The wind caught my laughter and sent it flying around us. “Si, Donna, you can help if you wish.”
So, I told her our plan.
We had men, some of them recruited from Rocco’s own community who were tired of the fear and his fury, and Damiano’s loyal crew. Thanks to Leonardo Esposito and our own investigations, we knew where some of Rocco’s loyal capos liked to hang out on a Sunday night and our men were waiting for them there.
Pietro Cavalli visited his long-term mistress in Ravello.
Paulie Gotti visited a local tanning salon to top off his color.
Tony Martinelli took a cigarette on his back patio after dinner to get away from his wife and seven children.
The rest would be at the reception for my fake wedding with Mirabella.
We’d known Rocco wouldn’t reveal the truth of our misdirection to the guests because he wouldn’t want people to know he’d been duped. I wasn’t sure how he was going to pull it off, but Leonardo had texted to say he told everyone we were shaken from the bomb and currently reaffirming our love physically.
If Italians believed anything, it was passion.
No one would blink an eye.
“Are you going after Rocco yourself?” Elena asked, standing to join me at the helm.
I steadied her when she almost lost her balance and put her between my body and the wheel, bracketing her with my arms so she was secured. My nose dipped into her hair to steal a drag of that sweet scent.
“Yes, he deserves to be ended by my hands.”
She was quiet for a long time after that. I fought the urge to question her, to ask if she thought I was a monster for orchestrating the killing of so many men.
Eventually, she turned her face into my suit jacket over my heart and pressed a kiss there. “I’m glad.”
“You are?”
Her sigh was lost in the wind, but I felt her shoulders move with it. “Yes. Italy is corrupted by the mafia. How can we expect him to go to prison for anything he’s ever done when he can just buy off the magistrates and police? I thought America was different and then Dennis turned out to be corrupted. I know it’s much worse here. Death is the only option for someone like Rocco. He tried to kill you and a totally innocent girl today in a car bombing just because he was threatened by your power and by her love of another woman? He sold my sister to Alexander. It might be wrong to want him dead, but not as wrong as his actions have been against the ones I love.”
“When I first saw you in that red dress at the San Gennaro party, I thought you looked like a heathen goddess of sex and war,” I told her. She laughed, the sound moving through her and into me like an electric current. “I still think of you like this.”
“I would have thought you found me an ice queen back then,” she admitted, putting her hands on mine on the wheel.
Her plain gold wedding band caught the light and winked at me.
“No, only a future Donna.”
My words were punctuated by a strange noise.
Something like a pfft, a whip snapped through the air.
Elena froze against me.
“Scendi!” I shouted over the wind and the growl of an approaching engine.
Elena dropped to the ground at my feet instantly.
A moment later there was another pfft as a bullet zigged by my torso and out into the sea.
Cazzo.
I looked over my shoulder to see three suited men in a small speedboat powering toward us. I recognized one of them as Rocco’s best enforcer, a man thy called Big Tom, because he was short but mean as hell.
“They found us?” Elena asked, peering up at me with an eerie calm in her eyes.
I reached down to stroke her head in reassurance before putting my hand on the throttle. “They found us. Hold on to me.”
Her arms wound through my legs.
I gunned the engine.
The boat tipped at a precarious angle, only the stern deep in the water, the bow clearing the waves as we soared over them. It was Wally powerboat, one of the most powerful on the market and I’d been boating since I was twelve, but boat chases were not like car chases. The water had its own obstacles, rocks hidden too close to the surface, errant waves, and wakes from other boats that could overturn a quick moving boat as easily as a beetle onto its shiny back.
I swerved too steeply, water spraying over the edge of the port side, dousing Elena and I in salt water.
“There’s a gun in my waistband and one at my ankle,” I shouted to Elena.
My eyes smarted and stung in the wind as I squinted back at the boat.
They were closer.
“Fuck,” I cursed, ducking as one of the men raised a gun and fired off another round.
There was a ting as a bullet hit a metal railing.
“You can’t shoot and drive the boat,” Elena yelled, shifting into a squat with one of my guns in her hands. “I’m going to shoot back at them.”
“No, absolutely not,” I ordered. “Stay down there where you’re safe.”
She ignored me, sliding out from between my legs on her hands and knees, crawling toward the back of the boat. The seat and back railing obscured her from vision if she stayed on the ground, but in order to shoot, she’d need to peek above the safety line.
“Elena,” I roared, my heart beating so hard I thought it would give out. “Get your arse back here.”
Nothing.
Only a crack as a shot went off behind me and, seconds later a volley of returning fire.
“Hold on,” I called to Elena.
I pushed the engine higher, the boat rumbling like a waking dragon beneath my feet as I swerved again, skirting the edge of a rock formation frothing just under the water before us. I hoped they wouldn’t see and wreck the hull over the stone.
Moments later, there was a faint cry in Italian and a resulting splash.
“They lost one of their men,” Elena shouted. “And they’re falling back a bit.”
I placed one hand solidly on the center of the wheel to hold it steady and twisted my body so I could pulled out the gun at my waist and fire off a few shots at them. They were too far out of range though, which was a good thing as long as we could lose them before we got to the port of Naples.
Gunfire would alert the authorities, which neither of us wanted, but they would wait until we docked to subtly corral us to a quieter place.
I had no doubt Rocco had given them orders to kill us outright.
The white rock and verdant green shrubbery of the coast loomed far to our right. I’d kept far away to avoid the hazards beneath the surface near the cliffs, but now I reasoned getting closer was our only way to escape them. Their boat had a deeper hull, potentially damaged now because of the rocks.
I angled the boat for the shore, getting so close, Elena yelled something to me that was lost in the wind. The depth sounder display should me what was beneath us, but she didn’t know that.
“They’re staying further out!”
Bene.
They weren’t able to get as shallow as we were and I’d use that to my advantage.
We powered along at such a clip, the cliffs were only a white smudge in my peripheral vision. I followed the ragged line of the rocks, dipping in and out of sight from our persecutors who were rapidly falling twenty then forty then sixty yards behind us.
Chiara had loved boating with Tore in the summer and we’d often spent long days exploring the grottos cut into the rock near Naples and on Capri. I scrounged through the faded memories in search of one near our location and laughed like a madman with exhilaration when the dark notch of a cave peeked out from the rocks ahead of us.