THE DON'S DEADLY ANGEL

The Flight of Crows

By two-thirty in the morning, St. Jude’s Cathedral had ceased pretending to belong to God.

The pews had been pushed against the stone walls to make room for black weapons crates, satellite equipment, maritime charts, and three tables covered with enough ammunition to provoke an international incident. Beneath the cracked gaze of stained-glass saints, Moretti soldiers checked suppressors, loaded magazines, and argued over routes through the Exuma chain.

At the center of the nave, Dante Moretti stood before an open weapons case with the expression of a man who had been personally insulted.

“Where is the second Beretta?”

Lorenzo looked up from a shipping manifest. “You already have three pistols.”

“I asked where it is.”

“You’re invading an island, Dante, not opening a gun shop.”

Dante slowly turned his head.

The cathedral went noticeably quieter.

Lorenzo sighed, reached beneath the table, and produced the missing weapon. “Bianca removed it from the case.”

“Why?”

“Because she said no sane man needs four handguns strapped to his body.”

Dante inspected the magazine. “That explains the misunderstanding. She assumed I was sane.”

From the upper gallery, Sloane watched Lorenzo mutter something about hereditary madness as he returned to the manifest.

A smile threatened the corner of her mouth.

She suppressed it.

There was too much work left to do and too little time before departure. At three, they would leave for the private airfield. From there, the Gulfstream would carry them south toward the Bahamas, where Elias Thorne had turned an unregistered cay near Exuma into a fortified sanctuary.

Or a trap.

Probably both.

Sloane’s fingers slipped beneath her tactical vest and closed around the small wooden bird hidden against her ribs.

The chipped wing pressed into her palm.

Real.

Impossible.

Her brother had carved it when they were children. She remembered him sitting cross-legged on the floor with a knife he had stolen from their father’s training bag, his tongue trapped between his teeth as he tried to shape the wings.

It was ugly.

She had told him so.

He had chased her through the apartment until their mother threatened to make them both scrub the kitchen.

The memory came in fragments now. Sunlight against worn floorboards. Her mother laughing. Her father correcting her brother’s stance with a hand on his shoulder.

Then smoke.

Heat.

A door that would not open.

Sloane released the bird.

“You look very dramatic up here.”

Dante’s voice arrived before his footsteps.

She glanced over her shoulder. “I was enjoying the view.”

“Of my men?”

“Of Lorenzo considering whether murdering you would improve his working conditions.”

Dante joined her at the railing. “He considers it at least twice a week.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t tried.”

“He knows Bianca would make him finish the paperwork afterward.”

Below, Bianca sat before three open laptops, her fingers moving over the keyboards with violent concentration. She had not looked up once since recovering the damaged Ghost files from the ruins of the Vault.

Sloane studied her.

“Your sister is hiding something.”

“My sister has been hiding things since she was old enough to lock a diary.”

“She keeps looking at me.”

“Most people do.”

Sloane turned her head slowly.

Dante’s mouth curved.

“There he is,” she said.

“Who?”

“The unbearable man I was ordered to investigate.”

“Investigate?” He leaned his hip against the railing. “Is that what the Agency called eight months of pretending to be my fiancée?”

“I was gathering intelligence.”

“You were drinking my wine and judging my furniture.”

“Your furniture was criminal.”

“My furniture was Italian.”

“Exactly.”

Dante laughed softly. “You know, I’ve been meaning to discuss your performance.”

“My performance?”

“As my fiancée.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Be very careful.”

“Eight months, Sloane.”

“I know how long the assignment lasted.”

“Eight months of hand-holding, charitable dinners, museum openings, and one carefully rationed kiss at the end of the evening.”

“You received more than one kiss.”

“Only when I behaved.”

“Which explains the scarcity.”

Dante placed a hand over his heart as though she had wounded him. “You convinced half of Chicago that you were a devout Catholic girl saving herself for marriage.”

“It was an effective cover.”

“You made me attend Mass.”

“You needed moral instruction.”

“You introduced me to a fake aunt who carried rosary beads and stared at me like she could smell the bodies.”

“She was very committed to the role.”

“She was an Agency interrogator.”

“One of our best.”

“She threatened to break my fingers when you went to the restroom.”

Sloane blinked innocently. “Aunt Margaret was protective.”

Dante’s laugh echoed across the gallery. Several men below glanced upward, then quickly returned to their work.

“You know what made it worse?” he continued. “I respected the boundary.”

“You sound surprised by your own decency.”

“I was deeply inconvenienced by it.”

“You survived.”

“Barely. I spent eight months engaged to the most beautiful woman in Chicago while being informed that even God disapproved of me touching her.”

“He probably did.”

“I own three churches.”

“That is not how absolution works.”

“It should be.”

Sloane folded her arms. “For someone who claims he suffered, you seemed remarkably entertained.”

Dante’s eyes brightened with the exact expression she distrusted most.

She went still.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Dante.”

He looked down at the men loading weapons. “I found out you were a spy during our third month together.”

For the first time that night, Sloane forgot about the bird.

“You said you discovered my identity shortly before the gala.”

“I said I confronted you shortly before the gala.”

Her face hardened. “Third month?”

“You were searching my study.”

“I never searched your study.”

“You entered through the balcony at two-fourteen in the morning, disabled the pressure sensor beneath the Persian rug, copied the contents of my private ledger, and replaced everything within ninety seconds.”

“That ledger was a decoy.”

“I know.”

“You knew I was there?”

“I was sitting in the dark.”

Sloane stared at him.

Dante’s grin widened.

“You were pretending to sleep.”

“I was drinking bourbon behind the curtains.”

“You watched me?”

“For twenty-seven minutes.”

“It took ninety seconds.”

“You spent the remaining time examining the painting behind my desk.”

“The varnish was damaged.”

“That was when I realized the art-restorer part wasn’t entirely fake.”

She stepped closer. “You knew for five months and said nothing?”

“I wanted to see what you would do.”

“You were playing with me.”

“I was courting you.”

“You switched my extraction vehicle.”

“The Agency sent you a gray sedan. I replaced it with a hearse.”

Sloane’s mouth fell open.

Dante looked delighted. “The expression on your face was extraordinary.”

“That was you?”

“I also changed the location of three meetings, planted false financial records in my apartment, and hired a man to follow you through the museum district.”

“The man with the green scarf?”

“He was an actor.”

“I broke his wrist.”

“He became much more convincing afterward.”

“You absolute bastard.”

“I paid his medical bills.”

“You were torturing me.”

“I was testing the best infiltration specialist in the country.”

“You put a tracker inside the crucifix you gave me.”

“Yes.”

“I took that crucifix into an Agency safehouse.”

“I know. The building was surprisingly dull.”

Sloane’s hand drifted toward the ceramic blade at her hip.

Dante glanced at it. “There she is.”

“I should have killed you in the ballroom.”

“You had several opportunities before the ballroom.”

“I was protecting my cover.”

“No.” His tone shifted—not softer, but more precise. “At first, you were.”

She stopped.

Dante stepped into her space, still wearing the faintly amused expression of a man who had spent months studying her reactions.

“During the first few months, every touch was calculated. Every smile had a purpose. You knew where every camera was, every exit, every weapon in the room.”

“I was doing my job.”

“Then you stopped.”

“I did not.”

“You stopped checking the windows when we had dinner.”

“I knew the security layout.”

“You fell asleep in my car.”

“I was exhausted.”

“You laughed at my jokes.”

“Some of them were accidentally funny.”

“You kissed me in the rain outside the opera and forgot to look for surveillance afterward.”

Sloane’s pulse betrayed her with one hard beat.

Dante noticed.

Of course he noticed.

“That was the moment,” he said.

“The moment what?”

“I realized Agent 704 was in trouble.”

She tried to produce a cutting answer.

Nothing came.

His smile became unbearably satisfied.

“You thought you were infiltrating my life,” he continued. “Meanwhile, you were becoming part of it.”

“You sound very pleased with yourself.”

“I spent ten million dollars on your file. I like knowing I received value.”

Sloane punched him in the ribs.

Not enough to hurt him.

Enough to make the point.

Dante laughed and caught her wrist before she could strike again.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I did then.”

“No, you were furious because I kept rearranging the pieces of your mission.”

“You enjoyed watching me struggle.”

“Immensely.”

“Why?”

His thumb brushed once across the inside of her wrist, where her pulse beat beneath the skin.

“Because you were the first person who entered my world intending to deceive me and somehow became more honest than everyone already inside it.”

The humor did not disappear, but something heavier moved beneath it.

Sloane held his gaze.

“You should have confronted me.”

“And end the entertainment?”

“I could have killed you.”

“You could have tried.”

“I did try.”

“You missed.”

“I was distracted.”

“By my charm?”

“By the Russians shooting at us.”

“Details.”

Lorenzo’s voice carried up from below. “Ten minutes!”

Dante released her wrist but remained close.

Sloane looked down toward Bianca. “You really knew all that time?”

“I knew you were a spy.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest took longer.”

“What rest?”

“That you were no longer pretending to want me.”

She stared at him.

Dante picked up the weapons bag resting near the railing.

“You became very bad at hiding that.”

“You are unbelievably arrogant.”

“Yet apparently worth abandoning your government for.”

“They sold me.”

“Still counts.”

She shoved past him toward the stairs. “I’m reconsidering the alliance.”

“You have the entire flight.”

“I may throw you out of the aircraft.”

“Make sure we reach cruising altitude first. I’d like the view.”

Below them, Bianca closed one of her laptops too quickly.

Sloane caught the movement.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing useful.”

“That answer is becoming repetitive.”

Bianca stood and slid a narrow encrypted drive into her jacket. “Perhaps you should interrogate me after we survive the island.”

“Perhaps I should interrogate you now.”

Dante descended the final stair between them. “Save the family bonding for the plane.”

“She isn’t family,” Bianca said immediately.

The words landed harder than she intended.

Sloane’s expression did not change.

Dante’s did.

Bianca looked away first.

“Convoy is ready,” she said. “The Gulfstream has a twenty-minute departure window before Thorne’s people start noticing gaps in regional radar.”

They moved through the cathedral together.

Outside, rain glazed the black SUVs and turned the city streets into rivers of reflected light. Weapons were loaded. Engines started. Moretti soldiers took their positions with the silence of men who understood that their Don was not merely hunting an enemy.

He was going to erase one.

At the private airfield, the Gulfstream waited beneath white floodlights, sleek and predatory against the darkness.

Sloane stepped from the lead SUV and scanned the perimeter.

Two pilots.

Four ground crew.

Lorenzo’s men on the western roof.

No visible threat.

Still, something tightened between her shoulder blades.

Presence.

She touched the hidden pocket over her heart.

The wooden bird was warm beneath her fingers.

Bianca’s tablet flickered.

She stopped walking.

“What is it?” Dante asked.

The screen went black.

Then words appeared in stark white letters.

THE ARCHITECT HAS PREPARED THE CAGE.

A second line followed.

DO NOT LET HIM SEPARATE YOU.

Sloane moved toward Bianca, but the message vanished before she reached the screen.

“Trace it,” Dante ordered.

“I can’t.” Bianca’s fingers raced across the tablet. “It entered through the aircraft’s navigation system.”

Every light inside the Gulfstream shut off simultaneously.

For three seconds, the runway held its breath.

Then the cabin lights returned.

Warm.

Inviting.

The open aircraft door looked less like an entrance and more like a mouth.

Dante drew his weapon.

His men followed.

Sloane stared at the plane, her instincts screaming that the Pale Horse had been close enough to touch it.

“He’s not warning us away,” she said.

Bianca looked at her. “No.”

“He wants us to go.”

Dante checked the chamber of his pistol and started toward the stairs.

“Then we shouldn’t disappoint him.”

Sloane fell into step beside him.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“An impossible island, a corrupt intelligence director, and a ghost hacking my plane?” Dante glanced at her. “It’s the closest thing we’ve had to a proper honeymoon.”

She shook her head. “I should have let the Agency kill you.”

“But then you would’ve had to marry someone boring.”

They climbed aboard together.

Far beyond the airfield, a figure in a gray coat watched the Gulfstream through a rifle scope.

The Pale Horse lowered the weapon without firing.

Blood had soaked through the bandage around his thigh, but he paid it no attention. He touched the small wooden swift hidden inside his own coat—the twin of the one resting against Sloane’s heart.

For twenty years, Thorne had taught him that family was another word for weakness.

Tonight, he intended to prove the Architect wrong.

The Gulfstream began to move.

The Pale Horse turned away from the runway and disappeared into the dark.

He was not following them to the island.

He was going ahead.

And before the Morettis touched Caribbean soil, Elias Thorne’s paradise would already have its first corpse.