Sydney Moya
(c) 2013
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Sydney Moya
(c) 2013
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Luciano had died protecting him, he had delayed the Carabinieri long enough to allow Mario to make a clean break and escape. Mario bowed his head, Luciano was dead now. He’d known that as soon he’d been forced to leave.
He had wanted to stay and fight alongside his childhood friend but Luciano wouldn’t have it, the Di Michele clan needed to carry on he’d insisted and since Mario was the last Di Michele it wouldn’t do for him to be shot or worse arrested.
So now he was dead dying to protect a member of a family that specialised in criminal enterprise, making its fortunes from the suffering of others. Luciano fervently believed that they did more good than harm, at least in their home region of Calabria, his family the Marciano’s apparently owed their existence to theirs. His great grandfather had been saved from execution by the Di Michele’s and had sworn a vow of fealty to them in return, a vow Luciano had died upholding.
What was the point? He wondered sadly, all this bloodshed was for what?
Stefan Ivanovic glanced at the man he was tasked with ferrying across the Adriatic to his native Croatia, the poor bugger looked beaten, lost in thought, a heavy burden on his slight shoulders. He wondered what was worrying him but then again with these Italians you never knew where you stood, their moods changed at the drop of a hat, he was probably mourning Milan's defeat last night in the European Cup.
Yes that was probably it, he didn't want to ponder too much into anything else as he'd been paid quite handsomely to take him to Croatia. He shuddered to think he might be one of those Mafia types. They never forgot even the smallest wrong those bastards.
Yes it was better to deliver him and forget about it.
On reaching the Dalmatian coast the plan was for Mario to make his way to a predetermined pick-up point where he would board a truck that was to take him to Prague where he was to lay low for a while, at least that was what he hoped to do but one couldn’t be too careful so he gave a young boy ten euro’s to go there and scout the place for him.
“There a lot of cars around there and the police won’t let anyone go through,” said the kid in broken Italian.
Mario immediately realised a raid was taking place.
“Grazzi,” Mario told him before paying the lad twenty euros.
It looked like nowhere was safe at the moment for the Di Michele family. He wondered what to do, everything was compromised and no one could be trusted. The guys at the depot might talk and the cops would realise he was headed for Prague or worse that he was in Croatia.
He retraced his steps and headed away from the area as soon as possible, aware that they would soon be looking for him. Somehow he had to evade capture, spending his life in prison wasn’t something he looked forward to particularly as he had not been an active participant in some his families more illicit activities.
All he had ever done had been to do his father’s banking, he was very good with numbers and he knew that the elaborate system he had used to cloak his family’s ill- gotten wealth was immensely difficult to crack. Therefore it wasn’t money laundering that they’d used to get them, someone had probably betrayed them which is why he was being looked for so they could get their hands on the Di Michele billions. Even though he knew his family wasn’t the paragon of virtue it claimed to be he knew the Italian government wasn’t much better and there was no way he would let Luciano and the others’ deaths be in vain.
That night as lay in bed he tried to think of ways to avoid arrest and he couldn’t think of any that seemed viable because they involved using his family’s network which for all he knew which might as well be compromised or that of another family who would be just as eager to see him dead as the police.
Only one idea came repeatedly to him that long night, that of disguising himself as a woman. Mario had longed since a tender age to be a girl and had confided this wish to his sister Marta who obliged by dressing him up whenever they were alone. His other sister Olivia a born tattler had told their papa after they’d refused to do her bidding resulting in a serious beating for all the children. Olivia for betraying her siblings, Marta for dressing Mario up, Stefano and Luigi for not manning up their brother and Mario for harbouring such disgusting thoughts and desires.
Since that day when he’d been 10 he’d clamped down on his yearning refusing to acknowledge its existence despite the overwhelming agony it caused him. Puberty had been painful not physically but mentally as he saw his body follow a path he hated. He was lucky though because his body didn’t take after the males of the family who were tall, bulky and hairy men, he topped out at 5 ft. 7 and didn’t become as hairy as he might have.
His father made sure to separate him from his sisters that day and teach him to be a man, it worked but only barely as Mario’s heart wasn’t in it.
At 18 his father decided he needed him to go learn about economics and business so he sent him off to the London School of Economics then Harvard after that. That is where Mario had given in to his urges just a bit and had most of his body hair removed as well treatment for his beard so that by the time he went back to Italy he only shaved once a month or so. He knew that had his background been different he would transitioned and was sorely tempted to do so in the UK and the US but he didn’t dare test his father by dishonouring him like that. Now that he was dead which saddened him the idea had been occupying him a lot at night but he found reasons not too.
Now his freedom depended on it.
He knew he could do it, in fact he had too and Thailand was nice at this time of the year and it would be the last place they would look for him considering that he was the child of a drug baron. He had no reason to go to a part of the world with the strictest drug laws on the planet. He smiled as thought about it.
Trieste, Italy
“Ladies and gentleman this is Mario Falcone Di Michele 27, a Harvard and London School of Economics educated accountant and economist. He is thought to be the financial brains behind the Di Michele crime family. We have reason to believe he has set up an elaborate chain of shell companies and bank accounts to hide an estimated $6billion in profits from drugs, smuggling, protection rackets and profits from multiple business interests initially funded by crime but now running on their own two feet. We captured his associate and bodyguard after a shootout, he is in hospital under heavy guard, he’s conscious but so far he isn’t talking,” said Interpol director Rossi.
One agent, an American put up his hand.
“Sir don’t we have forensic accountants who can track down the funds? People in DC want to seize any funds in the US,” he added.
“We have some of the best people on the job but I must hasten to remind you Di Michele was one the best students in the history of International Finance at his schools, I daresay some of the banks would love to have him on their payroll,” said the director to some muted laughter.
“As it stands he is the only link to the Di Michele money so he needs to be taken alive. We believe he is in the Balkans and in hiding,”
“Who is your source?”
“Unfortunately our informant cannot be revealed at this juncture,” said Director Rossi.
“Is he dangerous?”
“Yes because he is cornered though he wasn’t a violent Mafioso like his brothers and father if cornered I believe he will lash out,”
Somewhere in Croatia
The internet was literally a life saver thought Mario when he took delivery of the things he’d ordered last night. Thanks to the internet he had discovered exactly what he needed to do to pass as a woman and it had cost less than a grand. There were even make-up lessons on YouTube on disguising masculine features on his face like his beard which thankfully wasn’t showing then.
Having taken delivery of the items he promptly took stock of his purchases, there was depilatory cream, a pair of breast forms, pads to give his bottom a more feminine shape, make-up, special underwear to disguise his genitals, a pair of wigs, bras and a few outfits.
He quickly got started his excitement tempered by the knowledge he had to do a good job to pass and save his life. First he smeared the hair remover on his lower arms and legs. He hadn’t had the hair there removed out of fear someone in his family would notice the absence of it. He then took a shower and the hair came off as the water washed the cream away.
After that he stepped out of the shower and carefully towelled his body before sitting down on his bed painstakingly tweezing his eyebrows before gluing the breast forms onto his chest. He stood and looked into the full length mirror.
Perfect he thought they sat just right on his chest. He placed the wig on his head before he turned away and dressed in the gaffe, then panties plus hip pads before struggling with the brassiere. When he’d finally clasped the bra around his boobs he looked in the mirror once more and was pleased with what he saw, from the neck down he looked like one of those skinny model girls with muted curves.
A pair of jeans then a poet blouse followed. She then sat down and re watched the tutorial on make-up for a cross-dresser that she’d downloaded from YouTube. After a couple of false starts she finally got the look she was aiming for an understated look that enhanced her cheekbones. Making sure the auburn wig was properly combed and looked right followed. Looking in the mirror Mario saw someone she hadn’t seen in 17 years only now instead of being ten her alter ego was a grown woman, Something inside Mario’s head clicked and he had to fight back tears of relief lest the make-up job was ruined. She donned a pair of bug eyed glasses to further hide her features and complete the tourist look.
She packed her case with all her things resolving to dump her male clothes as soon as possible. Checkout was any time before 12pm so after one last look in the mirror she made her way downstairs left the keys to the room at the reception and made her way into the world.
To be continued
Sydney Moya
©2013
All rights reserved
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature
Chapter two
Mario knew she needed to get out of Croatia urgently, besides that she needed new travel documents which would require a new name too. She had picked one a few years ago but never allowed herself to use a woman’s name or to think of herself as anyone but Mario for fear that she would succumb. Names have power and having a girl’s name would have weakened his resolve to be Mario.
In almost every country there is a criminal class that supplies all manner of illicit things. Croatia on the fringe of the E.U was no exception. The Albanian’s had cornered the market on fake identities and human trafficking. Her father had taught her to avoid the Albanian’s where possible because they simply weren’t to be trusted. However at the moment she had no choice, they were the only people she knew who could help her out of the bind she was in.
She didn’t realise that as a single woman things might go a bit differently.
The girl who walked down the street pulling a suitcase looked quite attractive and elicited more than a few admiring glances making her smile to herself. She’d been nervous she’d be made as a boy but the looks on some the men’s faces made it clear she passed quite well.
She happily made her way to a cafe she knew doubled up as the office of some Albanian’s her brother’s had once done business with.
A waiter appeared as soon as she took a seat at one of the tables.
“How can I help you miss?”
“I need some documents,” she said in fluent Albanian.
Besides having a talent for money Mario had a gift for languages, she spoke nine besides her native Italian in varying degrees of fluency; English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Albanian, Russian, Japanese and Serbo-Croat. Albanian was one she’d learnt to help her father deal with the Albanians who were encroaching into W. Europe traditionally the turf of the ‘Ndrangheta and Sicilians.
The expression on the waiter’s face changed slightly.
He excused himself in English and left.
She saw him talking to someone who looked like bouncer at the entrance to what seemed to be some offices. The bouncer made his way inside. Minutes later he returned and the waiter came back to her.
“Please come this way miss,” he said politely.
She was led to the offices. The bouncer once out of sight of paying customers decided to pat her down.
‘What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, knowing no self-respecting girl would allow a strange man to search her. The bouncer stopped before he touched her looking confused. He decided to let her go in, she looked harmless enough.
The pair of them entered the office. Mario felt like she was entering a lion’s den. A burly man sat at the table and looked at her with interest. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Ms,” he said in English.
“Ms Mitchell,” said Mario without batting an eyelid.
“Ms Mitchell, yes and you would like some documents,” he said with smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Yes, two passports, one American and the other British, in the same name by the end of today,” she said.
“And what makes you believe a family establishment such as this would deal in such things?”
“I was referred by an old friend,” she said in Albanian.
The man’s eyebrows rose.
“You don’t look Albanian,” he said, still taken aback by her perfect accent.
“Looks can be deceiving,” she said in the same language.
“Yes so how can I be sure you’re not a cop?”
Mario mouthed the code word people in the know used to gain access to them.
“Everybody but the guilty sleep in the night,” she told him in Albanian, “I am such a person.”
He smiled; he decided he liked this one. He briefly wondered if he should keep her.
“All right, it’ll cost you $30 000 for both of them, collection at 6pm,” he said more business-like.
“Okay but I will pay half upfront the rest when I have them,” she said.
He nodded; this one was clever he thought. She would make a change to the girls he usually kept.
He gave her a paper and asked her to fill out the details she needed on the passport. Mario took it and wrote down the name she’d decided to use last night.
Ava Marylyn Mitchell.
D.OB: 24/06/1987 London.
Ava passed the piece of paper back to the Albanian man before she was led to a booth were passport photos were taken before she took her leave. All she had to do was return later in the day and pick up the documents and pay the remainder of the price.
She felt safer already, once she had travel documents she’d be out of here like a shot. She smiled at the name she’d chosen. Ava was the alter ego she’d had created when she was in the UK by paying a very good hacker. Legally she did exist; it had been an insurance policy in case she ever decided to transition. Her father was a man not be crossed and she’d seriously thought of doing just that by transitioning when she’d been in London and had decided she’d need a new untraceable identity.
In the end she’d decided it wasn’t worth the grief and had resigned herself to being a man for the rest of her life, though she indulged her feminine side with one or two things like the hair removal.
Now however she could be the girl she’d longed to be, not in the circumstances she’d have hoped but well every cloud has a silver lining.
“Follow her,” ordered the man she’d been talking to when she’d left the restaurant.
Trieste, Italy
Director Rossi picked up his twentieth cigarette of the day. It was a number he usually reached in the evening unless he was stressed.
He was stressed.
There was no sign of Mario Di Michele. He’d gone to ground and he had no idea where he was. Their information had suggested he might board a truck a truck and head for Central Europe. A raid had been done but Di Michele hadn’t showed, for the first time their information had failed them and there were no leads as to where he was.
Alerts had been put out in Croatia but nothing so far and Rossi wondered if he’d even gone there. Catching Di Michele wasn’t meant to be this hard, after all he was just gifted in hiding money and he was not the hard core criminal his brothers and father had been. Yet he’d managed to evade them even with the loss of his bodyguard.
He sighed; Di Michele had obviously picked up a few things from the old man after all and wasn’t going to be the easy catch they’d thought he would be. He wondered what he was going to tell his superiors.
With the way the day was going he’d be lucky if they didn’t tear him a new one.
Somewhere in Croatia
Ava sat in the plaza, enjoying her meal. She felt quietly hopeful that things might work out after all. She hadn’t been clocked as a man the whole day, to her joy which meant the cops wouldn’t be looking at her.
On a personal level she felt a sense of peace despite being on the run. After years of suppressing her identity, just being a woman felt so liberating and if she could she might skipped about in joy. She looked like a typical tourist and her voice hadn’t given her away, she’d never had a particularly deep voice and increasing its pitch hadn’t been too hard, with practice she could be perfect. People looked at her but not to eyeball a man in drag but to check out a pretty girl and she felt rather pleased that this was so.
In her joy she failed to notice the two Albanians who’d been shadowing her the whole day. She was too wrapped up in her feelings to notice and had the police been watching too she might have been in trouble.
As it was she didn’t notice them but took out her laptop and began planning her trip out of Croatia and what she’d do afterwards. She needed a place where she could lay low for a bit while getting hormones and finding a doctor to facilitate her transition. Money was definitely not going to be a problem as she had access to an immense amount of money placed in various virtually untraceable accounts not to mention the cash on her person. She went shopping for a few more clothes when she realised the outfits she had were too meagre for a woman.
Ava tried on her first skirt in 16 years as well as her first dress and she was pleased by her appearance, she had nice legs. So she bought a number of skirts and dresses as well as blouses to fill her suitcase which was nearly empty after disposing of her male attire that morning.
Things were looking up.
When the time she’d specified for collection of her documents neared, she hailed a cab to drive her back to the Albanian restaurant which served as a front for the Albanian mafia in that area. As she was about to reach her destination she noticed a car following not too subtly. She asked the driver to circle the block. When the car continued following she knew she was being followed. Her appearance ruled out the police so it had to be the Albanian’s.
She wondered what they wanted then realised that since she wasn’t dressed as Mario she was a potential target for the sex-trade the Albanian’s dealt in. European girls especially those who spoke English were rather popular and she realised she was in danger.
“Damn it!” Ava cursed in her native Italian.
She told the driver to drive her out of this town and to a hotel in the nearest one. Naturally the cabbie had no objection since that would earn him more money at the inflated “tourist rate.” Their tail followed at first discretely behind one or two other vehicles not knowing they’d been made. She told the driver to floor it in exchange for a bonus and he gladly obliged her. As their car accelerated their tail realised they’d been made and they duly increased their speed. The taxi driver suddenly realised that they were being chased and in his panic he also increased his speed. The next twenty kilometres were travelled at breakneck speed.
Luckily their chasers had a clunker chasing their Mercedes and the driver drove straight into the first police station he saw at Ava’s behest. She’d made a plan and hoped it would pan out.
She picked up her phone and called the Albanian.
“I don’t appreciate being followed,” she said coldly.
“What on earth are you talking about? Come and get your things,” was the man’s calm response.
“Listen, Enver. Yes I know your name. I’m not one of those little girls you like to kidnap. I’m ‘Ndrangheta and if you do not give me my papers my family will shut you down, there will be a war and you will be the first to die. So if you want to live, come to the police station in Kastav in 25 minutes and give me my things. And don’t try anything if anything happens I have already informed my family to hold you responsible,” said Ava in the calmest tone she could manage.
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“Very well,” the reply finally came.
The cabbie gulped as listened.
Seeing this, Ava smiled.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be safe and don’t ever tell anyone what you heard. When we’re done lose this car and get a new one. I’ll pay for it,” she said easily.
Twenty five minutes later a car arrived and two men walked up to the car.
Ava pulled out the nine millimetre pistol she kept for personal protection, though she’d never shot anyone she was trained in the use of firearms. She’d become an expert shot in her time in the States when Luciano had made use of the widespread gun ranges in that country and had made her come along. However she’d chosen the police station so as to reduce the potential for violence. The Albanians were not likely to start something there thus assuring her safety. The two men handed her a package through the window while Ava kept a gun trained on them.
She told the driver to open the package and check if there were two passports, one British, one American. He confirmed it and she handed over €15 000.
“Tell Enver to let this lie and not to look for me or this cab, it belongs to us. Should anything happen to the cabbie or his family, his life is forfeit,” she warned, “and don’t follow us or the same thing applies,” she finished.
They nodded and walked off.
Ava told the driver to take her to the Slovenian border after they drove off.
to be continued
‘
Sydney Moya
©2015
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter 3
Ava breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the Slovenian border without a sign of them being followed. She noticed how nervous the driver looked and she wanted to release him but she still needed his help to cross the border.
“What’s your name?” she asked him in Croatian.
“Vladimir,” he replied nervously.
“Look I’m not going to hurt you okay,” she said gently.
“How much do I owe you?”
The driver told her the amount. Ava took it out and added an extra €500.
“That’s for the fare," she explained.
She then gave him €7000 and advised him to get a new car and to get rid of his current vehicle. The man’s eyes nearly popped out at the sight of a year’s salary. He didn’t know what to say. When he finally said something it was to thank her profusely for her generosity. He wished he could pay her back.
To Ava’s surprise he offered to help her cross the border as his brother happened to work at the border post.
“Really, okay let’s do it,” she told him.
For some reason she trusted Vladimir and didn’t think he was a planning to rob her. On his part he was quite grateful she’d kept the Albanians away and had even paid for a new vehicle. He wanted to help her in some way.
He called his brother, Marko.
Thirty minutes later Ava had crossed officially in Slovenia at the cost of €300 using her British passport. She decided to get a coach which was heading to Ljubljana; from there she was going to head into the heart of Europe and hopefully, make good on her escape.
Ava didn't have to deal with the drama she’d had in Croatia in Slovenia. Once she reached that country's capital she made her way to a train that would take her to Gare Du Nord in Paris from where she intended to catch the Euro-Star and go to London. Her gut told her that going to the UK was for the best right now. She didn't go to Prague as that was probably were the police would check first seeing as someone in her family had sold her out and they’d known about the truck that should have driven her there.
She couldn’t go to Switzerland either as that was the police would be obviously waiting for her to show up and try to make a withdrawal. She didn't want them to figure out she was now living as a woman and so felt it best that she didn't tempt fate by going right under their noses.
Ava slept like her a log in the coach she was in, the stress of recent events finally catching up with her.
A beautiful and slender blonde woman called out.
“Mario my little darling, come to mama,” she said gently.
Mario ran to her and the woman scooped him up and swung him round. Mario laughed and shrieked joyfully.
Ava awoke remembering a dream where she’d been playing with her mother. Even today she had no idea what had happened to her. One morning when she was 11 she’d woken up to find her gone. When Luigi had asked where she was Papa had belted him. None of the kids dared ask about her again though they’d overheard some of the maids saying she’d left their father. Over the years she’d wondered about her but never attempted to find out as she feared her father’s wrath.
Now he was gone and the pain of his loss stung and it was inevitable that she’d wonder about her remaining parent and if she still lived.
Paris was cold and though it was a city she liked the only thing she did during her stopover was to go shopping to expand her meagre wardrobe. For a wealthy woman Paris is a shopping paradise and Ava thoroughly enjoyed spending her father’s money buying all the latest fashions.
Two Marc Gaultier dresses, blouses, skirts, a handbag and five pairs of expensive heels became her property. It felt good to be able to show the world who she really was and her confidence skyrocketed as she realised she passed a woman enough to be hit on by the French men.
Her stay in French capital was short-lived as she had to catch the train to London but she left having made a promise to herself to return and have more fun later in the year.
The wonders of modern travel let her reach London in three hours.
It’s good to be back she thought when she walked out of the station. She’d had no trouble with customs. Her British passport had been waved through without any real checks. She’d been worried the Albanian’s would have tried to screw her but it seemed they’d done an excellent job. Now she intended to burn this passport and apply for new one. Her prints were in the system but not as Mario the Italian student but Ava Mitchell, a London girl. She wanted to go to ground and start a new life as a woman. She wasn’t going to continue her father’s business but had no qualms living off the proceeds though.
She took a cab to a 2 star hotel and once in the room sat down and started a list of things she needed to get done.
1. Get hormones
2. Breast implants and FFS and GCS preferably legitimately
3. A job and place to stay- something middle class to keep people from figuring out I’m independently wealthy.
4. A car- something cheap and reliable.
5. More ordinary clothes
She started looking online for things that might help her. She found the address of a doctor who might be able to help her and decided to go there first thing in the morning.
Dr Ross was a bit taken aback when the girl who’d showed up told her she was actually male. She didn’t look like a man at all, probably because she’d done her make up expertly and had a very slight build and hands that didn’t seem big. Her Adam’s apple was small too. She passed very well.
“How long have you felt you were a girl?” Dr Ross asked.
“For as long as I can recall, I think I was 5 when I first realised it,”
Ava talked about her cross dressing and her father’s reaction to it when he found out. How puberty had worsened her discomfort and how she hated her body and being male and felt she should be female.
The doctor asked how long she’d lived as a girl.
Ava lied and said three weeks which still surprised the doctor as she seemed to do it too well. She told her about her father’s passing which left her free to be the person she wanted. Dr Ross had her answer a few more questions giving her a few tests after which it was clear that Ava had a strong and persistent identification with being female as well as a persistent discomfort with her biological sex and that it would impair her everyday functioning if she continued to be male. The doctor examined her and did some blood tests after which hormones were prescribed. She advised her to get a job or else she wouldn’t be able to proceed with her transition.
When Ava said she was going private the doctor smiled and said that changed things
Ava was over the moon when she left with her prescription in hand. She rushed to the nearest pharmacy and filled in her 3 month prescription for anti-androgens and oestrogen. On reaching her hotel room she downed the pills with a glass of wine to celebrate the start of her future.
Six months later
Ava opened the door to her Uxbridge home, after disarming the security system she’d had installed after buying the place. She was dead tired, her dead end zero hour contract job at the nearby supermarket always left her like this but it had grown worse lately. Her boss, Mr Jenkins was a jerk, ever since she'd corrected his record keeping he'd been bent on making her life miserable, piling on more work than she could handle.
"Avaa!" Jenkins would whine, "We're not here to play games m'dear. Get a move on love,"
Just remembering his words made her roll her eyes and grimace, who did he think he was? Did he think he could intimidate her, the child of Carlo Di Michele.
'Idiot,' Ava thought.
If it wasn’t for the fact that she was on the run and needed the cover for her transition and surgery she’d have quit the job ages ago. Working there had brought home how lucky she’d been in her upbringing and to have her slush fund.People living in the real world had hard lives. She’d never survive on the peanuts they paid her. The campaigners for a living wage were definitely onto something.
The last six months had been an incredible time of self-discovery, her real life test had reaffirmed her identity. There was now no doubt in her mind that she was a woman despite all the disadvantages that it brought in society. If she could have the surgery the next day she would. In moments of self-reflection she dreamt of marrying some nice guy and having three children and living happily ever after. She’d mourned her siblings and her father, she’d loved them as they were family and their loss hit her hard. It took all her willpower not to spend her time thinking about their deaths.
Ava had also learned how to deal with men and women as a woman. She passed well enough not to be bothered by people or stared at in the streets. No one at her workplace gave her a second glance. Ava also carefully avoided friendships with people for her own safety but wasn’t a loner. It helped that her fellow Londoners were quite aloof, not having time for strangers. She’d definitely grown up a lot in six months.
She hurried to her room and started stripping off. A smile came to her face as she noted the changes the hormones were bringing about in her body. She had noticeable curves and her breasts were coming in nicely she noted after removing her prosthetics. The face looking at her pleased her a lot, she looked quite pretty now she decided.
'I love being a girl,' she thought happily.
She blew herself a kiss before quickly changing into her favourite jumper and pair of jeans before heading to the kitchen and placing the leftovers from last night’s meal in her microwave. Once they were done she poured herself a glass of Chianti and switched on her laptop and started checking her investments. Everything looked fine. She sold off some stock and moved the substantial proceeds to one of her secret accounts in the Cayman’s. There was no use keeping all her eggs in one basket. Using her anonymous browser she checked the Italian news sites for any word of her family which she did religiously every day. The headline on one of the sites stunned her.
“Ndrangheta enforcer caricato”
It was Luciano, her bodyguard. He was alive. Ava nearly whopped for joy, he’d survived the shootout with the Carabineiri. Her joy was short lived when she read the article. He was being charged with a variety of crimes, including resisting arrest, harbouring a fugitive, being a member of the Mafia and a laundry list of crimes that would keep him imprisoned for the rest of his life. He was 37 and had a wife and two kids. Ava wondered what would happen to them. She had to do something, but what?
To be continued
Sydney Moya
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
(c)2016
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter 4
Ava knew no peace for the next few days as she mulled over Luciano’s predicament. She was ecstatic he was alive. Loyalty works both ways. Ava knew without a doubt that Luciano would have sacrificed himself to save her. She couldn’t just leave him to rot in prison.
She wondered about his family. Her father had given his henchmen’s wives account numbers which could be accessed on the death of the spouse. It was his pension plan. She knew the authorities knew nothing about them and she had been making sure timely payments made it the accounts for the men she knew had passed away.
Luciano’s account was untouched which should have clued her into knowing her bodyguard still lived. Luciano would have told his wife not to touch the money in case it led the Anti-Mafia back to his boss.
She knew he was loyal and the news story had just proved it.
Ava wondered what to do about Luciano. By the end of the week she was at her wits end.
Luciano was contemplating his future as the prison truck wound its way to the courthouse.
As he sat there reconciling himself to spending the rest of his life in behind bars an explosion rocked the truck.
The truck overturned and Luciano lost his bearings. Shots rang out as smoke filled his nostrils.
A beam of light burst into the truck as the door opened and a tall man in a ski mask scanned the inmates. He dragged Luciano out.
"Lets go," he instructed.
Luciano was in no position to refuse.
"Target acquired," said the man while helping Luciano stand.
They walked to a waiting vehicle. Luciano looked behind him and saw the police who'd been guarding him lying prone.
The escort car had a fist sized hole in the windshield he noted. He hoped they were unconscious and not dead.
The next thing he remembered was a needle puncturing his neck before everything went black.
Mauro Rossi hurtled into the police headquarters in a cloud of smoke. Smoking wasn’t allowed in the reception but the sergeant manning the reception knew better than to stop the Interpol man when he stormed in like that, trailed by a haze of cigarette smoke.
The wags around the building joked that apparently one could tell how bad a day Rossi was having by the quantities of smoke he was producing.
It was clearly a bad day noted the sergeant as Rossi bounded up the stairs three at a time leaving a vapour trail of tar and nicotine in his wake.
He strode into a third floor office without so much as a knock.
“What the hell happened?” Rossi asked his Carabieniri liaison, dispensing with all formalities.
“The driver of the truck said one minute they were on the road and the next the vehicle was overturning. It looks like some sort of IED,”
“What?” Rossi asked clearly taken aback.
“It gets worse apparently some men came out of nowhere and shot canisters with an unknown gas. From what we can tell they tranq’d the guards before removing Marciano from the truck. They didn’t leave a trace, except the unconscious officers, not even a stray bullet,” said Officer Renzo.
“A surgical strike, this was a military unit. Highly trained mercs,” Rossi said a scowl on his face.
“Yeah that’s what the brass thinks too, the intelligence people are all over the scene. Everyone is spooked,”
“They should be. Clearly the Di Michele family isn’t beaten and we just lost our lead in finding the survivor. Is there any footage?”
“No they struck in a blind zone,”
“Shit,” said Rossi the scowl on his face deepening.
Now he had nothing, Mario Di Michele was nowhere to be found and his henchmen Marciano was in the wind too, probably at his behest.
“What about his wife and kids, put them under surveillance,” he ordered.
“We already went there. They are are gone,” Renzo said, his face glum.
Rossi swore in colourful language. Renzo couldn’t fault him, this was years of work down the drain.
Luciano groaned, his head felt like a sledgehammer had hit it repeatedly.
“Relax, it’ll wear off soon enough,” a woman announced.
He turned to find the voice.
Ava gave him a smile.
“Hello Luciano,” she said.
“Who are you?” Luciano remarked, wondering if this was some enhanced interrogation technique to get information out of him.
They had tried a number with no results. He was never going to talk.
“Easy I am the person you owe your freedom,” said Ava.
“I have nothing to say. You may as well take me back to my cell now,” Luciano said, sitting up.
He wondered why he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed as that was how he’d been kept the last time he was in a hospital.
“Luciano, look at me, I have changed a bit but your plan worked. I got away but I couldn’t let you rot in jail. I’d have come sooner but I didn’t know you were alive.”
Marciano looked at the slender woman. She was as pretty as a picture, with long brunette hair framing a soft face. A nice enough rack, she had the Di Michele face but she wasn’t either of his boss’s daughters. Neither of them had piercing blue eyes like that. In fact only one person in the family had them.
‘No it couldn’t be!’
Ava lips curled into a smile as she saw the flash of recognition in her associate’s face.
She said the secret code only two people in the world knew.
“The strength of conviction is more dangerous than truth,”
Luciano automatically replied,
“Despair thy false angels Macbeth, for I was not of woman born,” Luciano.
“Hello Luciano,” Ava said, grinning with pleasure, “do you like my disguise?”
“How?” Luciano muttered, all his doubts cast away.
Ava had thought long and hard about how to get Luciano free. She'd thought about bribing officials before realising this case was too high profile for anyone to take her dollar. Also it would mean revealing herself and she was supposed to be in hiding.
So she had gone onto the dark net and found 4 men with a special skill set to extract Luciano. She had paid them each $2m to get him out without killing anyone.
Ava had hired another team to kidnap Luciano's family for her the same night. She’d taken vacation from her job to supervise everything.
“I’ll get to that in a bit but first there are some people you should meet,” Ava remarked, before standing up and opening the door.
“He is awake,” she said to someone.
Luciano got the shock of his life when he saw his wife and two children walk in. They sprinted over to join him.
Ava watched the reunion from the doorway, her eyes glistening. She closed her eyes happy for Luciano. Ava couldn't help but think she had no one who would miss her this much.
Luciano’s escape was made public two days later as the government didn’t want such an embarrassing incident to be known to the world. However commonsense prevailed and a manhunt was launched.
Ava had planned for this contingency. Her men had smuggled Luciano and his family to Spain where the next stage of the escape plan was being put into action. They were hidden in a ghost town, built before the recession but never finished.
It so happened that Ava had some years back bought a building in the town without anyone’s knowledge. One of the rooms was a fully outfitted surgical theartre.
“You need a new face,” she told her henchman, “your picture is all over the news.”
Luciano nodded.
“Okay, I understand, what about Natalia?”
Natalia looked Ava too.
“She needs one too but not as radical as your, just something to throw off facial rec,” Ava told him.
“What about you boss, when will you be yourself again?” Luciano asked, clearly concerned.
He still couldn’t get his head around how convincing his boss was. Natalia had also been spooked a bit when she found who Ava was.
Ava gave a sad smile.
“This is the real me,” she told her old friend.
Luciano squinted, “You mean you want to be a girl?”
“Yes, I’ve wanted it all my life. Papa would never have understood, so I hid it from everyone,” she replied.
“Tell me you’re kidding?” Luciano said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I am not. I have never felt okay as a man and this gave me the chance to do that without hurting anyone,” Ava answered.
Luciano shook his head again, “You disgrace your family,” he said slowly, a remark which cut Ava to the bone.
“Luciano!” Natalia whispered.
“Maybe,” Ava responded in a voice filled with ice that belied how devastated she was inside, “but you forget yourself Marciano. In case you haven’t noticed I am the family. Do you wish me to release you from your vow?”
Luciano’s eyes widened in surprise, he knew that tone well from her father, he’d crossed her and had it been Di Michele, he might be facing death.
What Ava was offering him was worse than death in his eyes especially after all she’d done for him.
“Forgive me my lady, I misspoke.”
Ava stood up, “There is a folder with potential looks for both you. Pick some so we can get out of here,” she curtly informed the Marciano’s.
She turned around and walked out all the while fighting tears.
Vienna
A dark haired, olive skinned woman sat watching the television, a scowl marring her otherwise beautiful face.
She picked up a mobile.
“What the hell happened?”
“I assume you’ve heard the news?”
“Of course, you clowns lost a top security prisoner, how do I know I haven’t been compromised?”
“We never caught Mario, he could have sprung his guard,”
The woman scoffed, “Mario doesn’t have the balls to do something so brazen,”
“Well someone is behind it. Everyone else is accounted for except him.
“Should I be worried I helped you?”
“No you are not compromised. Lay low, we will get to the bottom of this,”
To be continued
Sydney Moya
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
(c)2016
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter 5
Ava looked in the mirror.
A wave of distaste washed over her as she looked at her body, now mostly feminine because of months of intensive oestrogen therapy that had left her quite pleased except in her groin where the parts she so detested hung, limp as a cut vine.
Papa would be turning in his grave she thought.
Ava sighed and tears formed in her eyes.
"You disgrace your family," Luciano had said.
A large part of her believed he was right. She would never have transitioned had Luciano not been taken, had there been a chance anyone she knew would know about it.
The knowledge that everyone who would be disgusted by her transition was dead had spurred her on. Especially Papa.
Now he loomed larger than ever in her mind.
She remembered the beating he'd given her all those years ago when he'd found her dressed up with Marta.
She blinked rapidly so that she wouldn't cry.
"Che diavolo!" Papa exclaimed.
Ava had frozen at the sound of her father’s booming voice. Everyone in the house knew that tone was to be avoided at all costs.
"Mario come here."
A shaking Ava had walked up to her father.
"Why are you dressed like that?" Papa demanded.
Mario was still innocent and naive to the ways of the world. She didn't think to lie.
"I'm a girl Papa," she whispered.
His eyes narrowed.
Marta who was older and knew the implications of her siblings statement spoke up quickly.
"No Papa it is my fault. I was just wanted someone to play with so I asked Mario to dress up. It wasn't his idea."
"Please Papa can I be a girl all the time?"
The ten year old heard a sharp intake of breath from her sibling as her father swore up a storm. He removed his belt and locked the door before proceeding to thrash them within in an inch of their lives.
Ava had cried until she couldn't cry. She would never forget the red welts all over body, in her face, her back and legs which were mirrored on her sister.
Her father’s rage had resulted in all the kids being beaten that day. Stefano, Luigi and Olivia had taken a while to forgive her. It didn't help that their mother had disappeared some weeks later.
They had taken it out on her for years, taking turns to one up her and be mean to her. The sad thing is she thought she deserved it.
Marta had remained her closest friend and protector from the rest of their siblings. She was the one person who’d remained kind to her despite what had happened. Though they had never dressed up again Marta had always been there for her, a shoulder to cry on, someone to run to when it all became to much. It was only because of her that she had stayed a decent person who didn’t believe in hurting people. Sure she could pretend to talk the talk but she’d never bought into it
Ava had never spoken about being a girl to anyone until Dr. Ross again. She'd been the good son devoted to her school work and making her father happy even if she was miserable on the inside. She was no Luigi or Stefano but she liked to think her father had grown to appreciate her. Being brilliant with numbers helped quite a bit.
Marta had remained her closest friend and protector from the rest of their siblings. A kindred spirit, knowing she was dead had nearly destroyed Ava.
She sighed again. The plan would have to be changed. She wouldn't have the surgery today.
‘Soon,’ thought Ava but not today.
Luciano and his wife's surgery were successful. Both or them had their faces altered slightly so as to beat any facial recognition software.
It wasn't radical enough that their young children wouldn't recognise them but it was hoped they would have a slight edge over law enforcement which increasingly relied on software to identify wanted persons.
Ava hadn't been moping too much. Taking a trip down memory lane hadn't dulled her razor sharp mind. While Luciano and his wife recuperated she was hard at work preparing for her next move.
It involved setting up a new life for her henchman and his family. Italy was out of the question as they were still headlining the news channels there. She was glad to note that the international news cycle had moved on to the latest disaster in the middle east.
An arbitrage opportunity? Ava briefly wondered.
She put aside that thought for later.
They could stay in Spain for while. Luciano had the basics of the language. Maybe he could run a bar or something for a while.
However Ava was loathe to live Luciano behind for some reason and she didn't fancy staying in Spain much. It was fine if you were on holiday but she couldn't see a future for herself here.
Taking back the Marciano's with her to London was another possibility. Natalia and children had no English however which was not helpful.
Her house was large enough for all of them to live comfortably but it would be hard to explain why a single British girl now had an Italian family living with her.
She realized would have to get another place.
Moscow, Russia
Anna Shevchenko looked at her husband and frowned. The imbecile was drunk again.
She couldn’t help wonder how someone like him had ended up so wealthy. It boggled the mind, Antonin spent every day drinking himself to death.
She sighed, why did she always end up with the wrong types of man?
She shook her head and walked to her room.
Anna gazed into the mirror. A tall, lithe woman, with flashing blue eyes and blonde hair stared back at her. Anna placed her hands on her cheeks before running one hands through her hair. She was 59 though she could pass for a woman twenty years younger. No one could ever think she’d given birth to five children in ten years.
As she thought of her children, her face darkened. She was tempted to go and join Antonin’s drinking spree. She shook her head, to chase away the morbid thoughts. She didn’t want to go back to the dark place she'd been in for years.
She had sworn she never to allow herself to fall that low again.
Even so, she wondered about her babies. She had not seen them in 18 years.
Where were they now? What were they doing?
Anna had been a naïve young model straight out of Yugoslavia when she met Carlo in Milan. He had seemed sauve, charming and sophisticated. He was the embodiment of the Italian man in her and she’d fallen fast for him. Against his parents’ wishes, he had married her. Carlo’s father had been mad but when she delivered a grandson, Luigi all was forgiven. They had been happy at first until she began learning of her husband’s less than savoury business activities.
She thought of Luigi, her oldest, stoic from a young age. Even as a baby he’d never been one to make a fuss. Stefano, her second child had been a happy go lucky kid, with a silver tongue that could charm anyone. Olivia her oldest girl was sassy and outspoken, Anna had always believed she thought too much of herself but she’d spoilt her nevertheless. Marta her sister was a sweet, kind girl. Anna had considered her the favourite until Mario was born.
Mario was nothing like his siblings, he had her eyes and the same reddish blonde hair she had had as a baby. Her baby was a precocious child, so innocent yet so intelligent. So curious, he asked impossible questions but she adored it and him.
Anna had instinctively known he was different and had wanted to protect him from the world and her father. She sighed remembering his words at a tender six.
“I’m a girl Mama,” he’d announced when she found him and Marta in her clothes, lipstick on their faces.
Anna smiled at the memory. She had thought nothing of it after all they were just kids, so she’d hugged them both and fixed their makeup, telling them it was their little secret. Maybe she shouldn’t have encouraged them.
She didn’t doubt Carlo had initiated them into the ‘Ndrangheta. They were his children, a fact he’d made clear from day one when he’d named each and every one of them without so much as consulting her.
When he had caught Mario cross-dressing and beaten the kids she had confronted him. He had beaten her within an inch of her life. He considered it her fault for perverting Mario. Their relationship had turned to ice when he had told her to stop taking her birth control pills. Anna loved children but she felt she couldn’t have another one.
Carlo’s eyes had narrowed and he’d left the house in high dudgeon. Isabella Marciano, his henchman's wife had come in hours late with a warning from her husband. She was to leave asap as Carlo had put a hit on her. Anna had fled with the clothes on her back, without even getting a chance to say goodbye to her kids.
Tears filled her eyes.
Dammit she thought.
The hole in her heart was still as big as the day she’d left.
She went to her desk and opened her laptop, feeling that she had to know what her kids were up to.
Anna started up the search engine.
To be continued
Sydney Moya
©2016
All rights reserved
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature
Chapter Six
A large part of Anna Shevchenko's soul died as she read the news item. Her babies were dead.
She felt her life was over as she read of her family's demise. Anna had not known such pain was possible. It was as if someone had ripped out heart and crushed it underfoot, repeatedly. Anna couldn't comprehend it except that it was the worst feeling ever.
She stared at the computer screen but she no longer saw it, her mind reeling from what she had found out. Nothing entered her mind , no thoughts came except for one.
'My babies,'
Antonin found her virtually catatonic hours later. The sight of her like that roused him out of the drunken haze he lived in.
"Anna,"he murmured.
There was no response from his wife of many years. He called her again in a louder voice, worry creeping into his gruff voice.
He was frightened at what he saw, Anna just sat there, still as a rock staring blankly at her screen, her blue eyes glassy. Tears streamed down her face.
He followed her gaze and saw the story online.
Antonin sighed, so she had found out. He had known for months now. He loved Anna dearly and he knew about her past as a Mafia don's wife and the five children she had left behind. He knew her better than she knew herself and had known it would be a blow when she found out.
He had kept the news from her while trying to figure out how to tell her. It was one of the reasons for his increased drinking lately.
Antonin took her hand and helped her stand up at which point Anna began to bawl her eyes out yelling, "My babies!"
Her voice was hysterical and his heart broke at her pain.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, guessing how she felt. He only had the one daughter who Anna had raised and he didn't think he could live with losing her.
No one was going to do this to his Anna. There would be hell to pay.
About a month after getting Luciano out Ava and her entourage left the ghost town in Andalucía for good. Luciano and Natalia were healed enough and Ava had supervised the makeovers for both of them.
Natalia black hair was now red, her green eyes covered with blue contacts while Luciano had been told to lose the clean shaven look and grow a beard. His black hair had been dyed too. He now sported brown hair too gelled to perfection by Ava's hands.
The previously darkhaired kids were both blondes now but that was as far as Ava went with them.
Ava had procured new documents for all four too after a day trip to Barcelona. These were courtesy of a forger reputed to be best in this side of Europe and known for being discreet. He did work for many groups and never asked questions. Ava was relieved the Albanian's hadn't reached here or else she would have been in a bind.
Luciano and Natalia were now Marcos and Nadia Reyes, a Spanish couple.
Luciano had not dared question his boss again about her choice of gender. Mario had rarely scolded him and the dressing down he had received from Ava was making wonder if he knew his boss. He was however a man who took his oaths seriously and he had sworn to obey her, his loyalty to Ava was unquestioned, she had come through for him and his family. Natalia had reminded him afterwards that it wasn’t his place to question her on personal choices, weird as they may be.
The pair of them had discussed their situation late at night in their room.
“There is no man like that,” Natalia opined.
Luciano bristled at her choice of words and he couldn’t help but feel affronted.
Natalia sensed him tense and grabbed his arm, “You know I’m right. She isn’t pretending. I mean you couldn’t pass as a woman to save your life.”
Luciano smiled faintly.
Natalia carried on,
“She has real breasts Luciano, wears perfect makeup, walks and talks like a girl. A lot of men couldn’t pull that off for a night let alone eight months,”
“Mario is very smart,” Luciano murmured, “it is a good disguise,”
He knew he was clutching at straws even as he said it.
“Sure it is, why don’t we turn you into my cousin Bella,” Natalia teased.
“Don’t be silly woman,” Luciano replied a bit angry.
"See what I mean! A real man wouldn’t even entertain the notion. I know it’s weird but maybe he is a girl on the inside.” Natalia said.
Luciano shook his head he didn’t want to think about. Ava’s words had been a slap in the face he couldn’t believe his boss wanted to be a woman. All those years and he hadn’t mentioned it. Not a sign. There were so many feelings warring for control in his heart, anger, betrayal, shame and chief of all concern.
“I feel like I don’t even know Mario anymore,” said Luciano.
His wife squeezed his hand, “Well I trust her, she got you out of jail, I thought I had lost you forever,” she said, tears forming in her eyes.
He hugged her before kissing her.
Mauro Rossi sighed deeply. He wanted to reach for another pack of cigarettes. It was one of those days.
He reached for the drawer.
"I said I would quit," he muttered to himself when he discovered it was empty, "great timing Mauro."
Rather than curse he sighed, he had bigger problems. Luciano Marciano was nowhere close to being found. They hadn't had any luck tracing the operatives who had freed him.
It was a given that those were people with military training. It was also clear they weren't from one particular country or that they had tried to make it seem that way anyway.
The truth was that they had no leads. However they did know only one person had the means and motive to orchestrate a mission like that.
He glanced at Mario Di Michele's file. The man was one slippery son of a bitch. The man had eluded him for eight months now, it was like he had vanished into thin air. When he hadn't shown up at the staging point in Croatia or Prague a new theory had been put forward by their source, perhaps he was in London or the east coast of the United States, two places he had lived in for a while. That had been a bust, he hadn't showed at any of his father's properties. He had no known associates there not even an ex-girlfriend or two he might have contacted. No one had been able to place him regularly at any bar or restaurant when he had stayed there. It was as if the kid knew he would be on the run years before it happened. He was paranoid and much smarter than his brothers who were loud, brash and very dangerous but had been easy to pinpoint. He had even picked his associate well. The only person who may have known was Luciano and that one lived by omerta and now his boss had freed him.
There had been no progress with establishing a money trail. Carlo Di Michele ran a tight ship, only he and his genius kid knew about the way his billions were kept. The government had confiscated the businesses Di Michele had owned across the country but all of them were by the book, there was no evidence of any transfers to offshore accounts. All the money they made was either taken by Carlo himself or banked at known accounts. They all had very little money to take anyway. The whole thing confused everyone looking at it and the workers there had never seen Mario there.
Begrudgingly Mauro admitted his opponent was a lot smarter than he had given him credit for. He suspected Mario had overhauled the way his father's profits were used. It was known he travelled out of the country a lot, probably to do his father's banking. They had unfortunately never been able to know where he was going except for the frequent trips to Geneva and Zurich as he was not on a watchlist and his records of travel were conveniently missing from the system. He was very good.
Strangely he also wasn't a killer, it was clear those men he sent could have taken Luciano and caused casualties but the use of stun grenades, flash bangs and tranquilisers pointed to a plan that didn't want casualties. There was no body trail anywhere in Europe pointing to a gangster on the run.
'That was it,' Rossi thought, Mario didn't tie up loose ends.
People helped him no doubt for money and he didn't kill them when they had given their assistance. That was his flaw. Find one of them and be guaranteed one would talk.
'Yes,' he thought as he looked at Mario's file, 'you're smarter than I thought but I am going to nail you.'
Mauro came to a decision. He would try to find some ex-special forces guys from anywhere in Europe or the States awash with money. One of them was bound to be spending and talking.
The Shevchenko's private jet arrived in Rome later that hour. Anna had come to bury her children, Antonin and Yulia her stepdaughter accompanied her.
Their hired SUV snaked through the byzantine traffic of the city. Nearly an hour later they reached the police headquarters.
Anna swept into the building clad in black mourning clothes. They were expensive and tailor made and she walked with the same grace she had used on the catwalk so many years ago.
She presented herself to a constable manning the reception.
"My name is Anna Shevchenko and I would like to know the whereabouts of my children's bodies."
As soon as those words left her lips a crying jag overcame her. The pain was so raw, it never dissipated or receded like a tide.
Yulia rushed to her side and said some soothing words
"Don't cry Mama," she murmured embracing the stepmother she adored so much.
Antonin joined them before addressing the policeman.
The short sharp knocks on Mauro Rossi's door broke his concentration and disrupted his research.
"Yes," he said irritably.
"Eh boss, I have news," Officer Renzo began.
"Get to the point man," Rossi barked, irritated.
He felt he was on the brink of something and Renzo had just yanked him away from it.
"Of course sir," said the uniformed man nervously, "someone walked into HQ and wants to know where the Di Michel bodies are?"
"What? Who?" Rossi shot back.
"The former Mrs Di Michele," Renzo said.
He enjoyed watching the surprise blossom across his bosses face.
"The hell?" Rossi said, shocked out of his mind.
The woman had been missing for 17 years. Everyone assumed Carlo Di Michele had offed her. The local police had even questioned Carlo about it but no one could link her disappearance to him as he a watertight alibi. He had been having drinks at a local club the entire day she disappeared with a nearly 50 witnesses and he had reported her missing.
Mauro had always assumed he had put a hit on her and no one who knew would talk for fear of losing their life.
"You're kidding," Rossi remarked.
"Nope its her, the man she came in with claims he is her new husband and she has her old passport in her name. They took her prints and they agreed under protest. They were positive. The husband is a big shot of some sort. After he complained about the finger printing he called a number and less than half an hour later the deputy commissioner himself came out and apologised profusely. The kicker is Giuseppe who insisted on the prints been transferred to Palermo, the orders came in a couple of minutes later.
"Shit," Rossi muttered.
His interest was piqued, clearly this woman was a lost Picasso and he wanted to see her maybe even interview her. This woman could be danger to the operation. It was possible she could have tests done on the bodies and one of them wouldn’t match her DNA compromising the entire operation.
Maybe she was hiding her son or could pinpoint his location. Rossi also realized he would have to tread carefully as she clearly had enough pull to get someone who had annoyed her transferred the same day.
Since he was behind the operation which had resulted in the death of her children, he was probably the last person she wanted to see. He wondered if his source knew of the latest development and what she would make of it.
Ava knew the house had been compromised the minute she unlocked the door. The security system she had installed was not working. She saw that the panel by the door was not on. Someone had tampered with it. Her backup, the paperclip she kept on the door hinge was on the floor. She had set it up so that if anyone opened the door with a shove it would fall.
She had never bothered getting something more hi-tech as that attracted attention and most were set up to call the police. Ava didn’t want to have anything to do with the police.
“Luciano, cover me,” she instructed before pulling out her sidearm
He made a gesture signifying he had heard her before getting into position behind her. They quickly went through each room in the house. The place had been searched no doubt by someone looking for something, obviously a criminal.
There was no one in the house.
Ava had Luciano lock the door before she clambered up into the house’s ceiling and took out the case she kept in there. It had an emergency stash of bearer bonds, traveller’s cheques and cash amounting to two million euro’s or so.
They hadn’t found that.
She found Luciano in her room.
“You work at Tesco?” Luciano asked, grinning as he pointed at the t shirt on her bed.
The very idea of a Di Michele working in a supermarket was hilarious as far as he was concerned. Back in Italy the didn't even do their own groceries as far as he remembered. Still he thought it was great. Ava clearly knew how to lay low. He felt sure she wouldn't lead them astray.
Ava frowned.
“I’ve been made. I didn’t leave that there and I think I know who is looking for me,’’ she remarked, her face a mask.
To be continued.
Sydney Moya
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
(c) 2016
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter Seven
Enver Berisha thought London was overrated, as he looked at the pallid skyline and the buildings puncturing it, new glass and concrete towers, sprinkled in amongst the old. To be fair it was a cold and miserable afternoon, the kind that regularly plagued the British capital that time of the year.
He already hated the place. A large part of him cursed that woman for bringing him here. He almost hoped she’d gone to America instead so he could see New York, a boyhood dream.
He glanced at the passport photo of the woman who had bested him so many months ago. Ava Mitchell had walked in to his café, demanded his services and seen off an attempt to 'recruit' her into the sex-trade Enver ran.
She had told him going after her would lead to a war between ‘Ndrangheta and his people, a threat not to be taken lightly. Enver had backed down, but for months his ego had been eating away at him, steadily yet inexorably like a ticking time bomb. He felt that his people didn’t look at him the same anymore. Enver began to take any slight, even the smallest as an attack on him.
A few weeks back he had thrown a mug of coffee at a waiter because he didn’t put in enough creamer. He had a temper of course but he prided himself on being cool and collected, outbursts like that showed weakness. That was the last straw. Enver decided he had to get his hands on Ava Mitchell, if that was even her real name and teach her how to respect a man.
Once he was done with her, he would give her to his captains then send her to the local whorehouse.
The again maybe he would just keep her to himself, she was strikingly good looking and smart. The ones with fire were always the most fun to tame.
His men had been tracking every Ava Mitchell in the London area for the last couple of months. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack but Enver wanted her found. He had a good feeling about this. He had just come over to see how his men were doing.
Knowing that someone had been in her home unnerved Ava, she hadn’t felt so terrified since fleeing Croatia. She immediately wondered if it was related to the Albanian forgers. At the back of her mind she knew she had hurt Enver’s pride. Men like that didn’t take kindly to that. She should know as she saw enough of it in her family.
Okay, so Enver was looking for her. He may have figured out her family was finished and decided to get her back. Of course Ava had no intention of being a sex slave and as long as she lived the Di Michele’s were not done yet.
However she was constrained by the fact that the Albanians were in London and she was harbouring a fugitive and his family. They couldn’t fight back even if they wanted to unless she wanted to compromise her identity.
She considered going back to the continent but dismissed the idea immediately. The Albanian’s were even stronger there and she had no organisation to speak of anymore. No she had to do something.
Her immediate concern was that the house was compromised, it may have just been a burglary but nothing had been taken which pointed to a search and not theft.
‘Think Ava, che diavolo!”
She wracked her head for ideas and one popped into her head. It was audacious but maybe just maybe it would work.
“We’re leaving,” she said to Luciano.
“Okay boss,” Luciano replied.
She grabbed her backpack and some clothes and closed the door behind her. No one was watching the house which was a good sign. It meant Enver was stretched thin.
After establishing her bona fides thanks to a few calls between some mandarins in Rome and Moscow during which it was made clear that a few billion dollars in investments were at stake, Anna Shevchenko was allowed to collect the remains of her children.
A few people had their feathers ruffled and Mauro Rossi was instructed to keep away from the Shevchenko’s, an instruction he promptly disregarded.
He drove at breakneck speed, siren blaring to the airport so he could get on a fight to Calabria. He knew an air force plane was heading to Reggio Calabria in less than half an hour. He had called in a favour to get himself on it, he wasn’t going to miss a chance to observe the Shevchenko’s if he could help it.
He made the airport just in time and strapped in for the flight and hoped the Shevchenko’s private jet wasn’t as slow as the plane he was on. He could have called in a favour and had their plane grounded for half an hour but he didn’t dare pull any tricks with air traffic control to delay the them after what Renzo had told him about what had happened with Giuseppe.
Even though he worked for Interpol and wasn’t currently under direct Italian command, he needed his country’s backing to advance in the organisation or to get anything done in Rome. He couldn’t afford to show his hand at the moment. He could be sacrificed now that Di Michele was dead. After all he was nothing in the greater scheme of things while Shevchenko had pull.
Still he had to know what that woman knew. It may help to catch her missing son or allow him to change his plans. So he wanted to observe what would happen in Calabria. As the plane climbed into the air he wondered if he should contact his source.
Mauro wrestled with the idea for a while then decided against it, deciding to see how Anna would react first. It wouldn’t do to spook an asset without sufficient information.
At least one of Mauro’s wishes did come true. The Shevchenko’s Gulf Stream lifted off about thirty minutes after he did, not having the advantage of a Roman native and flashing lights at their behest. The SUV had stopped and started in the traffic for what seemed like ages.
They weren’t in a hurry though, Anna was too lost in her grief to care and her sadness was echoed in the faces of her family who sat beside her in the roomy vehicle both of them holding one of her hands each.
Mauro stifled a laugh at the sign proclaiming that Calabria was home to the cleanest air in Europe. It was ironic that this place and the region neighbouring it had produced some of the worst organised crime groups in the world.
It was a beautiful place, the land of saints another sign proclaimed. He guffawed at that one as his driver sped him to the city morgue.
‘Home of the ‘Ndrangheta, Gangsters paradise should be added to that sign too’
No doubt it was a beautiful place he thought but even the sweetest smelling roses had the sharpest thorns.
On arriving at the morgue he quickly talked it's director into letting him watch the feeds from the fridges. He knew the Russian party would be arriving soon and this was the best way of observing them.
He couldn’t physically be in the room to his chagrin but needs must.
Enver had his men search London for any Ava Mitchell. He hadn’t considered how big a city London was and he had no guarantee that the girl would have even continued using that name. He didn’t expect much but he had to do something. If he didn’t it would continue gnaw away at him.
Luck wasn't on his side though. So far the searches hadn’t turned up anything. There was a house in Uxbridge they had just searched but the girl was on holiday. She was the only one who fit the description so far, the other six girls didn’t fit the description.
He had no choice but to wait and keep searching in case she wasn’t the one.
Ava had taken Luciano and his family to Southend where she owned a second home. She had bought it in case things went pear shaped. Basically it was a safe house of sorts.
Natalia put the kids to bed and immediately began cleaning out the place and making a meal.
“What now boss, who is after you?” Luciano asked.
“The Albanian’s,” Ava answered before telling him the story of her escape from Croatia.
“Shit. Do you want me to take them out?”
“No you’re on the run remember, you could get me burned. We’re going to get Enver arrested. I am pretty sure he is in London running the search,”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’re going to send the authorities evidence that he is laundering money selling girls across Europe,”
“You have evidence?” Luciano asked, surprised.
He wanted her to back up her words to Enver by reaching out to their clansmen, the Tegallo and Latella clans who had survived the purge by the Anti-Mafia. Of course that would be difficult since she had decided to be a woman now. There was no way to know how they would take that. Heck he wasn’t pleased about it so it would be worse with them.
Still he was prepared to follow whatever course she chose. He spoke Calabrian Greek and as far as he was concerned she lived up to andragathizesthai, as she had a brave and valiant attitude.
“No but I can make some,” said Ava with a grin.
Luciano grinned back looking at his boss with a new found respect. She was nothing if ballsy, this side of her was something he hadn’t known she had. Still she was a Di Michele and he believed blood always tells.
Anna collapsed to the floor when she saw the first of her children.
Luigi, had a hole in his head, his olive skin a pale white. Anna was inconsolable.
“Why! Luigi!” she screamed hitting the floor repeatedly.
Her husband got on the floor and helped her up.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured as his wife sobbed into his shoulder.
“That’s my baby,” Anna cried.
Antonin was at a loss for words. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain she was going through, seeing her child like that and there were four more bodies to identify. He wasn’t a squeamish man but he wouldn’t put someone through this.
‘Someone will pay for this,’ he thought as he consoled his wife.
“We need to see the rest of them,” he said as gently as possible.
Anna’s sobs intensified when she saw Stefano. She would recognise his face anywhere, he hadn’t changed too much either. She would never see his naughty grin or his eyes sparkle. Olivia had grown into a beauty, even death couldn’t hide that and her grief at the terrible loss choked her. Blinded by tears she turned to look at the next body.
Mauro watching and listening was also moved. He may have been a jaded cop but he still hated to see people suffering and it was plain to see this woman was suffering.
He asked himself why people had to make life so difficult for one another. All Di Michele had to do was surrender instead he started shooting at the police and they had to fire back.
“Fuck!’’ he muttered, no one should go through this.
“Who is this?” Anna asked, as she stared at a female cadaver.
“Marta Di Michele,” the doctor read.
Anna squinted, she pulled off the sheet and looked at her lower leg looking for her daughter’s birth mark.
“This isn’t my daughter!” she screeched like a bat out of hell.
“I assure you that is Marta Di Michele,” said the doctor.
Anna responded angrily in rapid fire Croatian, questioning his parentage in colourful terms.
“What have you done with her?” she demanded.
“Anna,” Antonin asked, unsure what was happening.
Anna said nothing, she turned to the attendant and pulled off the next sheet. The father of her children lay there, his body still unclaimed.
Anna froze before she spat on the floor.
“Where is Mario?”
“These are all the bodies we received,”
Something akin to hope began to grow in Anna.
“Antonin, Mario and Marta aren’t here, find out what these dogs have done to them,” she said, her voice full of steel.
“I want my children and their father for burial. Make it happen.” Anna told the doctor.
The authority in her tone was such that the doctor who had very few people telling him what to do scurried out to make her wishes a reality.
Mauro watched fascinated at the change in the woman even as his operation was about to be exposed. He suddenly doubted he would ever catch Mario, if he was his mother’s son. With his brains and that spirit.
Heck Marta scared him some of the time.
Speaking of which he had no choice but to appraise her of the latest developments.
To be continued.
The ‘Ndrangheta Countess
Sydney Moya
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
(c) 2018
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter Eight
Anna didn’t cry as she laid her children to rest at the Di Michele family crypt. It took a supreme effort of will to do that however her resolve was strengthened by her fury at the manner in which they had died. The autopsies indicated the causes of death as headshots and multiple shots to centre mass. She knew there had been a shootout but she couldn’t accept that the police had needed to kill her children operation or no operation.
The whole thing reeked especially the attempt to pass off two bodies as Marta and Mario. Her babies, did they have them in custody? Was it in some black hole where they were being tortured ruthlessly for information?
Whatever the case was she was going to find her children, the tears would come later.
It was a moving service, which wasn’t what you’d expect for a crime family. However the Di Michele relationship with their neighbours was very complicated, similar in nature to that of a master and servant. Carlo was the don, the man you went to if you had a problem and had no one else to turn to. In return for his help one would basically owe him unfailing allegiance. It was a measure of how influential he was that scores of people had turned out to pay their last respects to the late Di Michele’s. A lot had probably come to eyeball Anna as well. Her whereabouts had fed the local gossip mill since her mysterious disappearances years before.
Anna was sure a lot had come to see for themselves if Carlo was dead. The authorities had refused to release the bodies to anyone not closely related to the family and since most of the family was implicated in the family business the bodies remained unclaimed. Antonin was sure the police had also known this and anybody who showed up to do the right thing risked being sucked into their investigation. So the bodies remained unclaimed.
Antonin looked at his wife and he shivered involuntarily at the expression on her face. Their eyes locked; and without a word both of them knew someone would pay for what had happened here.
“Antonin, Anna began, her voice cracking after the last coffin, Luigi’s had been buried.
Antonin squeezed her hand.
“I’m so sorry about this,” he murmured, “we will get to the bottom of it.”
“I want to find Marta and Mario,” she said close to tears.
“Yes my love.”
They attended a wake at Isabella, her old friend’s house and some of the local’s came to pay their respects. Anna thanked them all and listened to them giving anecdotes of the people her children had become which broke her heart all over again.
He wondered whether he should call the rozz about the men lurking about outside his supermarket. They’d been there every day, in different cars but three men at various times. They looked like hard men and he was sure they were scaring customers away. They were probably looking for someone and weren’t being too discreet about it.
Tony Jenkins had not born yesterday. No sir he wasn’t which is why he wouldn’t be calling the police lest the rotters decided to become shoppers instead of lurkers. Those were not the type of men he wanted paying him a visit. Still Mrs Chubbs had sent an email about it and heaven knew that when that biddy started writing she didn’t stop. He cursed whoever had taught the old woman to email. She made Hyacinth Bucket seem like an amateur in nagging and what’s worse the people at HQ listened to her sort.
He sighed. He didn’t need this besides he valued his job.
He picked up the phone and called the police. They assured him they would come by in a few. Less than half an hour later a police Focus pulled into the lot. The men watched it and the officers who came out of it like hawks. Tony was pretty sure there might be fireworks but breathed a sigh of relief when they got into their car and drove off after the officers had a few words with them.
He thought he was shot of them when a couple of hours later Nigel, one of his baggers came in to say some chaps were asking after Ava.
‘They had a photo. Looked like our Ava too,” Nigel said.
Tony frowned wondering why they were bothering his favourite worker though he would never tell Ava that.
“What’d you tell them then son?”
“I didn’t like the looks of them guvnor, not regulars. Looked a bit foreign too if you know what I mean so I just shook my head and they left without asking again.”
Jenkins nodded, “Alright. Let me know if they come back.”
‘A photo,’ Tony thought, ‘what’s she mixed up in?’
He frowned wondering what they wanted with Ava. The girl had asked for two weeks off which after he had agreed to after some protests as she was really good at what she did and he didn’t want Jess messing up the stocks. Ava had insisted she needed the time and that she had coached Jess. Tony had given in knowing he had no leg to stand on and suspecting if pushed Ava would quit.
He had long suspected the girl was whiling away time here and was probably smarter than she let on. She spoke like a toff when she’d first shown up here though she had quickly picked up a more local accent in an effort not to draw attention to herself. He had once caught her reading a large tome during a break. It had looked like Russian. Other times when she was typing, her fingers simply whizzed over the keys.
He remembered when she’d corrected a mistake after a month end stock take. Ava had found that a bar code had been wrongly entered into the system which had thrown the stocks out. He’d spent hours wondering what the matter was and having that particular section recounted twice to no avail. She’d got to the bottom of it in a matter of minutes. He’d kept an eye on her from that moment, pushing her as much as he could so he could recommend her for a promotion. Jenkins management style was rather brusque and more tough love than anything but he liked her though he was certain the girl loathed him but was too polite to tell him.
An inexplicable feeling passed through her, one most of us are all too familiar with. Ava tossed and turned on her bed, hoping to ward it off and trying to get comfortable so she could get back to sleep. It was a futile struggle. She yawned and sighed before sitting up in bed missing her old bed in Uxbridge.
‘So uncomfortable,’ she mused
She squinted, her eyes still sore from the late hours she’d worked researching her adversary. She pushed the covers off and stood up before making the bed.
Ava didn’t feel well rested having spent half the night tracking Enver’s banking practices, she’d started with the café in Croatia and then traced its ownership through various shell companies that her family knew were owned by the Albanian’s. Ava shouldn’t have been able to do this but where money was involved she was like a bloodhound on the hunt, she was gifted with a nose for tracking money and had some not inconsiderable hacking skills. All she had to do was move a few funds around their accounts and show them as originating from certain groups that were known to the police as traffickers. After that she had to let nature take its course and hope the police would get Enver off her back forever.
‘If that doesn’t work then,..’ Ava thought before balking at the implications if she followed that thought to its logical conclusion.
She was not her father. Instead she began her morning routine stretching a bit before doing a hundred sit-ups, a habit she had found was crucial to keeping her tummy in shape.
A shower followed before she headed to the kitchen to begin making breakfast for her houseguests. She knew the kids would probably be hungry after getting up.
Her phone buzzed with a text message as she made scrambled eggs.
It was Jess her workmate. Ava smiled Jess was her assistant, a sweet albeit bumbling girl. If Ava had a friend at work, it would probably be Jess.
“Hiya girl. How is Spain? Hope you got a tan. Missing you loads! BTW Some blokes with funny accents came by looking for you,’
A picture accompanied the Whatsapp message. Ava didn’t recognise the men but guessed they were with Enver. She sighed rubbing her temple.
“Nigel told them he’d never seen you before. They didn’t look to happy about that. Is everything okay?”
Ava texted back,
“Hi Jess. Thanks for letting me know. I don’t know these guys. Why would they be looking for me? If they come back just avoid them. Spain is great. Missing you loads!”
‘I tell lies way too easily,’ Ava thought, ‘it’s become second nature.’
As she had naturally never confided in Jess about her identity, being trans or being an heiress to a mob family. The less she knew the better for both of them was a justification. Sometimes she ached to tell someone about her life, it felt so lonely at times as she had to be careful with every word she said.
Yes she was happy to finally transition but freeing Luciano had reminded her she was a fugitive from the law who was responsible for the family upstairs and probably the people at the shop too. If any harm came to them it would be her fault and she wasn’t sure she could live with that.
Watching Luciano and Natalia brought home what she was missing out on. Would she ever be so lucky to find someone who could love warts and all? How would she even start?
A deep sigh followed before she turned her attention back to the meal she was preparing after deciding there would be enough time to deal with Enver after she’d fed everyone. Very soon she was done. She padded back upstairs to wake the kids up while deciding the adults probably needed the lie in.
“We have to meet,” Mauro said.
“Why what’s the matter?”
“The situation has evolved but this is important,” Mauro insisted.
“Have you got a lead on Mario?” Marta asked.
“Possibly, but we need to meet, another player has showed up,”
“I’ll be in Zurich tomorrow afternoon,” Marta responded
Mauro’s operation was blown thanks to Anna Shevchenko coming out of left field. Everyone was sure she was dead but she’d disappeared and wound up married to some Russian tycoon.
He briefly wondered how she must feel, did she blame herself for leaving maybe she could have pointed her kids in a different direction. Even as he thought it, he scoffed. Carlo Di Michele was not the sort of man whose kids would make their own path in life. It was his intransigence that had led to this. He was doubtful Anna could have done much to curtail his kids following him into the family business.
With her newly dyed hair Ava thought she looked a lot like her mother. She smiled sadly wondering what had become of her.
“If she could see me now,” thought Ava with a sad smile as sshe finished brushing out her locks.
She smiled slightly at her reflection, pleased she looked nice even if she was just in a coat and jeans. No one could guess she was transitioning.
She was lost in her thoughts when she heard some rapid knocks on her door,
“Signora,”
It was Natalia. Ava rolled her eyes. She’d been trying to get Natalia to call her Ava for a while now. The little woman was a bit scared and way too respectful of her. Especially given she’d had her family kidnapped.
“Yes,”
The door opened and Natalia and Luciano entered.
Both of them had guarded expressions.
“What’s going on?” Ava remarked.
By way of answer Natalia handed her the tablet she as carrying.
Ava realised it was their local paper’s site. Splashed across the screen was a headline announcing the funeral of her relatives. Ava’s eyes clouded with tears and it was all she could do not to start sobbing. Those bastards had not buried her family up to now?
As she scrolled down the page, one of the pictures made her heart come to a standstill.
‘Could it be? No it couldn’t’
That woman looked so much like her.
Ava quickly scanned through the article and discovered the answer to a question that had long plagued her. Her mother was alive.
She made no effort to restrain the tears now. The Marciano’s left the room at that moment.
Ava made no effort to stop them as she sat on her bed tears flowing down her face. She was unsure whether they were tears of joy or tears of grief. The woman she had wondered about every day of her life since her disappearance. Her beloved Mama was alive and she couldn’t express how much that meant to her even after all these years. This was juxtaposed with the act that she would never see the rest of her family. She was also sick to her stomach with grief and wondered how if it was so bad for her then how bad it must be for the woman who had brought her siblings into the world.
In that moment she wanted nothing more than to hold her mother and comfort her, the one person who would be in as much pain as she was. Time seemed to have no meaning as she remembered her family, the good times and the bad crying and laughing. Ava had never properly grieved for them but now it all came out.
At some point during that day she fell asleep from fatigue and it was only late in the night when she woke up and remembered the news she’d seen. Natalia’s tablet lay beside and she scrolled through the article again, zooming in on her mother. Her face was still beautiful but it wore expression she had never seen. Ava struggled to make sense of it, her mother seemed so cold and yet determined
The heiress briefly she wondered if her mother had anything to with the raid but she dismissed it out of hand.
‘Mama would never do that!’
‘How would you know she abandoned you when you were just a baby!’ her dark mind informed her.
Ava shook her head to clear her mind of these treacherous thoughts but as she did so a more malignant one entered her thoughts. It would be obvious to her mother that one of her children was missing, there was a manhunt on for her. Would Mama try to find her? If anyone knew how she had felt about being a girl as a child it was her mother and she worried that by trying to find she might give the police new lead.
‘Omigosh what if she thinks I am the traitor?’ Ava wondered, ‘so I could be a woman and steal Papa’s money?’
She knew if the police thought that there was nothing that wouldn’t stop her clansmen from hunting her down and she knew they would never stop searching if they thought her to be a traitor.
WHY HADN’T SHE SEEN THIS COMING?’
‘Che diavolo!’
To be continued.
Sydney Moya
(c) 2018
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
Synopsis
Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature.
Chapter 9
London
Her mind swirled, a kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories, a reflection of the state of her heart, which was a cauldron of emotion. She was confused and incapable of coherent thought.
In short, Ava had no idea what to make of what had happened the previous day.
Mama was alive, which was wonderful and she had done what she could not do, by giving their family a proper burial. Her inability to do so had been eating at her every day. The guilt remained though, why had she survived? The only one in the family. It was a bitter irony that she had lived to see what had to be her fondest wish come true, the return of her mother only to be unable to meet her when she most wanted to.
Ava ached to see her, to hug and comfort her. She wanted to catch up and just bare her heart. She hated that she couldn’t catch the next flight out though she was sorely tempted if only for a moment. It was only the cold analytical part of her that kept thinking up different scenarios.
All those scenarios had negative outcomes as far as she was concerned. Her first priority was to secure her own safety as well that of Luciano and his family. No matter how much she wanted it a reunion wasn’t feasible. She was sure prison was no place for a woman like her. And not because she was trans and risked being placed in a maen's jail. Her father had crossed many people who would relish the chance to get back at him.
She shook her head and made a sign of the cross to chase away the demons bedevilling her. Now that she knew what no to do, she had to figure out what to do and this where her heart won out. She was dying to find out about her mother.
Ava reread the article and confirmed her mother was married to a Russian oligarch.
‘Okay,’ she thought feeling a bit uncertain about this.
Saying her father was a difficult man was an understatement and she was happy her mother had found someone to love her. Still the pain of abandonment rankled. It refused to subside and she hated the emotion and herself for feeling it. Her mother had left her and her siblings at the mercy of their father. She had missed her so much, wondering if she was alive. What had caused her to leave? Deep down she suspected it was her fault for dressing up but she refused to think about it.
‘Especially not today,’ thought Ava.
Ava sighed loudly as she opened Antonin Shevchenko’s wiki page. He looked to be in his fifties, not particularly good looking but not bad and he wasn't in bad shape.
“My stepfather,” she mused out loud.
It contained the standard spiel of your Russian billionaire. He’d made his fortune in the wake of the Soviet collapse in the mining industry. Bought low and sold high suspected to be in bed with the Putin administration, a web of properties across Europe. He had a 19 year old daughter.
Ava’s heart rate climbed as she wondered if she had a little sister. She quickly searched for Yulia Shevchenko. The image that appeared bore no resemblance to the rest of her family. She was beautiful though Ava admitted with those well defined cheek bones and doe eyes.
Her hopes were dashed when she opened her Instagram page and saw that Anna was described as her stepmother. Still it seems they were close judging from how many posts her mother appeared in. Yulia clearly had a lavish lifestyle it seemed she noted.
''You look great Mama," Ava heard herself murmur.
Ava cursed the fact that she had never thought to look for her mother on social media.
‘I couldn’t have known where to look anyway,’ she consoled.
After stalking Yulia and downloading some images of her mother who didn’t have a profile Ava lay down in bed and started wondering what to do. Her mother was alive and had buried her siblings and father. As she was still alive this meant she would be looking for her either as a traitor or her missing son. Assuming Shevchenko had pull and links with the Kremlin there was a high chance he could get operatives or ex operatives looking for her. She knew those guys didn’t mess about and had links in the underworld, connections she had avoided using with the exception of the Albanian’s which had turned out to be a dogs breakfast.
Would her mother clue them in on her gender dysphoria? Ava thought she was being paranoid but if she did and Antonin had KGB types looking for her they would have an edge and any smart cop would follow them to her. This was before factoring in what could happen if her mother reached out to her father’s ‘Ndrangheta clansman as there was a blood debt. If that happened and she was the target all bets were off. She would be better handing herself in.
‘What a mess’ Ava thought.
Reggio Calabria
Even as her grief threatened to overwhelm her Anna’s resolve was strong. Two of her children were missing, their bodies unaccounted for even though the police had tried to fool her and the public into believing otherwise.
She had demanded information from the authorities on what happened two days after the funeral. Thanks to her old friend Isabella, she knew Mario had not been at the house the day of the shootings and that the police had made inquiries had his disappearance that bordered on a manhunt though they had since become discreet. They had captured his bodyguard who had since escaped from police custody thanks to a brazen operation led by person’s unknown.
Isabella had told her Mario was some sort of financial whiz kid, the whole community knew of his academic achievements in the UK and US and were justifiably proud of him especially since he helped a lot of the old people with their money matters for free and never threatened anyone unlike his father.
“Everyone liked him,” Isabella, “he was quiet and minded his own business.”
Naturally Anna wanted to hear more about her kids, especially her baby who’d been so young when she’d left.
“How did he grow up?”
Isabella shook her head not wanting to burden her old friend with more guilt than she already had.
“Please I need to know,” Anna begged.
Her friend told her about the bullying from his siblings in the first few years after her disappearance.
“From what I saw he had it rough from the rest of them but Marta usually stopped the worst of it. It was better as they all grew older and it turned out Mario was far smarter than the rest of them. Carlo only cared that he didn’t disgrace him but after a while even he could see the kid was gifted at school which he liked for some reason. He sent Mario to the best schools and he excelled. His siblings respected that and Carlo saw a future for him in his business.”
“What did he do for Carlo?” Anna asked frowning.
“I don’t know exactly. Franco says Mario knew how to hide and wash money like no one else. Carlo loved that no one could track what Mario did. He says the boy was a genius. And he never forgot us. All the widows from the shooting still get payments from accounts he set up for them. That’s why they want him and why no one will help them find him.”
Anna and Isabella talked for ages about her kids. Isabella had become a surrogate mother in her absence and she was grateful her friend had done what she could. It could never make up for not being there for them but it was a small consolation.
Meanwhile back in London Ava had decided to get back to dealing with the immediate threat of Enver and his goons. She needed to get him arrested and hoped to do so by exposing his sex trafficking ring to the police however this was proving harder to do than she had anticipated.
Ava knew that even if she had Enver arrested she would have to get his men off the board as well, as she was aware people like him could still direct operations from their prison cells. It wouldn’t do for her to be taken after thinking she had beat the man.
Luciano was of the belief that they stage a hit and take out the guy once and for all. Ava would not entertain the notion. Murder wasn’t something she could countenance. It just was not who she was. Yes, Enver might be a threat to her life but killing him was beyond the pale and she knew enough about Britain to know if it happened, the police would find her. Being a financial criminal was one thing, a murderer on the run was another.
However, what was clear was the need to deal with Enver while keeping her identity secret. If he was canvassing her workplace and had broken into her house, it meant he was too close for comfort.
She did not want to work at Tesco indefinitely but she liked Jess and didn’t want to up sticks without saying goodbye though it was obvious she would have to leave for her own safety.
Ava sighed and returned to her research into one of the Albanian’s firms. She bit her lip and pinched her nose. There was hardly any useful information she could use to tempt the police. That meant she would have to manufacture evidence.
She smiled, her grin widening as she realised Enver had done half her work for her by sending his men to her workplace with a picture of a young woman. All she needed was to get the identity of those men and work her way into their bank accounts and the rest would sort itself out.
Geneva
Rossi sat by the window of the cafe and watched as the clouds rolled in from Lec Leman obliterating the pale sun in the sky. He thought it matched the mood of his case, depressing.
He had flown to Geneva to meet his witness and let her know that the complexion of the case had changed drastically.
He watched her walk into the cafe and waved to get her attention. She saw his gesture and made a beeline in his direction.
Marta looked lovely. Her olive skin glowed despite the lack of sunshine. Her coat and jeans couldn’t hide her lovely figure and he couldn’t help eyeing her up and down. Her red lips parted and she gave him a coquettish smile. Mauro noted the smile didn’t reach her eyes which was a bit unsettling.
He stood and pulled out a chair for her.
“Thank you,” Marta said, still smiling as she took her seat.
“You look gorgeous as usual,” he said, sitting down as well.
“Liar,” Marta replied, cocking her head slightly.
“You wound me madam,” Rossi replied with a chuckle.
Marta smiled then looked around, “A non smoking cafe too?”
“I’m trying to quit,” Rossi replied.
“My father always said never quit anything you’re good at,” Marta remarked.
“Words to live by,” Mauro said with a sigh born of his craving a smoke now that the subject had been brought up.
“Okay what’s so important that you had to bring me all the way to Geneva? I thought we only talked over the phone?” Marta enquired.
Rossi handed her a file with her mother’s pictures. They were surveillance photos of the Shevchenko’s from their arrival in Rome all through to the funeral the day before.
“It’s your mother, she’s alive,” Mauro explained.
Needless to say Marta was shocked. She looked at Mauro, her eyes narrowing.
“She’s alive?” Marta remarked, “How? Everyone assumed my father killed her years ago.”
“Yes it’s an unexpected development.” Mauro said, eyeing her. Marta’s face remained an inscrutable mask.
“She claimed the bodies and arranged burial,” Mauro explained.
The mask slipped and anger and perhaps worry flashed across her face.
“She knows you’re not dead,” Rossi explained.
“Son of a gun,” Marta said banging her palms on the table.
Some of the diners glanced at them.
“Shh, calm down, do you want the whole world to see us?” Rossi retorted, his eyes darting about the café.
“You promised me I wouldn’t be compromised,” said Marta in harsh whisper.
Mauro nodded, “Yes but she’s your mother. She knew it wasn’t your body as soon as she looked at it.”
Marta’s features softened, “How,” she whispered.
Mauro shrugged, “A mother’s instincts?”
“Goodness, she hasn’t seen me since I was 12,” murmured Marta, “where’s she been?”
Rossi updated her on what they knew. The local police had yet to conduct a thorough interview with Anna what with her heavyweight political connections and the fact that she was grieving the killings of her children. It hadn’t been considered appropriate to interview her right away though Mauro was dying to do so. They surmised Anna had fled from Carlo and somehow ended up in Moscow and married to an oligarch. Marta listened without interruption as he gave her the little he knew.
“She has another child?” Marta asked.
“I think that’s a stepdaughter,” Rossi replied.
Marta nodded, “How is she holding up?”
Rossi noted her concern and thought back to the scene at the coroners.
“She is devastated but she has resolve. She is a strong woman. I’m pretty sure she will grieve and do whatever she can to find out what happened.”
“What’s her angle?” Marta asked.
Rossi looked her at her astounded she could ask such a question.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know her from Adam so I can’t anticipate what she’d do. Revenge or closure?” Marta explained.
“There is a request for the incident report on the shootings and why we misidentified your body. I heard her say she wants to locate you and Mario.”
“She has resources at her disposal no?” Marta replied.
Rossi nodded.
“Am I safe?”
“Yes,” Rossi replied without hesitation.
“How can I trust you when you say she has pull in Rome? What’s going to stop someone from blabbing to avoid demotion or if their hands are greased by this billionaire husband of hers. Can you rule out my mother having access to KGB types as well?”
“Well I’m the only one who knows of your involvement and I work in a tightly knit group. Trust me when I say my people are solid. As for Shevchenko’s reach, I can’t say how long it is but we’ll have to take precautions,”
“What precautions?” Marta screeched, “I have two problems now. Mario has my father’s money and Luciano at his side. We don’t know where the fuck they are and it’s obvious they’ll figure out I am involved somehow,”
“Mario is harmless. You said it yourself.”
“Well maybe I don’t know her as well as I thought I did. I certainly didn’t see him breaking Luciano out,”
A thought flashed across Mauro’s mind and he grew cold at the idea. How had he not considered the notion?
“What?” Marta asked on seeing his solemn expression.
“Could your mother have been behind that? A lot of the oligarchs are in bed with the Russian mafia and security apparatus. Maybe she knows more than she’s letting on.”
Marta shook her head, “That’s another possibility. Have they allied or is my mother going to reach out to our kin for revenge?”
Mauro paled. The last thing they needed was a ‘Ndrangheta war with law enforcement which would be the likely scenario if Anna decided to use that option.
He had to admit anything was possible.
“I have managed to get her under surveillance and I’m certain your clansmen don’t trust her as an outsider,” remarked Mauro.
Marta scoffed, “My father’s family lives by the old ways Rossi. All she has to do is ask and there will be blood. I would suggest transferring any officers who participated in that raid out of Calabria. I would watch my back if I was you. How you will able to watch mine is what worries me.”
To be continued