The sky is just starting to turn a regal purple when I get home, later than I thought but that's okay, I was busy with things at The Farm. Getting into the weapons warehouse took a little bit of craftiness, and I had to be even more careful with my modifications to some of the crates. Fifty Claymore mines, daisy chained together and rigged with a sort of cell phone detonator takes some time but can easily sink a boat the size of what The Sultan uses for transport. It takes time to prepare, and can be finicky work. With a little bit of luck, the roughly thirty five thousand steel pellets from the mines can perforate not just the boat, but most of the crew, The Sultan himself, and maybe even the nerve gas. Just looking at those pressurized canisters fills me with dread.

Now though, I feel better knowing that Jessica is waiting for me, and that we can enjoy a quiet evening together. I wonder how much work she got done on the garden today, and as the gate to the villa rattles open, I don't see the pick lying on the dirt until it's almost too late. I stop my truck and get out, curious. “Jessica? JESSICA?!?!”

There's no answer so I pick up the pick out of the dirt and carry it over to the stairs, my heart speeding up when I find the door to the villa locked from the inside. I use my key, following the dirty bootprints to the inside stairs and down to the first floor, where they stop about halfway down. Still, it's my best bet. “Jessica? Where are you? It's Rodrigo!”

There's a shuffle, and the door to Jessica's old, first room opens and she peeps her head out, her eyes filled with fear before she sees it's me. She launches herself out towards me, wrapping her arms around my neck and sobbing in fear and relief. She's babbling incoherently, but I console her as best I can, holding her carefully and stroking her back. Her shirt's soaked, but I can smell the scent of her sweat, this isn't exercise sweat but fear, terror induced sweat. “Shhh... what happened? I came home, and you dropped your pick, I find you down here... what's wrong?”

Jessica sobs, then lets go, her face angry. “You promised! You promised and you lied to me!”

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused but also angry, not at her but whatever caused this. I don't know what's happened to her, but she's obviously scared out of her wits, and whoever did that is going to fucking pay. “Wait. Come upstairs, let's sit down, you can tell me what happened.”

“Sit down?” she asks, half hysterically. “He threatened to rape me, Rodrigo! He said that he'd break all my teeth off then force his fucking cock down my throat! You want me to sit down and tell you this like I'm telling you about some recipe?”

She starts to break down again and I take her in my arms, holding her closely, stroking her back tenderly as I try to suppress the rage building inside me. “The Sultan.”

“No,” she whispers, sniffing. “Leon.”

I shake my head, hissing in anger. The Sultan's errand boy, he didn't even have the fucking common courtesy to threaten me himself. “That fucking slime.”

“Rodrigo, you promised me... when you first bought me, even before you were my Master, you promised that you'd protect me! You promised me that I'd be safe with you, that none of... none of the shit that makes up the other side of your life would come here without you! He came in, used a fucking remote like he was you! That gate didn't stop shit!”

I take a deep breath, my anger mixing with my fear at what almost happened to my... to my Jessica. “Okay, I got it,” I say quietly. “Jessica, you're right. I promised you that I'd protect you. And I'm telling you again, I will protect you. You're more important to me now than ever before, and I'm going to get this taken care of. Now... come upstairs and tell me exactly what happened.”

Jessica listens to my voice this time, and when she looks up at me she's still scared, but holding out hope. “Okay... Master.”

“That's a good slave,” I whisper, stroking my thumb underneath one beautiful silvery gray eye, smiling reassuringly. “Come on, let's get you some tea or coffee, and you can tell me all that happened. Then I'm going to go out and deal with this.”

“Master, please!” Jessica says, but stops when she sees my face. She understands, I can't just stay here and hold her to keep away the boogeymen who threatened her. “Yes Master.”

I lead Jessica upstairs to the kitchen, where I put a kettle of water on to boil while I get two mugs down and a container of herbal tea. “All right, start at the beginning again, and take your time. The water's still got a few minutes until it boils.”

She starts over, telling me slowly and carefully from the beginning what happened. I'm shaken on the inside, but I can't let Jessica see it. Instead, when the water comes to a boil I cut the heat and put a teaspoon of loose tea leaves inside. “Okay. First off Jessica, you did just fine. Leon, he broke quite a few major rules of The Network when he came here, and I'm going to deal with that tonight, as well as with The Sultan. Now... about your protection.”

I gesture for Jessica to follow me, and I take her into my small home office. Behind the picture I have on the wall of the New York skyline, I have my safe, and I use my fingerprint to open it. “Sicily isn't the States,” I say as the safe reads my thumb and pops open, “so while I travel strapped, I keep my gun normally in my truck unless I've got a reason to worry. This is my backup. Have you ever fired a gun before?”

“Just one time, a friend of mine took me to a gun range. We shot AR-15s. It was for a psych study on gun control as an undergrad,” she says, looking at the Beretta I hold out warily. “Master... are you sure?”

“One hundred fucking percent sure. If anyone other than me comes in this house, I want you to shoot first, shoot some more, and when they're dead you can stop to reload. It's got twelve rounds,” I say, jacking the slide and loading one, “and it's hot now. Safety's on, I don't need you accidentally shooting yourself in the foot with nerves. Here's how you switch that off. Other than that, point and shoot, it's a single action semi.”

I demonstrate the safety, then reverse the pistol, holding it out to her. Jessica takes it in awe, looking at me with those big eyes of hers as she realizes the amount of trust I'm putting in her hands. Forget kitchen knives... she could kill me right now, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Her grip tightens, and I smile as she takes the gun and holds it properly, with her finger outside the trigger guard. “Yes Master.”

“Good. Now, follow me. It's going to be a bit of a bitch to deal with, but we'll figure out another system later,” I say, leading her outside to the motor that controls the gate to the villa. I reach up, snapping off the remote sensor, disabling it. I thought, when I installed the system, that having a remote control only gate would be helpful. Not that it stopped Larissa, but nobody else ever tried to clone my signal. Well, that's not going to happen again. “When I get back, I'm going to have to use the outside intercom to call you inside, and then you'll have to walk out here to trigger the gate manually using this button. Got it?”

“Yes Master,” Jessica says, and I give her a hard kiss on the lips, tasting her and feeling my heart harden inside. Leon, The Sultan might be your boss... but you fucked with the wrong bull today. This isn't about The Network, this isn't about the fucking FBI or Deep Cover. This is about Jessica, and my house. “Be careful?”

There's still a little bit of softness in me right now, and I stroke her cheek again. “I'll be back. If I'm not, take the money you found before, along with what you find in the safe, I left it open. Get to safety.”

I run over to my truck, getting in just as the last of the sun's rays drop out of the sky. Jessica's brave as she hits the gate controls, her eyes watching me intently as I pull through. “Good luck!”

“I'll be back!” I promise her, driving away into the night. I reach for my phone, and pull it out, looking for The Sultan's number. I call him up, the phone buzzing in my ear as I rumble down the dirt road. It doesn't take him long, he picks up after the second ring.

“Mr. Camponini. How nice of you to call, I hope you got my message?”

“Cut the shit, Al Gazi. Your man broke so many fucking rules today that the time for niceties is done for the moment. Where's your piece of shit henchman?”

Omar Al Gazi has always had a cultured voice, probably something he picked up that allows him to interact with the upper crust of Middle East society, but I still can't stand the arrogant fuck. “Leon? Oh, he's here at my townhouse. Would you like to speak with him?”

“No, what we need to say isn't for the fucking phone. I'm on the road, I'll be there in thirty minutes.”

Unlike the rest of the capos and me, Omar Al Gazi only maintains a townhouse in Sicily, a luxurious place in Termini Imerese, but still just a townhouse. His main property from what I understand is in Turkey actually, and of course his quarters on his various ships are all luxurious, even at the cost of losing cargo space. Not that he cares, he owns a dozen different ships.

I push my gas pedal a little harder, putting on speed as I head towards Termini. The Sultan's building overlooks the water, and when I park my truck, I see Leon waiting for me in the parking lot. He grins, already reaching for his waist as I close the distance with him. “Rodrigo, so good to see you again.”

I don't say anything, my right hand crashing into his jaw and shattering it, blood and two teeth going flying as Leon goes tumbling to the pavement. I grab him by the lapels of his sportcoat and knee him, his head snapping back and giving me the satisfying crunch of another few teeth breaking off. I reach for his hip and take his gun, a piece of shit Marakov that's all show and no go. Just like Leon. “Now who's got no teeth for biting down when a cock's jammed in there, huh?”

Leon's unconscious, so I drag him by the coat to the elevator, using the card key I find inside his pocket to give me access to the penthouse. The elevator's slow, and about halfway up he starts to stir, but nothing else until the door opens and I grab his leg, dragging him out onto the marble tile entryway to The Sultan's townhouse. “Al Gazi!”

I gotta give The Sultan credit, he doesn't have any more goons with him when he steps out of his front door, but in his hand he does have a pistol, a giant Desert Eagle that he's carried with him for a long time. It's showy, but unlike his bitch boy, it's got plenty to back it up too. When he speaks, he doesn't sound upset or angry at all, just... perturbed. “Rodrigo, I was just having a brandy. What happened to Leon?”

“Your boy here threatened to take my property, my slave, pry her teeth out and rape her. Him and Kahled both. So, I took care of the tooth removal on his part.” Leon stirs again, starting to wake up, and I stomp down with a boot onto his nuts, crushing them hard before I twist my heel back and forth. Leon screams breathlessly before passing out, and I turn my attention back to The Sultan. “Looks like I took care of the threatened rape part too. Hope you got room in your operation for a eunuch. I warned him I'd do it the last time he thought he could threaten me.”

The Sultan clucks his tongue, displeased. “Leon... I never should have sent him. Too worried about trying to sound tough rather than just deliver the fucking message. I underestimated you, for that I should have planned better.”

“Oh, don't worry, I got your message,” I reply. “Now, I got a message for you. My doubts about your security risk, my doubts about your loyalty to The Network, all of it... they don't mean shit compared to this, right here. You send your boys to break into my villa again, you threaten to steal my slave, you threaten my life or my slave's life again... and I don't care if you are a capo in this organization or not. I'm coming for your fucking nuts.”

“Big words for a man with no backup,” The Sultan says. “So... can you back them up?”

“Try me, Al Gazi,” I rasp, staring a hole into him. “Try me, and The Network's going to be looking for a new contact man in the Mideast. Now, Hammurabi's Code, I got my eye for an eye. You and I.... we stay out of each other's way.”

I back up, there's no way I'll trust turning my back to him, and call the elevator to open. It's still waiting for me, and I hit the button, not turning my eyes away from The Sultan at all. He watches me, his eyes not drifting from mine at all as the door starts to close. “Good evening, Mr. Camponini.”

“Good night, Al Gazi.”