Page 245 of Marcello

As soon as we walked into the room, Cesare glanced over at us.

“Where the fuck is she?!” he snarled.

“I couldn’t find her.” I tried to keep the nervousness out of my voice, but I wasn’t entirely successful. I just hoped Cesare interpreted it as fear of failing him instead of the fear of being found out.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t find her?!”

“She wasn’t in her room.”

Cesare must have believed me, because he pressed his gun against Luciano’s head. “You lying fuck – ”

“That was her room, I swear!” Luciano yelped.

I would’ve gladly let Luciano die. After all, he did give up his sister, knowing full well what would happen to her –

But Giulietta would never forgive me if I didn’t try to save her brother’s life.

“It was a woman’s bedroom,” I said quickly, “but she wasn’t there.”

“Where the fuck IS she?!” Cesare shouted at me.

“I don’t know – out, maybe?”

I must have been convincing that time, too, because Cesare turned to the old mafia don. “Amato – where’s the girl?”

“…out with friends.”

The old man was a way worse liar than I was.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cesare growled. Then he shouted at me, “Go search the rest of the house!”

Ciro was looking at a message on his phone. “The rest of our guys showed up a few minutes ago. Lucrezia’s downstairs.”

“Good – send her up.”

“We’ll need to turn on the lights. Otherwise she won’t be able to see a thing.”

“Go ahead.”

Ciro and I left the room.

“I’ll get Lucrezia. YOU find the girl,” he ordered contemptuously.

Fucking prick.

But I didn’t say anything. I just walked away –

And into a part of the house as far from the hidden door as possible.

The lights in the mansion came on. I took off my night vision goggles and wasted half an hour wandering around, pretending to search for someone I knew wasn’t there.

The entire time, I tried to figure out how the hell I could save Don Amato and Luciano.

I decided to try to convince Lucrezia that we could ransom them off to the Cosa Nostra and make a lot of money.

Cesare would be furious at me for ruining his fun, but it was worth a shot.

Suddenly, a call came through on my tablet computer, and I pulled it out of a pouch in my body armor.