I try to put in front of it.Luca drives from the airfie

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