One-Eyed Jack Read online

  One-Eyed Jack

  A Thriller

  Kristi Belcamino

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Prologue

  Dear Queen of Spades,

  (Is that what I should call you? Ma’am. Miss?) Forgive me for not knowing. Please read on anyway. Not to sound like Princess Leia, but you’re my only hope. (Cheesy, I know).

  But seriously, I don’t know where else to turn. I thought it was harmless talk, but they, well, really, he’s taken it too far. And they all look up to him. Just like ER. When he killed all those people, he became a hero.

  Dozens of people are going to die. Maybe hundreds. Our forum was fine when it was just a place to vent and find support and like-minded love-shy guys like me, but then when he joined, it all changed.

  He’s sick. Like really messed up. And now everybody looks up to him, and he’s going to kill people and then everyone else will think it’s cool and do it too. He’s going to be made a hero, and others are going to want to go and massacre just like him. It’s not only the lives he will take, it’s the movement he will start. He’s really persuasive. And it scares the hell out of me. He’s going to kill people. And it’s going to be bad.

  I sat back and let it happen. It’s only because I was scared. I’m a coward. The worst kind. I let this hatred grow, and now it’s too late.

  And the truth is, it’s really all my fault. I saw him on another site, a fan site for Dr. Frank. You probably don’t know who he is, but Dr. Frank is this Chicago doctor who specializes in turning guys like us into Chads. He’s a hero in our world. I saw him on the Dr. Frank site and told him about our site, Incel Nation.

  He was really charismatic, so I knew he would be good for our site to help it grow. And he did. It now has 150,000 members.

  But I didn’t know what was in his heart. It’s black. And rotting.

  He recently started a secret subgroup of top fans. I’m one of them, of course. And he told us about his plans.

  He’s going ER, but he wants to top it, to kill even more people and in an even more dramatic way.

  When I started asking too many questions about it, he got weird. He’s suspicious of me. I think he hides some posts on the private group chat from me.

  I would go to the cops, but I found out we have some Florida cops in our group. That’s where I live. He does too. That’s the only personal information I know about him. He mentioned it on the Dr. Frank forum. How he’d flown from Miami to Chicago to see the doctor.

  But those cops in our group, they are onboard with his plan. They are egging him on. But I only know their user names.

  That’s why I can’t go to the cops. I don’t know if I should even say this, but I already tried. I contacted a detective at my local police department. The guy acted kind of weird. He wanted me to come in to talk to him, but I told him I needed to make the report anonymously. I told him I’d gotten wind about a possible mass shooting that had to do with a group of incels. He didn’t ask what incels were which should have been the first tip-off that something was weird. He said he wouldn’t talk to me unless I gave him my name. I told him I’d think about it and hung up.

  About an hour later, there was a police car in front of my house, cruising by really slowly. The next day when I went to my car, all four tires were slit. It was a warning. I listened.

  That’s why I’m writing you. I don’t know where else to turn.

  And I don’t know much. All I know is that it’s going to go down next month—in May—and that it’s going to be in Florida. And that if everything goes the way he plans, hundreds of people are going to die.

  —The One-Eyed Jack

  1

  Eva Lucia Santella woke with her hands between her legs, panting and writhing in pleasure.

  The brilliant, golden Italian sunshine lit up the white covers of her king-size bed. An ocean breeze lifted the filmy white curtains into the air. Her dark hair spilled out like ink over the silk pillow.

  She’d been dreaming of her husband, Jason. They had been making love on the beach in front of their Malibu home as the sun set. It had never happened in real life. Their stretch of beach wasn’t private enough. But in her dream, they had the beach to themselves. The kids were… well, safe somewhere…and she and Jason were like horny teenagers as they fucked on the large cashmere blanket spread out on the sand. She buried her face into his neck and came wildly with abandon. As the orgasm melted away, the dream also began to dissolve.

  Right before her long dark lashes fluttered open, Eva realized that she could still smell her husband. Hovering right between a dream state and consciousness, Eva could recall Jason’s smell as vividly as she felt the ocean breeze on her face.

  In that moment, reality punched her in the gut like a fist. She sat up in bed and looked around, bewildered and feeling hollow inside. The emptiness of her massive bedroom was like a slap. There was no husband. No giggling kids running into the room to pile into bed with them on a Saturday morning, begging them to get up and make pancakes.

  Her family was dead. They were all dead—buried in dark, cold graves across the ocean in America.

  Eva shook off her grief and put it in a small, internal compartment to deal with later. As she stretched her arms above her in bed, she was already planning out her day—how she could avenge her family by destroying every last Mafia boss in Italy.

  She’d taken a fatal swoop at some of them, killing a dozen at once, but there were more to go.

  It was what got her out of bed every day.

  It drove her to train and work out for hours at a time, honing her body into a lethal weapon. And now she had raised an army of women just like her. Even though the sun had only just risen, she could hear them in the courtyard below, training in the ancient Italian martial arts form of Gladiatura Moderna.

  Throwing back her covers, she swung her legs around until her feet hit the cool marble floor. Time to conquer the day.

  2

  Downstairs, Eva squeezed a fresh lemon into a glass of water, fixed an espresso, and headed out to the stone patio through the large French doors with both drinks and her leather-bound journal and planner. Beyond her patio deck, she could see the turquoise blue of the Tyrrhenian sea stretched out for miles before her, sparkling in the early morning sunlight. She settled in at one of the café tables scattered on the patio and in
haled. She was surrounded by lemon trees, and their scent comingling with the salty sea was one of her favorite smells. Sipping her coffee, she opened her leather-bound journal to review her plans for the day.

  After breakfast, she had a meeting with one of her more promising soldiers. The girl was just seventeen. She’d been recruited by Francesca, Eva’s most trusted and loyal friend and business partner.

  Francesca had found the girl as a runaway on the streets of Rome. Monica had fled an abusive stepfather in the countryside and was hoping to make a new life in the big city, but she had fallen in with the wrong crowd—a group of thieves and drug addicts who wanted to make her a prostitute.

  Monica was about to have her first meeting with a “client” when Francesca had stepped in and offered her a new life. At first the girl scoffed, but then Francesca played her wild card—the girl would be working for, and with, the Queen of Spades. That was all it had taken.

  Over the past two decades, Eva’s nickname, her nomenclature, if you will, had become a legend in Sicily and Italy. Little girls played “Queen of Spades” and little boys pretended to marry her. She was the people’s hero. She was known to take from the rich and give to the poor.

  When Eva had been a mob boss, before the hit was placed on her life, she made sure her “people” were never without. She had earned their loyalty for life. Generations of children looked up to her. When the other Mafioso tried to kill her, she had to flee and disappeared to America. When she returned after a decade, nobody had forgotten. When word grew that she had slain twelve of the most vicious mob leaders and that she was back in Italy, there were parties and dancing in the streets for three days.

  Today, after two months of training, Monica would meet Eva for the first time. Eva had kept a close eye on the girl from day one and had been pleased with the young woman’s fiery spirit and adept physical prowess. This morning, Eva would offer her a leadership role. Each band of her small army had lieutenants in charge of their designated squads.

  After that meeting, Eva had a phone call with her financial adviser. She had lived off her investments for years and still liked to monitor them weekly. This week, she was going to direct her adviser to donate half a million Euros to a women’s shelter that had just opened in a southern Italian city, Bernalda.

  Later, she had a lunch meeting planned with four of the most important businessmen in Southern Italy. They were going to discuss ways to bolster the Southern Italian economy. After lunch, Eva would work out for three hours before a late dinner with a visiting politician from Rome who said he needed her help financially. She would consider it. He had been active in fighting sex trafficking, something that was near and dear to Eva’s heart. It had been her own refusal to engage in sex trafficking years ago that had started the war against her and led to the lifelong price on her head.

  But before all of that, she had her most important meeting of the day—the one with Francesca. Her consigliere, as they said.

  The red-haired, older woman arrived ten minutes later, swooping into the patio area with a massive mug of hot tea and a smile. She wore an ankle-length green silk Cheongsam dress, high wedge sandals, and her deep red hair was pulled back from her face with an emerald clip that still allowed it to flow down her back.

  She looked like an Italian geisha, Eva thought as she rose to kiss her on both cheeks.

  Once they were settled in at the table and sipping their drinks, Francesca took out her iPad.

  “Something came in overnight.”

  Eva waited, but Francesca’s tone had aroused her curiosity.

  “From that website,” Francesca said.

  Eva stopped herself from rolling her eyes. It was unbecoming for a grown woman to do so.

  “That website” was a fan site for the Queen of Spades.

  The nickname had stuck after she’d become a notorious mob boss and assassin as a teenager. In Italy, the Queen of Spades playing card signified death. At first, she used the cards as a warning—such as “stop sex trafficking or you will die.” And then it morphed into her calling card. Each time she killed, Eva left the playing card on the victim’s body.

  That life and world seemed so far away from where she sat now on the patio of the finest villa on her stretch of Italian coastline. So much had happened since then.

  Now, when people, especially Americans, thought of the Queen of Spades, they thought of an avenging warrior who would rectify dangerous child custody issues. It had started innocently enough—helping out her friend Jonathan’s friend—but then more and more people had reached out to her for help.

  When she complained to Jonathan that the international flights to America were expensive, he’d offered to cash out his 401K to pay for them. Touché. They both knew her wealth made that a nonissue.

  “Baby, I have other priorities,” she told him. “I’m raising an army over here. I have to take down the Cosa Nostra. I’m playing a bigger game here—what you over there would consider the Super Bowl.”

  “Yeah, yeah, nice sports analogy, and good for you,” he’d say and hang up. Then he’d text her pictures of the kid in an emergency room with a broken arm or the mother with a black eye and stitches across her cheek.

  Dirty pool. It always worked.

  In his defense, Jonathan was careful that only the really hard luck cases were brought to her attention. The ones where the abusive parent was so powerful or connected that the other spouse could not turn to lawful resources to save their kids.

  So far, Eva had helped a dozen parents with these types of custody disputes. Reluctantly, at first, but then she was always glad when it was over.

  The idea that a fan site had sprung up from these actions was baffling for Eva to think about. As soon as it had, Jonathan had contacted the creator. When he told the person privately that he knew the Queen of Spades, he’d been made an administrator.

  “What is it this time?” Eva finally said to Francesca.

  “A private message for you on the site. Jonathan said to forward it to you as soon as possible.”

  Eva closed her eyes for a second. As much as she hated the idea of the site, a part of her knew that her work in America was part of her healing process. Helping others was actually helping herself and her own gut-wrenching, heart-stabbing grief. She even sometimes snuck onto the site to read the posts and, every once in a while, seeing that she really had helped other people helped to temporarily numb the grief of her own tragedy.

  But she would die before she admitted to Francesca she’d ever even been on the site.

  In any case, she wasn’t privy to private messages.

  Francesca logged on to Jonathan’s account and pushed the iPad over to Eva to read.

  When she finished, Eva sat back. The letter was unnerving, hinting at a mass murder in a few weeks. But the details were sparse. And who was the One-Eyed Jack?

  When she looked up, Francesca met her eyes.

  “Jonathan said he immediately forwarded this to the FBI and the police but nobody seems to be taking him seriously. Their response was for him to call back when there were more details.”

  “Lovely,” Eva said. Her voice dripped sarcasm. As a woman wanted by law enforcement in America for a crime she didn’t commit, she didn’t have a lot of faith in their abilities.

  “Traced him to some pretty offensive websites,” Francesca said. “The content and motive of these groups he’s in is quite alarming.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Have you heard of incels?”

  Eva shook her head. She gestured to the iPad. “First time I heard the word was in this letter.”

  Francesca gave her a look. “It’s distasteful to speak of over breakfast.”

  Eva stood. “Let’s take a walk. You can tell me all about it. We’ll eat after.”

  They walked down on the beach below the villa and its high stone walls. By the time they got to the rocky outcrop that ended that particular stretch of beach, Francesca had finished.

  The gist of it was th
at there were apparently as many as 60,000 people in online forums spewing hatred against women. They all identified themselves as “incels” which loosely meant they were involuntarily celibate.

  A few of them, including a California man named Elliot Rodger, had gone off the rails for their “cause,” by deciding to express his frustration through mass murder. Rodger, twenty-two, wrote a 140-page manifesto against women and then killed six people before killing himself.

  He’d become an incel hero. People referred to him as ER and spoke of “pulling an ER” as committing a mass shooting.

  Rodger left behind several videos, including one that spoke of his revenge murders saying, “I will slaughter every single spoiled stuck-up blonde slut.”

  But he wasn’t the only incel that took on a kamikaze mass shooting mission according to Francesca. A Pittsburg man killed three women in an aerobics class before killing himself, and a Toronto man, claiming to be starting the ‘Incel Rebellion’ mowed down ten pedestrians in his van.

  A few other incels who spoke publicly about their mass shooting plans had been stopped in time.

  “They have their own jargon,” Francesca said. “Chad and Alphas are men who easily attract women. Women who are attractive enough to date anyone are Stacy’s. And ER simply acknowledges Elliot Rodger and his martyr status. They also call him Saint Elliot.”