No more memories sparked themselves as we continued our journey across the ocean and Europe, making a number of stop-offs before reaching central Italy. There were no contacts from Marissa or the Society, leaving me feeling distinctly alone.

Despite this, I remained focused on formulating a plan to bring down my masters, as well as going over what I’d dreamed. Was it possible my memory wipe was breaking down? Or was I just hoping it was? Was the woman who claimed to be responsible for protecting me the reason I could remember more than most? In the end, it didn’t matter. I had a mission to do.

The plane settled down in a private airstrip in the middle of a mountain-filled countryside. I was supposed to meet here with the Caesar and his men, just as they’d arranged with F. I was an hour and a half late, but with recent events, I was hoping they’d overlook that. Of course, if they didn’t buy me as F, tardiness would be the least of my problems.

Stepping out into the bright afternoon sun, I absorbed my surroundings. The tarmac had a half-dozen private jets and smaller planes parked on it with one single commercial airliner of a brand I didn’t recognize.

The one-story concrete building next to the control tower was completely empty, and I guessed this place had no customers but the Carnevale and its allies. The armed guards on the rooftop with machine guns contributed to that impression.

A trio of Italian men in khaki pants, sunglasses, and button-down cotton shirts walked up to me. Two of them had P18 Gorgon machine guns with shoulder straps, while the third sported a holstered sidearm. The one with the sidearm patted me down for weapons, finding none.

“All right, you can go meet the Caesar,” the man said in heavily accented English.

“I speak Italian,” I replied in the local accent.

“Do I look like I give a shit?” the man responded, gesturing with his gun.

Not in the mood to argue, I followed him into the airport terminal lounge only to find the place completely empty except for a group that made my blood run cold. It wasn’t because of the Caesar’s presence, or even his daughter’s. They were there, but it was someone else that drew my attention. Someone who shouldn’t be anywhere, let alone here.

The Zombie.

Standing over the sitting form of Lucio Biondi was the man I’d blown to pieces back at their airport, looking none the worse for wear. The Zombie was wearing a red, open-collared shirt, long faded blue jeans, and a motorcycle club jacket with a bandana tied around his forehead. The figure even had the same scars.

He was also smiling.

Lucio was sitting next to his daughter, wearing a pair of slacks, suspenders, and a sports coat to one side. He looked every inch the kindly old Italian grandfather, but the files on him were a nightmare of murder, rape, torture, and terrorism. He was a bit too young to have been active during the Years of Lead, when the Carnevale had still possessed Italian government backing, but everything he’d done since the eighties sounded like stuff from horror movies. Perhaps the most heinous thing involved killing an entire school bus of children to incriminate a Latin American government abroad.

They’d died slowly.

Sitting beside him, wearing a form-fitting canary yellow dress showing ample amounts of both cleavage and leg, was Lucita Biondi. I’d read up a lot on her with Marissa, and bluntly, the International Refugee Society’s conclusions about her just being the bag woman of the Carnevale as well as occasional killer didn’t fit my impression.

There were a lot of murders the Society had attributed to either the Yellow Spider or other female members of the Carnevale that I suspected were actually her doing. Call it gut instinct, but looking at her, seeing her body language, all I saw was a fellow predator. There were other individuals present in the room, armed guards and a few mid-level Carnevale killers I’d read the files for as well. It was an honor guard that could tear me apart even without the presence of the Zombie. If they didn’t buy I was F, then this entire thing was going to be a very short execution. Though I’d still try to kill Lucio before I went down. Standing in front of the group with my guards, they all looked at me, and I realized I was meant to speak first.

I held out my hand, palm down in the Roman salute. “Hail, Caesar.”

Everyone stared at me.

Then Lucio burst out laughing. “Good one!”

Everyone but Lucita forced themselves to laugh with him.

Lucio stood up and walked over to me, giving me a sudden bear hug. Grabbing me by the shoulders, he smiled. “I’ve wanted to meet you for months now, F. Our friend in the Society has told me many things about you!”

Our friend? Shit. That wasn’t good.

“Only the horrible things are true,” I said, smiling. F was a warm and easy-going presence, which made it natural to continue my usual gentle jests. I needed to avoid overdoing it, though, because he’d never been very friendly in his messages with the Carnevale. My impressions of his messages, in fact, indicated he was only going with them because he considered them the lesser of two evils.

A very curious conclusion.

Lucio surprised me by pinching my cheek and giving it a pull. After a second, he stopped and nodded. “I bet. I’m glad you’ve decided to come to work for us. I was worried you’d been killed after the fiasco at the airport.”

I stared at the Zombie. “It proved to be more of a clusterfuck than intended, yes. I wanted to retreat earlier.”

Lucio waved his hand in front of him. “Don’t blame Alonzo. He’s just the latest of our immortal best. I’m afraid Hugo is not going to be joining us anymore.”

Ah, that explained it. It wasn’t the same Zombie. It was just another person wearing an identical Shell exterior. Searching my memory for any Alonzos associated with the Carnevale, I came up with only one match: Alonzo Cipriani, a.k.a the Smiling Killer.

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Great.

“I hope he proves worth the investment,” I said. “The last one wasn’t.”

The Smiling Killer’s smile never left his face, but his eyes turned hate-filled.

“We do not speak ill of the dead where I come from,” Lucio said, putting his arm around my shoulder. He gestured to his daughter, who looked bored. “This is my beloved Lucita, who is currently mourning her cunt of a boyfriend. He died in a car crash a few days ago.”

Wow, A worked fast.

Either that or he subcontracted.

“Gillespie was a real man, not that any of you would know anything about that.” Lucita tousled her hair in a wholly unnatural way. She didn’t look especially broken up about her boyfriend’s death, which fed into my belief that Lucita was a psychopath like her father.

Not that I was one to talk.

No, I had to reject that premise. The International Refugee Society may have reduced my empathy, and I had done terrible things, but I had to believe I was not a monster. I had to believe I could come back from what I’d done and live a normal life after all this was done. I had crossed lines I never thought I would cross, done things I never thought I would do, but there were things I hadn’t yet done that I clung to the belief I wouldn’t. I was not a psychopath, not yet, and I needed to hold to that belief like a levee holding back a flood.

“Charmed,” I said, bowing my head.

Lucita looked away, a bored expression on her face.

“Ignore her,” Lucio said, smiling. “I’m very excited about you joining our little family. You are said to be the fourth best agent in the Society.”

“Third now, since G is dead.”

Lucio’s expression shifted for a moment, unreadable. He took his hand off my shoulder. “A pity, I was hoping we might take him alive. Doctor Gordon has some very foolish ideas about spreading his technology to the rest of the world, and I’d rather not resort to physical force to coerce him just yet. Having G to leverage him would have been useful.”

“Their relationship is an unusual one,” I said, fishing for information.

“Indeed, but you know that better than anyone.” Lucio gave me a swift pat on the back. “I think you will like it in our little family.”

Lucita gave a contemptuous chuckle. “Yes, you will find it a wonderful collection of murderers, thieves, and whores.”

Lucio stared down at her. “Of which my daughter is all three.”

Lucita swore at him in three languages.

Lucio returned with a volley of insults in four. He then lifted his hand before lowering it. “I’d fucking slap you if I didn’t think I’d break it.”

“That is your fault, then, isn’t it?” Lucita said, getting up and marching out of the room.

“Is this common?” I asked.

“All too much,” Lucio said, sighing. “Never mix family and business. They say it is the only way to guarantee your legacy is preserved, but as far as I can tell, it’s not worth it.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

Lucio gave me a sympathetic look. “Yes, you Letters have no families. No identities. No pasts. It is tragic, truly. You should be more than just a letter in the alphabet. Have you given any thought to what your name should be, now that you are a free man?”

A free man? That was a concept I’d long thought of. “Frank.”

“A bit predictable, perhaps, but all right. Frank it is. Do you have a surname?”

“Not yet.”

Lucio nodded. “We’ll work on that, Frank. In the meantime, you realize you’ll be expected to prove yourself loyal. My son, for example, believes you are not to be trusted.”

The Smiling Killer looked straight at me. “A man who betrays his masters once is very likely to do so again.”

“Very true, my boy,” Lucio said. “So, how would you guarantee your loyalty?”

Alonzo Cipriani was the Caesar’s son? That was a bit of intelligence that hadn’t been in our files. It certainly explained why Lucio was so willing to defend him despite his various massacres. Maybe he saw himself in the boy.

That didn’t explain why he’d taken the man’s brain and put it in a Shell, though. The same for his daughter. Shells were nearly indestructible, but they couldn’t have children, either. If the Caesar was trying to secure his legacy, turning his children into cyborgs wasn’t the way to do it.

“The Society ruined my life. I don’t know who I was or what I did before I became a Letter. They stole it from me. They trapped me in their service. Service to the Carnevale, though, is my choice. I also understand you pay very well,” I said, picking up the conversation where Lucio had left it. “But I think we both know actions speak louder than words.”

“Very true,” Lucio said, nodding. He proceeded to pull out a small piece of paper and slip it into my coat pocket. “This will be your first assignment for us. The first of many. You will be well paid for it, but it will go a long way toward reassuring me that I can trust you.”

“Just note I’ve already killed three of my fellow agents. There’s nothing waiting for me back there.”

“The International Refugee Society has sacrificed more for bigger gains. They gave up five of their agents to deliver the Saudi’s body in Pakistan.”

I picked the piece of paper out of my pocket and looked at it: Luigi Mondo. I didn’t recognize the name. “May I ask who the target is?”

“A politician,” Lucio said.

“The next President of Italy,” the Smiling Killer added.

Lucio shot him an unhappy glance.

The Smiling Killer didn’t seem to notice.

I placed my hand over my heart. “It will be done.”

I needed to get in contact with Persephone or Delphi to confirm my next action. Not only was there another mole in the home office, something which meant my efforts here were probably futile, but also, I needed to know how to proceed. My mission parameters included killing targets for the Carnevale, but I wasn’t sure if that included European Union leaders. I also didn’t like killing the innocent.

Not that any politician I’d ever met qualified.

“Good,” Lucio said, smiling. “Take note that if you succeed in this task, I will take you to Doctor Gordon and restore your memories.”

I blinked. It took every bit of my willpower to keep my surprise off my face. I forced myself to think of it in the same terms as Redmond’s offer, an obvious bribe which the Caesar had no intention of following through with. But I couldn’t. Gordon was related to the Letter program, me, and familiar of Black Technology.

It was very possible he could restore my memories.

And if he could, did I really care what the Society had sent me to do?

No, I didn’t.

“Should I begin immediately?” I asked.

“We’ll take you to my chateau after you’ve proven yourself,” Lucio said, gesturing down to the main part of the terminal past the unmanned metal detectors. “My daughter will deliver you to the target site.”

“I could help, Father,” the Smiling Killer said. “You know, keep an eye on our new friend.”

“We have a surgeon in our midst,” Lucio said, staring at him. “I want to see him operate. We’ll send you in when we need a meat grinder.”

The Smiling Killer frowned for the first time in our conversation. “As you wish.”

“I look forward to working with your daughter, Caesar.”

Lucio snorted. “You won’t after getting to know her. She is Lucrezia Borgia reborn, a plague on her family.”

Lucrezia Borgia was actually one of the few members of the family to escape relatively unscathed, but I wasn’t about to mention that fact. If only because F hadn’t any real knowledge of history. “Is there anything else?”

“One more thing,” Lucio said, looking to the door. “Just to be on the safe side.”

The doors to tarmac opened up and men dressed similarly to the ones who’d escorted me in were dragging the body of my pilot. He was missing several fingers, cut off with a cigar cutter by the looks of it, and he was sporting a gunshot wound to the back of his head. The corpse was dumped at my side.

Lucio looked between the men and the corpse. “Well?”

“A civilian,” the leader of the group replied. “He was paid in cash by F and has no connection to the Society. When he arrived at the plane, not long after the whole business at Logan, F was in the lounge sleeping like a baby.”

Lucio looked back at me. “You can go now.”

He gave me another affectionate pat on the shoulder.

I gave the dead pilot a glance, shook my head, and walked to join Ms. Biondi.