The Mafia Contract Series

ALESSANDRO

The room erupts into confused chaos. I hold my screaming woman in my arms, her life destroyed along with mine as we face the death of our son. The son I never knew I had and as I hold her pain wrecked body, I feel numb. I have a son. I had a son. It’s too much to comprehend and as the activity increases in the room, I can’t move. I hold Winter as if I’m afraid to let go and try to wrap my head around something I never saw coming.

We have a son. Frankie.

I barely register Angelo’s strong hand on my back and as the seconds turn to minutes, I am frozen to the spot. Then something kicks in, a natural instinct to protect what’s mine, and I say angrily, “I want to discover where my son is.”

The awkward silence is not what I need right now, and I raise my eyes to the only person I trust with this and growl, “I need to know everything.”

Malik nods, looking as emotional as the rest of us, but it’s not emotion I need right now, it’s action.

Standing, I drag my sobbing woman to her feet and sweep her into my arms and say roughly, “We need a moment.”

As I stride from the room, nobody dares stop me and as Winter weeps like a broken angel in my arms, I want answers and I want them yesterday.

Winter is inconsolable, but I have no time to waste, so I place her gently on the bed and take her hand, saying firmly, “I want you to tell me everything.”

“Please, Alessandro, we must go to him.”

I exhale sharply and say with the deepest pain etching my words. “I don’t think you understand, Winter. There is nothing left to return to.”

Her wide eyes fill with grief, and she shakes her head. “No, he must be somewhere; he must be.”

Her voice breaks and I growl, “I want it all. From the moment you realized you were pregnant and every minute of my son’s life. Everything you tell me is for a reason, because I refuse to accept that he is gone, and we must place ourselves in the mind of madness to work out what could have happened.”

Through heart wrenching sobs, Winter tells me her harrowing story and I hang onto every word and commit it to my memory. I crave every small detail of a life I never knew existed until now. We talk for hours, and we grieve like any parents would, but I grieve for more than the son I never had. I grieve for the fact I never met him and the life we were denied because of one man.

Hours pass and I ask many questions and by the time Winter falls into an exhausted sleep, I have never experienced rage like this. I had a son and now it’s my duty to step up and be the father he deserves.

Leaving Winter to sleep fitfully, I head back to the kitchen and find everyone exactly where I left them. The emotion on their faces rolls off me like water on wax because I no longer have any.

Angelo steps up and says quickly, “How is she?”

“Sleeping.” I growl my response and head straight for the coffee machine. I need a clear head now and fix Jasmine with a hard look.

“Please, can you watch her?”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

She jumps up. “Of course.”

Louisa nods. “We’ll take it in shifts. We want to help.”

I note the tears streaming down Charlotte’s anxious face and she says with a quiver in her voice, “I’m so sorry, it was all my fault.”

Ivan hisses angrily, “None of this is your fault. There is only one man responsible for that and he’s lucky he’s not here right now.”

Angelo shakes his head, looking as if he’s been to Hell and back. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. We couldn’t get inside, so we burned the place down. I…”

“Enough!” I round on my friends in a rage that has been brewing since hearing the news I have a son.

“We are all to blame. Nobody saw this coming. We weren’t to know.”

Flynn looks as destroyed as the rest of us and moves closer, saying with a gruff, “What can we do to help?”

Before I can answer, Malik’s voice washes over us like a balm of antiseptic taking away the sting as he says firmly, “Take a seat. I have some information that may help.”

We stare at him in surprise and waste no time in grabbing a seat at the table and he peers at his computer with a worried frown.

“As I said before, you may be interested in what I discovered, and now certain events have come to light, it begins to make sense.”

There is not a sound in the room as we wait expectantly for him to speak, and he raises his eyes to mine, and my heart quickens when I note the excitement in his.

“I hacked into Massimo’s servers and found some interesting files stored on his computer. He saved them to the cloud and used a weak password to protect them.” Malik shakes his head in disgust as he sighs. “They contained the usual shit, but there was one folder that interested me more than any other because it was titled with a name rather than a description.”

“What was the name?” I’m guessing it’s one we are all familiar with, judging from the gleam in his eye and he nods. “Ortega.”

The silence says it all as I share a look with my friends around the table and understand why Malik is so excited about this. Like his own family in Dubai, the Ortegas are mafia royalty. Some consider Giovanni Ortega to be the Mafia King and I’m not surprised that Massimo had him in his sights.

“What was in the folder?” Angelo says quickly and Malik’s eyes gleam.

“A series of payments set up to a woman.”

“What woman?” Angelo is getting impatient, but whatever Malik has discovered is something he’s excited about, and he says with a smirk, “Delores Brown.”

“Should we be familiar with that name?” Flynn appears as confused as we all are, and Malik shakes his head.

“At first, I was as confused as you are. I did some more digging and found a bank account set up in Zurich for a Miss. Delores Brown. Then I cross-referenced the account numbers and payments and had a match.”

“But how does this matter to us?” I huff with frustration.

“Because the payments were for services received. Once again, I did some digging on the elusive Delores Brown and discovered a birth certificate and a passport in her name.”

“So, you think Delores Brown is somehow connected to Giovanni Ortega?”

“No.” We stare at him in confusion as he says with rare excitement. “My sources reveal that Delores Brown was last seen leaving a party in downtown Los Angeles around a year ago. That was the last sighting of her and despite exhaustive searches, she was never found. Word is, she left the country and in the absence of a body the case remains open. It appears that whoever Delores Brown is now, is someone who doesn’t want to be discovered and is hiding behind her, using her identity.”

“So, how does this link to Massimo?”

Malik laughs softly. “Because at the same time the payments started, Giovanni Ortega’s daughter went missing.”

We all stare at Malik with more questions than answers and he grins triumphantly.

“On the day Angelo burned Massimo’s house to the ground, a ticket was purchased in the name of Delores Brown to Zurich, and she wasn’t traveling alone.”

I stare at him with a sense of anticipation as he says triumphantly, “Her companion was a small infant listed as Benjamin Brown. I tracked the cab companies and found a booking that collected them thirty minutes after Massimo and Winter left for Scarpetta.”

As the news sinks in, Malik leans back with a twisted grin on his face and says with satisfaction.

“It appears that our cuckoo fled the nest before Angelo got there, but what interests me more than anything is what connection Delores Brown has with Giovanni Ortega.”

“Do you think Massimo was keeping Giovanni’s daughter prisoner to bring her father down?” Ivan voices what we’re all guessing and Malik shrugs. “If Delores is his daughter. She may not be.”

“So, we go to Zurich.”

I stand because we have no time to waste, and Malik shakes his head. “I understand your desire to find your son, Alessandro, but we need to be clever about this. If Giovanni Ortega is involved, we must tread carefully. Word is, he is tearing the world apart for news of his daughter, and we must tread in the shadows and creep up on them when they least expect it.”

“But I can’t just sit here.”

Angelo growls, “Malik’s right.” He turns to me, and I hate the sympathy in his eyes as he says with a slight break to his voice. “We can’t risk her going to ground. At the moment, she doesn’t know we’re onto her and if we race off to Zurich and tear it apart, we may never find her. The only way to deal with a mouse is the set a cat after it and we have the best one for the job.”

All eyes turn to Malik, who looks almost euphoric, and I wonder if Delores Brown has just escaped one mad murdering bastard only to set herself in the path of a much more sinister one.