The elevator door opened and six Italian police officers stepped out, guns raised at them.
They were ordered to the ground and handcuffed. Then they were led downstairs to the main lobby where the officer in charge, who spoke fluent English, would come any moment.
During their wait, Darwin saw a couple of the Fuccini family men sitting in police cruisers in the front of the building.
A man in a suit and a tie came up to them. The man’s face changed to anger when he saw the handcuffs.
“Officers,” he called out and then shouted something in rapid Italian.
Two cops ran over and undid their cuffs. Darwin checked his forearm cut. Still bleeding.
“I’m so sorry for treating you like this. They don’t know who you are. My name is Marco. I’ll have an ambulance take you to the hospital where we’ll get you stitched up and then I’ll take your statement. How does that sound?”
Darwin nodded at him.
“I got a call from a colleague of mine, Greg Stinsen with the FBI. He told me what was happening and that he’d be here in the morning. He said to offer you all the support I could. These men can piece together what happened here and we’ll leave now. That work?”
The trio walked out to his car, Darwin holding Rosina’s hand tight as the darkness surrounded him.
As the cop pulled away from the curb, Darwin said, “Can you turn on the interior light?”
“Yeah, sure,” the cop said and flicked it on.
Darwin took a deep breath and stared down at his hand, clasped in his wife’s. He didn’t want to look at the windows. All he’d see was blackness and that didn’t help anything.
It was over for now. A lot of men had died, but they were safe for now. They were in police custody and the FBI would arrive soon. Together they’d launch an attack on the Fuccini family to end the vendetta, the blood debt.
“You still need the light on?” the cop asked.
“Yes.” Darwin looked up at the cop in the mirror. The cop smiled, nodded his head, and looked away to focus on the road.
I definitely need to see the light.
He woke in the hospital the next morning, sun streaming through the window’s drapes.
“Rosina?” he called, panicked.
“I’m right here,” she said.
She rose from the chair she’d been in, stretched her arms out as far as they could go, and moaned.
“Sometimes, when I think about what happened yesterday, it almost feels like it was a dream. Then I see your injuries and I know we lived it. But that’s the important part: we lived it. We made it.”
Darwin rested his head back and nodded slowly. “The cop, Marco, is he gone?”
“Yeah. He left after he took out statements, about four in the morning. I just heard from a nurse that Greg called. He’s about five minutes away. Maybe that was what woke you, when the nurse left.”
“What’s next? What are we going to do?”
“You’re going to go home, is what you’re going to do,” Greg said as he stepped into the room.
“Greg!” Rosina shouted and ran to hug him.
“How’s my favorite couple?”
“Great now,” Rosina said. “It’s so good to see a familiar face.”
Rosina stepped away and Greg walked up to Darwin. “What am I gonna do with you?” He smiled, his face beaming. “First you kill Vincenzo, by accident, and then come to Rome to wipe out the rest of his family. Wow, if I hadda known you were like that, we could’ve used you on the force.”
“Greg, it wasn’t like that,” Darwin said. “They keep coming after us. If they had accepted it was an accident in the first place, they wouldn’t have hunted us to Rome. I flew my wife here to get married. I felt they were getting too close to us in Toronto. Death threats, people following me. So here we are, and they try to kill us twice in four days. So I decided to send Rosina to Greece and I’d stay behind to deal with it. But they grabbed her and…”
“I heard from Marco. He told me everything.”
“Doesn’t that guy sleep?” Rosina asked.
“I think he does, but that’s not my concern. What is my concern is getting you home.”
“Home?”
“Yes. I have you two booked on a flight tonight from Rome to Toronto. I can’t protect you here.”
“Didn’t you get clearance or something?” Darwin asked.
“Not really. As a favor, Marco let me see the reports, but the diplomatic channels will take too long for me to do any good here. This is the mafia’s home. I’m only one man, and I don’t speak Italian either. If you’re in Toronto, I have backup and I have a sort of quasi-jurisdiction.”
“Rosina,” Darwin looked over at her. “You’re okay with all this?”
“Of course. I’ve had enough of Rome’s charms. After what happened yesterday, I want to get as far away from here as I can, as soon as we can.”
Darwin looked back at Greg. “Thanks for coming so fast and, yeah, let’s do this.”
“I’ll talk to the doctor and get you checked out, but first, I have to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did your father ever tell you why he called you Darwin?”
“Yeah, he said he wanted to always remind me to stay motivated and get out of life whatever I wanted. He put two words together to make Darwin. Dare and win. He said, just saying my name was my dare to win.”
“That’s pretty good.” Greg walked over to the hospital room door. “I thought there was another reason. Something to do with survival of the fittest. You know, Charles Darwin and natural selection.”
Darwin smiled. Greg was always high on the compliments.
“There’s one other thing. I hate when I told you to lay low and stay out of sight and then you didn’t. But I’m glad you didn’t. Good work, Darwin. Good work.”
Greg opened the door and made to step out, but his cell phone rang. He hopped back into Darwin’s room and pulled his phone out.
“Not allowed to have these things in the hospital but I gotta take this.”
“Go ahead,” Darwin said.
“Hello, Stinsen here.”
Greg listened, his phone pressed to his ear. His face grew darker, his eyebrows got closer until they connected in a look of consternation.
“Okay, I understand. Send units over to their house ASAP.”
He flipped his phone shut and looked between the two of them.
“I’m sorry. Very bad news.”
“What? Tell us.”
“It’s not over.”
“I didn’t think it would be,” Darwin said as he sat up in bed. His head felt woozy and he leaned back on his good arm. “What is it?”
“Your father,” he said to Darwin. “Adrian has been kidnapped. He was taken from his home an hour ago, according to witnesses. That puts it around six in the morning, Toronto time.” Greg looked over at Rosina. “Whoever’s behind this may be headed to your parents’ house in Brampton too. I have units en route there now. I’m sorry.”
Chapter 9
They landed under clear skies at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport.
Darwin had rested most of the flight, sleeping uncomfortably in the airplane seats with a bandaged left shoulder and left forearm.
