87

Callahan
“Sir, we have a lead on David,” Dante announces as I turn away from the woman in frustration. Her English is broken but from what she’s telling me, she’s one of the women they’d trafficked at some point. Terrified out of her mind, she keeps making the sign of the cross every time she glimpses either of the dead men, a stream of words in a language I don’t understand pouring from her.
“They brought me to make the food,” she repeats again. “But the girl doesn’t eat.” When I turn away, she continues to tell one of the soldiers. “I go now,” she says, nodding as if giving herself permission to leave.
“Where?” I ask Dante.
“Hotel in Amsterdam. I can get you there in forty minutes.”
“Does he know we found him?”
Dante shakes his head. “The man who just delivered his dinner called. Soldiers are on their way, but it’ll be about twenty minutes before they’re on site.”
“Let’s go,” I say, then glance at the woman who has started sobbing again. One of the soldiers is holding on to her. She’s not struggling against him, but she wants out. “Let her go,” I tell him.
We file out of the decrepit house and back to our vehicle. With traffic, it takes us almost an hour to get to the hotel where, according to Dante’s contact, David checked into the Presidential suite for one night under an alias. That alias has a first-class seat booked on a plane heading to Dubai first thing in the morning.
“Does he have men with him?” I ask as we enter the property.
“No. Not that my contact has seen.”
“Anything else on the location of that auction?” I ask for the hundredth time even though I know Dante would tell me the instant he knew anything.
“Not yet.”
The three of us ride up on the elevator accompanied by two soldiers.
“He’ll know,” Antonio says.
I look at him, see the furrow between his brows. He’s processing all this. Processing our uncle’s betrayal.
He runs a hand through his hair and looks at me. I get that he’s feeling responsible for allowing Portia to have been taken. He is, on some level. He should have protected her. But I also understand why he didn’t.
“He’ll know where she is. He doesn’t leave loose ends,” he adds.
“Aren’t we loose ends?” I ask him.
His gaze darkens and he shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Cal. Makes no fucking sense.”
I nod because he’s right. It doesn’t make sense that he’d massacre our family and leave us alive when he could easily have killed us. Me at least. I lay helpless in a coma. Antonio too. Antonio trusted him. We both did. It would have been easy for him. Too easy.
What was there for him to gain by keeping us alive apart from having me become his personal killing machine when someone crossed him?
“He’s going to explain it to us now, Brother.”
The elevator lets us off at the twenty-second floor. There are two doors in the hallway. Two suites. One is empty. Or was until I booked it. I won’t take a chance that we’re interrupted.
“How are we doing this?” Dante asks when we step off the elevator.
I turn to him. “We’re not. Antonio and I are. And we’re walking right up to the door and knocking.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dante asks, clearly, he doesn’t think so.
“I’m sure.”
Dante and the soldiers flank us as we walk to the double doors of my uncle’s suite. Once there I raise my hand and knock.
“It’s about time,” my uncle’s voice carries before he even opens the door. “Does your chef know what rare – ”
He’s mid-sentence when the door opens. He looks pissed off, holding a plate with a steak on it, the piece of meat sliced in two sitting in its own bloody juices.
My mouth moves into a smile of its own accord. I don’t feel it though. What I feel is hardening in my chest. A deadening. Because when I look at this man, all I see are the bodies of my family lying on that bloodied marble floor.
“Uncle,” I say as he looks first at me, then at Antonio.
For a brief moment, I see that we’ve surprised him. That he truly did not expect us.
“Callahan!” He smiles wide, sets the dish down on a side table. “I thought you were dead!”
“Hm.” He almost moves in as if to hug me, but I push past him into the suite. Antonio follows. Dante and the soldiers stand sentry at the door as Antonio closes it.
“Steak not rare enough?” Antonio asks peering at it. “Looks good and bloody to me.”
I take in the large room, the wall of windows, the river that separates North Amsterdam from the center. All the lights, the lives being lived oblivious to what happens under their unsuspecting noses.
Portia is out there somewhere. Alone. Unprotected from men like my uncle.
I turn to face him. “Where the fuck is my wife?”
“Portia?” He glances at Antonio but only momentarily as he addresses me with his answer. “I gave her back to Felix. Unharmed. I thought you were dead, Callahan. I needed to protect Antonio. She was peace offering.”
“It didn’t look very peaceful on the video you left behind.”
“That was Felix. Not me.”
“You told me my brother was dead,” Antonio says.
“I thought he was,” he says like he’s confused by the question.
“No. The soldier who passed the news on, told you I was injured but stable,” I tell him. “I don’t have time for this. Where’s my wife?”
“I don’t know. I took her to the address Felix specified and from there, I don’t know.”
I remember Portia talking about how calm she remained in violent situations. How her heartbeat didn’t even accelerate. She thought she might be a monster.
I told her she wasn’t. I stand by that. Because I’m looking at the real monster. His mouth is moving but all I hear is the sound of bullshit. “I don’t even know why you – ”
I take hold of his arm, drag him to the desk in the corner and slam his hand flat onto it before taking the letter opener and stabbing it through the back of his hand with so much force, so much rage, that the wood splinters as the blade penetrates the desktop.
My uncle’s scream is choked like it’s caught in his throat. His eyes widen to stare at his impaled hand, at the blood seeping from it. At me.
“Where. Is. My. Wife?”
He turns from me to Antonio who is watching from a few feet away. Antonio picks a French fry off a dish beside my uncle’s half empty glass of wine. He dips it in mayonnaise and eats it like it’s the most normal, casual situation.
“That’s nasty,” he mutters, eating another one without the mayo. “I’d heard the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, but I didn’t believe it. Why would anyone do that?” He picks up the bottle of wine, pours some into an empty water glass and swallows it down like it’s water.
“Callahan,” my uncle starts but stops. His eyes are shiny like he’s on the verge of tears.
“You lied to me,” Antonio says, bringing the dirty steak knife over, anything casual gone from his face, “You fucking lied to me and I broke my promise to my brother. That part is on me. I’ll pay for that. But the rest, that’s all you. Now answer his fucking question or put your other hand on the desk,” he says. “It’s going to get messy.” He shifts his gaze momentarily to my uncle’s bleeding hand. “But you like messy, don’t you?”
I wonder how Antonio knows that detail but it’s true. It’s what my uncle always asked of me when I took out those names he listed for me. How many innocents have I killed for him?
“You too?” my uncle says to Antonio. “You’ll side with him as he accuses me when all I was doing was protecting you?”
“If you were protecting me, why are you here in Amsterdam registered at a hotel under a false name? Why would you run? Why would you hide unless you knew he was alive, and he’d come after you?” Antonio pauses. “We’d come after you. It looks bad, Uncle, so help yourself out. Tell us where Felix took Portia. Then you can explain the rest of it.”