Page 2 of Bratva Sacrifice

My brow furrows. Giulio has only the one child—and now, none. This is common knowledge. Probably a wrong number. Or a code I do not recognize? While the text is still on screen, I write down the number it came from. It is not saved in Nicola’s contacts, so maybe it is nothing. But I will have Anatoli run it down in the morning anyway.

Information is everything.

And still, I think, as I climb back into bed—maybe Giulio is better at hiding some things than others.

∞∞∞

Anatoli sits down to breakfast. He loves the blini my cook prepares. I like them best with sour cream and caviar—but Anatoli likes to smother them with jam, because he has a terrible sweet tooth.

“Russo begs your forgiveness,” he says dryly. “He is unable to meet until next week. He is preparing a funeral for his only son. His wife is beside herself, and he cannot leave her side even for a moment. He extends his regrets.”

The old man must be pissing himself. This pleases me.

“Of course,” I say. I could insist, but I know Russo will be even more worked up for our eventual meeting. He will make mistakes. “Send him a funeral wreath.” This is an obvious insult, since I placed his son in the ground. “And send his wife a fruit basket or some shit.” What does one send to bereaved mothers?

Anatoli slides a folder across the desk to me. It is labeled Catalina.

“The phone number?” I ask.

He shrugs. “The number is from a burner. Certainty is not possible. But the suspicion was enough to merit looking deeper.”

“What is this?” I ask as I thumb through the folder. It is full of pictures, records.

Anatoli says, “Russo has a bastard daughter. Even his wife does not know this.”

Catalina. I browse the pictures Anatoli has collected for me. She is pretty. She has that soft sort of face many American girls have, like they grew up watching cartoons and eating sugary cereals. A dimple in her right cheek. Her blonde hair up in a high ponytail. In one image, she wears a sweatshirt that says University of Illinois across the front. In another her eyes are crossed as she blows a large pink bubble out of bubble gum.

“She is twenty-four,” Anatoli says. “Just graduated with a Masters in Early Childhood Education.”

Ahh, so Papa Giulio knocked up his wife and his mistress at about the same time. No wonder nobody knows about her.

Except maybe Nicola.

Anatoli is thorough. Catalina’s whole life is contained within this file. Braces at twelve. Appendectomy at thirteen. On the birth control shot for irregular periods since she was in her mid-teens. She went to a private girl’s boarding school on the west coast. She came back to study in Chicago—major in education; minor in history, then directly to her master’s—because her Mama was sick. The woman passed of cancer years ago.

Catalina has no social media presence, no boyfriend, no husband. Probably her father has kept her life quiet and small on purpose. She is his insurance policy. A son is a legacy, but a daughter—a daughter is a commodity, valuable in other ways. His time is drawing to its close, but he can still attach himself to another powerful family. Through marriage.

Now I know what I will demand from him in recompense for the trouble his worthless son has caused me. His only bargaining chip.

∞∞∞

As days pass, there can no longer be any doubt to whom the mystery number belongs.

Texts begin to roll in, slowly at first.

I’m sorry I couldn’t go to your funeral.

Little Catalina has some issues, maybe, if she is texting her dead half-brother. The Italians revere family, and Papa Giulio married well—though not well enough to secure a better place in his own family’s hierarchy. Still, his wife’s family supplies most of his money, and he is not keen on alienating them by announcing the fact that he has a bastard daughter out in the world, one who was clearly conceived during his marriage.

This is another string I have to pull. Giulio will dance like a puppet at my command.

Italians are also fanatical about purity—for their women. Probably Catalina is still a virgin. I imagine that Papa would have put the fear of God into anyone who thought to defile his daughter. A lack of virginity would decrease her value, dishonor him before his peers.

She will not be worth much to him when I am finished with her.

I find myself looking through Anatoli’s folder often, in odd moments. I keep it in the drawer beside my bed. I like to flip through these pictures, mark the progression from girl to woman. Giulio is not in any of them. Probably he was a distant father at best. I think the woman who dominates her childhood in them must have been her mother. They have similar faces; soft, sweet. Pretty. Not beautiful; not in the flagrant, sharp way the women who move in my sphere are. But pretty.

It is easy to see that she has lived a life removed from her father’s family, his mafia connections. That softness does not last within these circles. There is no room in this life for the sort of sweetness that is etched into Catalina’s pretty face. I think this must be why I cannot stop looking at these pictures. She should not exist to a man like me. There is an innocence, a purity that glows in her face, and it has nothing to do with the purity of her body. It is a purity of the soul which would have been long smothered had she been raised a cosseted mafia princess.