The Suicide King Read online

  The Suicide King

  Kristi Belcamino

  Contents

  Foreward

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Foreward

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  Prologue

  Pizzo, Calabria, Italy

  The girl took his breath away as he watched her weave through the sidewalk café tables in her black leggings and tight black tee-shirt accenting a body tight and toned and—without doubt—lethal. But it wasn’t the formfitting athletic clothes that made her so magnetic. All the girls dressed this way—it was the uniform their Queen Bitch made them wear in training. But this girl was different.

  There was something about her that was extraordinary.

  As soon as she’d stepped into the plaza, he’d been captivated. She moved like a panther across the cobblestone streets, oozing confidence and danger.

  The way she moved suggested that she was not afraid of anything in this world but, at the same time, was hyperaware of everything and anything around her in a two-block radius.

  He knew that, from behind her swinging, long light brown hair and dark sunglasses, she’d already clocked him sitting at the café table. He rose and followed her as she entered the cordoned off area in the restaurant across the street. He knew she would stop briefly inside at the bar for a double shot of espresso that she would quickly down and then leave with another paper cup containing the same thing. It might have been her only weakness—that daily fix she insisted on getting every morning in the village. His admiration of her was only slightly marred by this one flaw.

  His spies had told stories about this young woman and how she was the chosen one. How she had been plucked off the streets of Rome and groomed to be the Queen of Spades’ newest and best killing machine.

  But this was the first time he’d actually seen her with his own eyes. And he was mesmerized and excited by the sheer power that emanated from someone so young.

  He knew better than to stare at her too long.

  If he did, he knew she would grow wary.

  But just to test his theory, he set down his coffee and made a point of staring at her.

  Her head turned, and she fixed her gaze on him with deadly precision.

  Quickly, he smiled at someone on his side of the street at a table that lay between him and her. She paused and he knew she was memorizing every detail about him before she dismissed him and continued.

  She was brilliant.

  His instincts were right.

  Her loss would hurt the most.

  For now.

  The Queen of Spades had a much more valuable Achilles heel, but the loss of this girl would be only the beginning of the pain that she would ultimately suffer at his hands.

  1

  Villa Santa Maria Del Mar

  Eva Santella had just completed her lap and surfaced from the water of the pool when she noticed the small feet with pink toenails in impossibly high, slip-on sandals.

  Francesca.

  “Buon giorno,” her redheaded, right-hand woman said with a smile.

  “Ciao bella, regina,” Eva answered.

  Francesca laughed and answered in English. “You are the queen. Your website proves it. The world now knows you as the regina di spade.”

  Eva shook the water out of her hair, pulled herself up out of the pool, and reached for the plush white towel Francesca held out to her. She dabbed her face and blinked against the bright Italian sunshine streaming over the house and warming her flesh.

  “We all know you’re really the boss,” Eva said. “I’m just the figurehead.”

  “Hardly,” Francesca said, handing Eva a glass of water.

  With the towel draped around her neck, Eva downed the water as they walked over to the lounge chairs still cast in the shadows of the hulking bulk of the villa. Francesca sat first and patted the cushion of a nearby chair.

  Her consigliere’s face had grown dark and somber. Alarm zipped through Eva along with an icy chill that was only partly from stepping out of the sun into the shadows.

  In the distance, she could hear the women of her army shouting in unison as they trained in the courtyard around the corner of the villa, just out of sight. Normally, Eva found the sounds of the training comforting, but seeing Francesca’s face sent a tremor of dread through her.

  “What is it?”

  “The dogs.” Francesca hesitated, which was unlike her.

  Eva felt her throat tighten. A few years ago, they had handpicked six dogs from nearby shelters and trained them as guard dogs. Four of the dogs patrolled the grounds at night. Two patrolled the interior of the villa and slept in Eva’s room with her as protection.

  “Two of the dogs are gravely ill.”

  Eva’s heart clenched.

  “They are alive,” Francesca continued. “But just barely.”

  Eva didn’t interrupt. There was no need to ask questions of her most loyal friend. Francesca always anticipated everything Eva would want to know and nearly always knew Eva’s next move.

  “They were poisoned. Marcella found them this morning at dawn. The vet came immediately. He took them back to the hospital with him. They are on IVs and being monitored for liver and kidney damage. We must hope for the best. He is calling with reports every hour. So far, they remain stable, but oftentimes it takes at least twenty-four hours for damage and toxicity to become apparent in the blood samples.”

  Eva reached for her sunglasses on the table by the lounge chair. The sun had finally arched over the villa, bathing them in its warm, orange-red glow, and helped to quell the shivering Eva was attempting to keep at bay.

  Although hearing that her dogs had been poisoned was horrendous, she took comfort in knowing Francesca hadn’t delivered news of a human death or illness.

  “What kind of monster goes after a dog?” It was the first thing Eva had said since Francesca started to speak.

  “Security cameras showed the dogs being fed something through the front gate. No entry attempt was made there or anywhere else along the perimeter.”

  That had been Eva’s next question. She reached for her phone and pulled up the security app. No alarms anywhere. She punched a few buttons and was silent for a moment as she reviewed the security footage.

  The large gate was the easiest way for anyone on foot to enter the villa’s grounds.
There was a back stairway to the secluded beach below the villa, but that was heavily fortified with a solid steel door. Eva and Francesca were the only ones who had access to the underground garage. Everyone else, including staff and the army of soldiers they were training, had a special code to enter the gate that identified who entered and when.

  With a price on her head, Eva could not be too careful. Ever.

  She studied the footage for clues, but it only showed two dark figures. They approached the gate shortly after three in the morning. After a few seconds, the dogs came running. Their huge bodies undulated with the force of their barking. But then the figures on the other side of the gate crouched down and pushed something through. The dogs, at first wary, bent down to sniff and then snatched the items and bounded away.

  “The video is being enhanced as we speak,” Francesca said.

  Eva continued to watch. The shadowy figures didn’t try to scale the gate, nor did they try the handle. As soon as the dogs took the food, the two turned and fled.

  Eva put down the phone and stood staring, looking across the pool at the sunshine flickering on the turquoise sea beyond the villa wall. That particular wall was at the top of a sheer cliff that rose straight up from the water below.

  “It’s a warning.”

  Francesca gave a small nod.

  “Exactly.”

  2

  When he returned to the house he’d rented along the Eastern coast, he was not pleased to learn that the dogs were still alive.

  The two men he’d ordered to the task stood before him, squirming.

  “The dose must’ve been inaccurate,” one man said.

  He didn’t answer; he just stared at them both. In his mind, he was deciding just how valuable these two men were to him. The taller one had helped him out before on a dangerous job. He would stay. And live. The other one was new.

  That gave him two choices. He could kill the man as an example of his power and intolerance of a job poorly done. Or he could give him another chance.

  Only these two men knew that his aim had been to kill the dogs. Any of the rest of his men who heard about the situation might not be aware it was a fail. They might think his aim had simply been to poison the dogs and make them ill. And besides, the dogs still could die.

  The animals were most definitely not in the clear yet.

  At the last second, thinking about the hassle of finding another man to complete the second step of his plan—a step that both these men had already trained for as a team with two others—outweighed his desire for punishment.

  He took a deep breath before speaking.

  “The dogs have been poisoned. The message has been sent. You may go now.”

  Neither man wasted any time slinking out. They closed the thick study door behind them.

  He leaned back in his leather chair, tapping his gold pen on the oak desk.

  The plan was in place. It would soon be time to execute the next step.

  3

  Eva stood in her office, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the courtyard where her female army was training. She’d just had lunch—fresh fish and vegetables—and was sipping her afternoon espresso as she admired the sword play among the young women training below her in the hot afternoon sun.

  In the distance, a woman patrolled the far perimeter of the courtyard wall. That wall, facing west, separated the courtyard from a sheer cliff drop to the ocean below. The wall to the south abutted a local neighborhood. The closest house was a few lots away, and a grove of thick Leyland Cypress provided a smidgen of shade and privacy along the wall, but if any area of the wall was vulnerable to breaching, it would be there.

  The wall to the north abutted a rocky, inhospitable terrain nearly impossible to reach on foot. Or so Eva had believed. She spoke into her phone, ordering some of her staff to go scout that area and see if there were any signs of someone snooping. Beyond that wild area of brush and coast was something that made her smile. It was several hundred meters away, but she knew beyond that rugged terrain lay another villa she had grown to know and love over the past few months. It belonged to Alex Miller.

  They’d met on a flight from Italy to Florida and embarked on a torrid affair.

  He’d ruthlessly pursued her once she was back in Italy until she finally gave in. Despite her initial reluctance to become involved with him, she had nevertheless found his company an excellent way to lose herself in her hedonistic side: Every month or so, the two of them got together for good food, good wine, good conversation, and mind-blowing sex.

  She took out her phone and typed a text message.

  “FYI, two of my dogs were poisoned this morning. It was a warning. Be careful.”

  That was enough. She wouldn’t call him. She wouldn’t even respond if he replied. But she’d felt it necessary to at least warn him.

  If someone was going after her, he was not safe.

  When they first had become involved, she’d warned Alex about the Mafioso hit on her head. She told him if he was smart he’d stay very far away from her.

  “But I’m not smart, my dear Eva.”

  His response had irritated her. He may have intended it as a compliment and maybe meant it to seem cute, but to her it made him appear weak and foolish. Two traits she could not abide in men. Or women for that matter.

  It didn’t take long for him to realize that the flattery that other women responded to left Eva Santella cold.

  Now, she looked down on her passion project and obsession—her own personal army, training to take out the old-school, misogynistic Mafioso hierarchy that had thrown morals aside and thought sex trafficking was an acceptable way to become rich.

  Eva, once a renowned and notorious Mafioso boss in her own right, was a ruthless killer like them.

  But unlike the other bosses, she was an idealist. She believed her role was to take care of those who could not take care of themselves. In the old days, the Sicilian Mafia was formed to protect the people against those who had invaded the island. Somewhere along the line, the Mafioso had become those the people needed protection from.

  Eva intended to turn all that around.

  One by one, she would kill those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with her.

  Training her army was step one.

  The two dozen women in the courtyard before her—deftly arching and dipping with their flashing swords in graceful but deadly maneuverers—filled her with pride. They were like a well-oiled machine as they practiced the ancient Italian martial arts of gladiatura moderna.

  When the women were not honing their fighting skills, they were training their minds. Inside the villa were three large classrooms. Eva had hired experts from around the world to teach the girls skills they might need in the field.

  They studied how to break into and hotwire vehicles and to bypass building security and alarms. They learned how to hack into government computers. They studied how to poison someone with common household items or weeds. They practiced reading lips and body language.

  And most importantly, they learned how to kill someone silently, quickly, and efficiently.

  The core group had been training together for many years now.

  Eva knew it was time to send them out into the field. It would be one small mission at a time. Their first assignment would be to sneak into the heavily guarded home of a Mafioso who had recently publicly threatened to bring Eva’s severed head to a council meeting the following month. Even the Italian newspapers had quoted the moron. A huge mistake.

  Publicly announcing that he was going after Eva would be the last mistake he ever made.

  She had briefly considered killing him herself just to see the look on his face as she plunged a knife into his neck or chest or severed his femoral artery, but Francesca, her wise and dear consigliere, had talked her out of it.

  “You must not take it personally,” Francesca had said. “We’ve been looking for the perfect first assignment for your guerriere.” Warriors.

 
; As always, Francesca was a sane, logical counterbalance to Eva’s roiling and passionate emotions.

  Eva nodded “Yes. You are right.” That phrase, you are right, had become a common phrase in their conversation. At times, Eva would wake in a sweat from nightmares that Francesca had left Eva to work for the enemy—the ultimate betrayal.

  Now, standing high above the courtyard, Eva sought out her newest lieutenant.

  Chiara was an outstanding recruit.

  She had quickly become the most powerful and skilled soldier in the small army.

  Eva would send her to do the job. It would be the young woman’s first kill.

  A small part of Eva flinched at the thought. Was she ruining this young woman’s life? Once you have killed someone you can never go back. You can never take it back. You can never be the person you were before.

  Eva lifted her phone and dialed Francesca.

  “Ciao. Can you send Chiara up to my office after lunch?”

  It had been two years since Eva had first summoned the young woman to her office to promote her to lieutenant.

  This time, Eva’s role would be less that of a leader and more of a colleague.

  Eva would never ask anyone to murder someone without careful thought and consideration. The rest of the team—two other young women—had already had their first kills before Eva had recruited them to her small army. Martina had killed her own brother when he attempted to rape her. Emma had grown up on the streets of Sardinia in a band of thieves. She’d murdered another girl in a fight over a boy and served four years in jail. The other girl had started the fight and had spread word that she would either kill or be killed. Eva had been the only person waiting for the girl when she’d finally been released. Her own family had disowned her in shame.