Private Rome

Chapter 2

Murmurs of concern rippled through the room as all our guests focused on the priest. Undeterred, he took hold of both Matteo’s hands.

“I came to ask for your help,” he said, glancing around nervously as though all the eyes fixed on him belonged to enemies, “but it’s no good. I cannot be saved. I must pay for my sins and pray that God will forgive me when I stand before Him. Only He sees all, but the Devil sees almost as much.”

The poor man seemed very distressed, quite possibly in the grip of a mental-health crisis.

“I’ve put you at risk,” he said suddenly. “I’m a fool. I came here to talk, but by doing so I only endanger you.”

Matteo shook his head and soothed the priest. “Father Brambilla, let’s get you somewhere you’ll feel safe and then you can tell me what’s troubling you.” He turned to me. “You don’t mind, do you, Jack?”

“You do what you need to do,” I replied.

“I’ll look after Jack for you,” Esther said, taking Matteo’s place at my side.

He smiled. “You’re in good hands then.”

Matteo took the distressed priest by the arm and led him away. “Come with me, father.”

The priest glanced back at me, raw fear visible in his eyes. For a moment I thought about following. There were few things in life that could make a man look so afraid. This had to be serious.

“Jack, I’d like to introduce Aldo Accardi and his wife, Sofia,” Esther said, trying to get my attention.

I watched Matteo and the priest go through a service door at the far end of the large function room. Once they were out of sight there seemed to be a collective exhalation of breath and the party resumed its former momentum.

I turned to find a distinguished man in his late sixties and his glamorous, much younger wife waiting to greet me.

“Aldo is chief executive of Russo Bank,” Esther went on. “And Sofia runs Happy Paws, a local charity that rehomes abandoned pets.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” Aldo said, offering me his hand.

“Thank you for coming,” I replied, returning the gesture and then shaking Sofia’s.

“I would not have missed it,” Aldo responded. “I have a friend in Italian intelligence. He’s told me about some of your exploits. Is it true you staged a rescue mission in the mountains of the Hindu Kush?”

I had resigned myself to the fact I would always be an object of curiosity to some people because of my history, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed being treated like an exhibit. I had almost died numerous times while trying to rescue US Special Forces pilot Joshua Floyd, a traumatic experience that would forever be imprinted on me, but which for others was simply a thrilling anecdote. They would never understand the toll it took on me to cast my mind back to those events.

I nodded without saying anything.

“Those are some of the harshest conditions in the world,” Sofia remarked. “It must have taken much inner strength to endure them, Mr. Morgan.”

I didn’t need the praise of strangers. I would much rather have been in my Los Angeles home, having dinner with Justine, but this was part of the job of running Private. Building a client base was the first step toward establishing a successful office in Italy.

“It’s not something I’d want to do again,” I conceded.

“What pushes you on in such circumstances?” Aldo asked. “Where do you find the will to survive?”

I knew the answer. The quest for truth, justice, the love of friends, family, Justine most of all, but I wasn’t about to share those parts of myself with strangers.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Until you’re in a situation where your life depends on—”

A loud bang cut me off. While the sound startled everyone in the grand room, I recognized instantly what it was.

A gunshot.

I raced to the doorway on the other side of the hall, weaving through the startled guests. Behind me, a couple of guards sprang into action. I sensed a few people at my heels, but reached the door first and pulled it open to reveal a wide corridor with a number of rooms leading off it and a grand staircase rising to the upper floors.

One of the doors halfway along the corridor was ajar and I rushed toward it.

At the door I slowed down, taking the time to push it further open, alert for any danger inside. No sound or hint of movement came from within the room.

I stepped into a grand old library with stacked bookcases lining the walls, and two leather-covered couches and a gilded coffee table arranged on top of a huge red Persian rug.

The area nearest the door was now a crime scene. The priest Matteo had addressed as Father Brambilla lay face-down, blood soaking into the deep fibers of the rug beneath him as it flowed from a bullet wound in his temple. Standing over him, holding a smoking pistol, was my new manager for Italy, the former police inspector I’d hired to head up Private Rome.

Matteo Ricci.