Married to the mafia King

The door in the rear of the room the one the salt-and-pepper guy had disappeared through a few minutes ago opened about a foot.

I couldn’t see anything in the shadows on the other side

But something flew out of the crack, tumbled in an arc through the air, and clanged onto the dais to the left of the Widow’s throne.

My heart froze when I saw it.

At first I thought it was a grenade

But when the black cylinder rolled across the raised platform, I realized what it really was:

A flashbang, also known as a stun grenade.

Lars had been in the Swedish military’s Special Forces before he went to prison. When he came to work for our family, he’d spent months drilling us out on the grounds of our family estate. Hand-to-hand combat, how to efficiently search and clear a building, and much more.

One of the things he’d shown us were flashbangs.

They’re basically small explosives that aren’t meant to hurl shrapnel or destroy anything, but to temporarily blind and deafen.

Law enforcement and the military use them to disorient targets in advance of an attack

Which is how I knew what was coming.

The Widow’s bodyguards looked down when the cylinder hit the dais.

At first they were unsure of what the hell it was but they weren’t alarmed. After all, we were standing inside one of the most heavily guarded rooms in all of Venice. Nothing could get in here without going through multiple layers of security.

The suits didn’t panic until they registered the object’s cylindrical shape.

Flashbangs and grenades look enough alike that they often get confused with each other.

That’s when the suits panicked

But by then, it was too late.

I only had a split second to react I had no idea when it would detonate

So I screwed my eyes shut, clapped my palms over my ears, and turned away.

BOOM!

I could still hear the thunderous explosion through my hands.

When I turned around, smoke was drifting through the air.

The Widow was holding her ears, her eyes closed in pain.

The men around her were fumbling for their guns. Because of the explosion, their vision was fuzzy and their ears were ringing

Which is why none of them saw or heard the four black-clad figures rushing through the door at the rear of the room.

All four of them had body armor and helmets

All wore balaclavas covering their faces

And all of them carried assault rifles.

I reacted without thinking which meant that Lars had trained me well.

I sprinted for the dais, keeping the men in suits between me and the intruders.

If I had run in the opposite direction, I would have been the only target in an otherwise empty space. Better to have at least some cover even if it was the Widow’s henchmen. When the intruders started shooting, I would have multiple bodies between me and their bullets.

And the intruders immediately started shooting.

BRATTATTATTATATTATAT!

As bullets slammed into them, the men in suits started flailing around like marionettes with bad puppeteers.

The rail-thin consigliere’s head jerked as a puff of red mist exploded out the back of his skull.

When I’d first entered the palazzo for my meeting with the Widow, I had known I would be searched so I’d given up my Glock voluntarily. Her guards kept the pistol and frisked me anyway.

So I was completely defenseless and without a weapon

Which meant my first priority was to get a gun.

The nearest suit had his pistol out when he got shot three times in the back.

As he screamed and convulsed, I grabbed his gun with one hand and seized him around the waist with my other arm before he could fall.

Not because I was trying to help him. He was a goner.

No I needed a shield to help me get to the Widow.

I held up the suit’s limp body in front of me as I fired the gun under his armpit.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

I was aiming for the eyeholes of the attackers’ masks and I got lucky.

One of the bastards immediately went down.

By this point, the mafia goons were dropping all around me like flies

But I made it to the Widow.

She was crouched down in her throne, a frail little figure with her hands clasped over her head.

I realized that no one had tried to shoot her, though. Her wooden throne was untouched by bullets.

If the intruders had wanted to kill her, they could have just walked ten feet to the left and had a wide-open shot

Which meant they weren’t trying to kill her.

The Widow was the prize

Which meant I had to protect her at all costs.

Dumping my human shield of a corpse, I pulled the Widow out of the throne and threw her to the dais floor

And then roared like a lion as I toppled the throne on its side.

The thing was a relic of the Renaissance, a giant sculpture carved from a single block of wood. It must have weighed at least 700 pounds, but my normal strength was tripled by the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

The throne crashed to the ground with a BOOM

Then I dove to the floor behind it and slid the Widow over next to me.

Three of the intruders were still standing.

Their assault rifles were still firing

Until they stopped.

BRATTATTA

click.

They were out of bullets.

In reality, two of them had probably already run out of bullets and were in the process of reloading. I only heard the momentary silence when the third shooter ran out.

I popped up over the side of the toppled throne and fired just as I’d practiced hundreds of times with Lars.

BANG BANG!

A double-tap to the head put one intruder down

Then I aimed my gun at the one beside him and caught him mid-reload.

BANG BANG!

A puff of red mist exploded from his balaclava as he went over backwards.

Unfortunately, there was one intruder left

And I heard the clack-CLACK of him chambering the first round.

I ducked back down as he opened fire.

BRATTA-TAT!

BRATTA-TAT!

BRATTA-TAT!

He was firing in bursts of three, not full automatic.

Unfortunately, all he had to do was walk around the throne and he would have me dead to rights

So I took a gamble.

Not much of a gamble, really, when the alternative is certain death.

I crawled on my belly around the top of the overturned throne.

I was expecting the gunman to come around the other side the bottom of the throne.

If he really was here to kidnap the Widow, he would hold his fire when he saw her

Which is exactly what he did.

I was already on the other side of the throne when I heard the shooting pause.

That’s when I popped up like a jack-in-the-box and shot him through the left eye.

BANG!

He collapsed to the ground.

In the silence that followed, I checked to make sure the other intruders were actually down for the count.

When I saw one of them twitching, I put another bullet in his head for good measure.

BANG!

Six shots fired from my gun. I had no idea how many bullets had been in the magazine before I started, so I grabbed another pistol off the floor from one of the fallen suits.

Then I hurried around the side of the throne to check on the Widow.

She was peering with wide eyes at the carnage all around her.

She looked tiny and frail like a doll in a Victorian funeral dress.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She glanced up at me and nodded once.

I was surprised to see no fear in her eyes.

Over the years, I’d witnessed several people staring death in the face often because I was pointing a gun at them. The vast majority had been terrified.

Not the Widow. She just seemed to be on heightened alert nothing more.

“Thank you, Signor Rosolini,” she said in a croaking voice.

“You’re welcome,” I said

Just as half a dozen more men in suits rushed into the room, pistols at the ready.

I immediately dove to the ground beside the Widow.

I was afraid her men would shoot first and ask questions later.

“COME OUT NOW!” one of them yelled.

I was about to shout, Don’t shoot, I’m on your side

When the Widow beat me to it.Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.

“STOP, you fools!” she roared in a voice that didn’t match her frail body. “He saved my life!”

Footsteps clattered across the dais

And I looked up to see a half-dozen guns pointed at my head.

One of the men knelt down, scooped up the Widow, and set her on her feet.

I stayed where I was and gently slid the gun across the floor.

“Put your guns away!” she snarled. “You idiots couldn’t do your job when it mattered, so stop pretending to do it now!”

Embarrassed, the men put their guns away. I finally stood up.

“What happened?” one of the suits asked.

“What do you think happened?!” the Widow shouted as she gestured at the four dead intruders. “Someone smuggled in assassins!”

“Signora Fioretti,” I said, “I saw someone leave the room while you and I were talking a man with salt-and-pepper hair. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but ”

“Giotto,” she hissed, then scowled at her men. “Go find him, now!”

Half of the men raced out of the room as fast as they could.

I bent down to pick up the gun I’d left on the floor

“Unh-unh,” one of the suits warned, his hand on his holster.

“Let him have it,” the Widow snapped. “He’s the only man here who knows how to use one.”

“But ma’am,” the suit said as he looked at me sideways, “he might be involved in ”

“If his aim were to kill me,” she snarled, “it’s rather odd that Signor Rosolini just saved my life, wouldn’t you agree?”

Though she was small, the Widow was vicious. It was like watching a cobra made out of black lace rear up and flare its hood.

The henchman didn’t say anything else as I picked up the gun.

The Widow stared down at her dead consigliere. The rail-thin man was sprawled out on the floor, a shocked look on his face as a puddle of crimson slowly oozed out from his head.

“Silvio was my consigliere for 17 years,” she said. “Where will I find another as cunning as him?”

It struck me that her attitude seemed more like exasperation than grief.

I walked over to the nearest intruder and unclipped his helmet’s chin strap.

“What are you doing?” the Widow asked as I pulled the helmet off, followed by his balaclava.

“This man isn’t Italian,” I said. “He looks Russian.”

“…Russian?!”

She and her bodyguards watched as I removed the helmets and ski masks on the other three intruders.

“This one’s Slavic as well… this one, too. Maybe Eastern European.”

“You think the Russians are behind this?!”

“Mercenaries, more likely,” I said as I pulled out my phone and snapped pictures of the dead men’s faces.

“What are you doing now?” the Widow asked, intensely curious.

“My family’s enforcer has ties to that world,” I replied. “He can probably find out who they are quicker than your men. But regardless of where they came from, I believe my uncle hired them.”

“Fausto,” the old woman growled.

“Yes,” I agreed as I sent the pictures to Lars’s cell phone. I included the text, Just attacked by these assholes. Can you find out who they are.

“I have to admit,” the Widow said bitterly, “I initially thought your claims about your uncle sounded like a conspiracy theory… but I’m beginning to find them more and more compelling.”

I was about to reply when Lars texted me back.

Are you okay????

I typed out my response:

Yes. Not hurt. Widow OK. Pretty sure Fausto sent them.

Several seconds later, I got another text.

Call when you can. I’ll run these guys down in the meantime and let you know.

Seconds after I read the message, Giotto he of the salt-and-pepper hair came in through the rear door he’d exited just 10 minutes before. He was escorted on both sides by suits with guns pointed at his kidneys.

“Hopefully he can shed some light on it,” I said.

The Widow gave a sinister smile as she muttered, “We’re about to find out.”