Nicky’s people had cleaned the grave well enough, now that the original mission, both true and false, was over. Nicky had the manners to police his own. Now it was left to her to gather what dust had fallen out of her cousin’s reach and how she could make it pay. It would be more satisfying to have someone else pay the costs now resting in her ledger.
“Any reason you chose…” Angelina turned back a page to see the list of operatives that Nicky had sent. “Diana Rosselini, alias Anna Betancourt?”
“I felt she was the best of the four.”
“What made her stand out?” At first glance, all four seemed to be of similar quality. Military training of one flavor or another. Specific skills earned in vague unnamed places. Confirmed kill lists. All from distant branches of breeder families, probably only accidentally aware of the family business, if aware of it at all. No one with any strong ties to any Kindred family that she could recall at this moment. Perfect operatives for those hopefuls with nothing left to lose and willing to work for a family pariah.
Angelina frowned slightly, perturbed at the unnecessary self-reminder, tucking that thought away for later contemplation. Now was not the time for meditating on old injustices.
“I feel that a Rosselini was more suitable,” Pietro gave an easy shrug, as if such an important choice was merely an afterthought. Normally a temperate guide, she found his lack of care or worry to be irritating this evening.
“More suitable than what, Pietro? Do not dissemble.”
He capitulated immediately. “The Rosselini was the only choice, donna. I wouldn’t dare Proxy Jara without approval of the Pisnob. I didn’t feel that you’d want the della Passaglia here, all things considered, so Durant was also not an option.”
“Your consideration of my feelings is commendable, but if he was the better candidate, I would have accepted him. Chances are he wasn’t involved with the…current politics.” Angelina clicked her teeth shut on the words, biting them where she couldn’t bite those that had risen against her.
Again that nonchalant shrug and easy grin, tacitly ignoring the tempest she held under thin glass “I would not risk it and besides, the Rosselini was equally qualified and the fourth did not survive the mission.”
“Karl Koeing, alias of Gerhart Auer,” Angelina mused, putting the papers back in order and finding the small work of neatness to be soothing. There would be very little this evening that would be considered soothing. “Nicky removed him from the operation himself?”
“Compromised,” Pietro agreed. “At least that was what my Rosselini has told me, though I find it all a little extreme. The Butcher didn’t like the fact he was passing information. I understand his reasoning, but it wasn’t as if the Koeing was speaking out of house.”
A flash of annoyance cut through her precarious calm, jaw tightening against what she wished to say. Vincenzo. They had been contemporaries once, equal in status as one of the North American padroni. Their cousin’s unexpected murder had given him the job and she found the timing of it suspect, as well as Vincenzo’s lack of proper familial mourning. “And Ms. Rosselini was the one that made sure the grave was clean?”
