Chapter 3 - Flight Through the Alpine Gale
Twenty minutes later, a convoy of three armored Mercedes SUVs was tearing down
the mountain road toward the private Falcone airfield outside Trapani.
The storm over Sicily was escalating into a full Mediterranean gale, but inside
the leather-lined cabin of the lead vehicle, the air was dead silent.
Matteo sat in the rear passenger seat. He had stripped off his soaked suit
jacket and dress shirt, changing into a black tactical turtleneck and dark wool
trousers.
On the center console between us rested three items: Camilla’s unburned gold
wedding band, the Zurich death certificate, and a matte-black Sig Sauer 9mm
pistol with three spare magazines.
I sat opposite him, clutching an oversized black shearling coat that Stefano had
pulled from the estate’s cloakroom. My hands were still stained with red clay,
my knees aching from the fall on the flagstones.
“Mr. Falcone,” I whispered, unable to hold the silence any longer.
Matteo looked up from the gold ring he had been turning between his scarred
fingers. “Speak, Gina.”
“Miss Castiglione told me... she said her father had my brother’s asylum file on
his desk in Rome,” I stammered, my chest tightening with raw dread. “She said if
I didn't destroy the urn, they would deport him to Libya.”
Matteo stared at me for three long seconds. His dark eyes, which had looked so
terrifying in the courtyard, held an unexpected, deep stillness.
He picked up his satellite phone from the armrest, dialed an encrypted ten-digit
sequence, and brought the receiver to his ear.
“Dante,” Matteo barked.
A voice crackled through the speaker: “Boss?”
“Send an extraction team to the Sacred Heart shelter in Naples immediately. Pick
up Leo Rossi, fourteen years old, brother of Gina. Move him to our fortified
safehouse in Florence under twenty-four-hour armed guard. If any agent from the
Ministry of the Interior approaches within a block of that boy, execute them on
sight.”
“On it, Mr. Falcone. The boy will be in Florence within two hours.”
Matteo hung up. He looked across the seat at me.
“Your brother is safe, Gina,” Matteo said, his voice low and absolute. “Nobody
touches a member of your family while I draw breath.”
Tears burned the corners of my eyes, hot and overwhelming. “Thank you, sir.
Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” Matteo replied, looking down at his scarred palms. “You saved
my wife’s life tonight. You refused to dump her memory into the dirt. If you had
listened to Bianca... I would have married the daughter of the man who put
Camilla in that cage.”
We arrived at the runway as the airfield’s high-intensity halogen lights cut
through the driving rain.
Waiting on the tarmac was a customized Gulfstream G650 private jet, its twin
engines already whining with a high-pitched, predatory hum.
We boarded the aircraft under the cover of armed umbrellas held by six Falcone
enforcers.
The moment the cabin door pressurized, the jet surged forward, lifting off into
the turbulent black sky, banking sharply north toward the snow-capped peaks of
the Swiss Alps.
During the ninety-minute flight, Matteo did not sleep.
He sat at the executive conference table, reviewing digital blueprints of the
Saint Moritz Sanitarium displayed on an encrypted laptop.
“The facility is built into the granite cliffside on the eastern shore of Lake
Zurich,” Matteo explained, motioning for me to look at the screen. “Officially,
it’s a high-end luxury psychiatric retreat for European billionaires. In
reality, it’s a black site owned by Anton Castiglione, funded by illicit
political slush funds.”
“How many guards will be there?” I asked, leaning over the table.
“Sixteen private Swiss security contractors on the perimeter,” Matteo answered,
his jaw clenching. “And Anton Castiglione’s private surgical staff. Their
termination window is midnight. We touch down in Zurich at eleven-fifteen.”
He reached into a leather compartment beneath the table and pulled out a small,
compact Glock 43 pistol, sliding it across the polished wood toward me.
I stared at the weapon. “Mr. Falcone... I don't know how to shoot.”
Matteo reached out, taking my right hand, wrapping my fingers around the
textured grip of the weapon. His hands were large, warm, and rock-steady.
“The safety is internal,” Matteo instructed gently. “You point it at anything
that wears a Castiglione uniform that isn't me, and you pull the trigger. If we
are separated in that building, Gina, you protect Camilla with this gun. Do you
understand?”
I looked from the black steel of the weapon into Matteo Falcone’s fierce,
May you like
desperate eyes.
“I understand, Mr. Falcone,” I whispered.
