A/N: Ownership of...I forget. Sorry. I think it was important, but you know...

A/N2: WARNING: The final scene in this chapter is very tough to read and was very tough to write. It depicts a man being tortured. If you want to skip it, I won't blame you. I intend to begin the next chapter with enough of a recap that you will not miss any particularly pertinent detail.

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Casey was up early and came down to the dining room. Chuck was there already, going through the files from the hard drive they had cloned from Greco's device the prior night. Ginni Caron (with whatever staff she'd hired for the duration), apparently recognizing that the Villa had a large collection of visitors, had set up a vast breakfast buffet. Ginni Caron, it seemed, didn't sleep much. Casey got coffee for him and for Chuck.

Walking over and giving Bartowski his coffee, he said, "Well?" He sat next to his teammate.

"Thanks, yeah. This thing, it's exactly what we need. All the surveillance footage they took of Grillo, the proofs for what they were trying to do... The almost final product. The only stuff we don't have is the actual final product. It's a pretty big file, though. Maybe on the whole company's main server? I'm not sure. But this shows we had the right guys and the right technique."

"You mean you had. You figured this all out on your own," said Casey.

"Don't forget the bearded troll," said Chuck with a smile.

"Ok. Still some pretty top notch work, Bartowski. You should be proud," said Casey.

"I am. But ...you know...I..." Chuck looked a bit nervous. Tense.

"You're not sleeping," said Casey. "How come?"

"I'm sort of on edge, you know?" said Chuck. "Something on my mind, I guess."

"Not this Grillo thing," said Casey. "So, what is it?"

Chuck said, with a huff of humor, "I'm going to ask her to marry me, Case. I'm ...thinking about it … a lot. It's a big deal."

Casey said, "Of course, but you aren't second guessing it. Just chill, Chuck. Just relax."

"No, I mean, I'm going to ask her here...in Italy. The land of romance. I'm doing to ask her on this vacation."

"Good. You should. I vote yes, not that I get a vote." He sipped his excellent coffee, nodding his appreciation.

"Thanks. I'm keyed up, though. I'm afraid I'm overthinking it. What's the perfect place? The perfect place for me to ask her? The perfect time?"

Casey leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee once more. He looked at Chuck thoughtfully for a few moments then said, quietly, "You know, I proposed once."

Chuck looked at Casey with surprise. Casey looked back at Chuck with warmth and affection, and continued in his gruff voice, "Kathleen. We had plans to go to Niagra Falls. I was about to ship out. We were young and I was stupid, and things got screwed up and I ended up proposing in a Buffalo bus station. Not exactly the most romantic spot in the world...but, I'll always have that day. I'll always have that look upon her face. The truth is there's no such thing as a perfect moment or a perfect spot. So, forget about perfection, Chuck. All you need is the girl."

Chuck was more than touched and gave his friend a warm smile and said, "Thanks, Casey. That's some good advice." He reached out and gave his friend's forearm a squeeze. How did he get so lucky as to have two best friends?

Pietro brought Major Volta into the dining room and Volta greeted Casey and Chuck. He said, "I have some news..."

Pietro said, "The others are just coming down for breakfast now. If you wait a few moments, you will not have to repeat yourself, Major. Coffee?" He gestured to the buffet spread.

"Yes, please," said Volta. As he was getting his coffee, he said to Pietro, "If I may...those are some very competent looking men you have outside, Mr. Caron. When you said your friends would look after security, you did not joke. It would take a company of infantry to get to the house, and even with that I predict they would suffer unacceptable losses."

"Yes," said Caron. "They learned their lessons well in the last few years. I trust them with my life...as I have many times in the past."

Over the next few minutes the household assembled at the table, having taken food from the breakfast buffet.

Volta started, "First of all, you will be happy to know that Judge Monte is out of his coma and is awake. I spoke to him last night and told him what had happened since the bombing. I know he will call to thank you himself, but he asked me to express his gratitude and thanks for all you have done for Grillo and for him.

"Next, he authorized me to tell you about his investigation of Rosetti. To begin with, organized crime, among its four major elements here, is the largest business in the nation. They estimate that it has an annual income of approximately 130 billion Euros, about 165 billion dollars for my American friends. The pizzo alone is...

"What's the pizzo?" asked Chuck with a slightly raised hand.

"Right, sorry. That's the protection money all legitimate businesses end up paying so the criminals will not target them."

Tony said, "He's right. We all pay it. It's like another tax on Italian businesses."

"But," Volta continued, "that alone is taking billions from the economy. Such numbers create a very tempting target for the ambitious. And Rosetti is ambitious. He wants a piece of the pie. Rosetti is positioning himself to launch a major operation to muscle in on the more established criminal organizations..."

"Will he be worse?" asked Sarah.

"We don't know. Probably not, but it's too early to tell. What we do know is that it will lead to all out war on the streets of Italy while the decision is shaking out. He's already hijacked and stolen two drug shipments from the Camorra. As best as we can tell, they do not yet know who their enemy is and so have not retaliated yet."

Casey said, "What do you care if they kill each other?"

Chuck answered that, "Case, you know there would be innocent casualties in any sort of mayhem like that."

Casey shrugged to admit the truth of what Chuck had said.

Volta continued, "Exactly. Monte and Grillo are investigating Rosetti in order to stop a war. If they can shut him down before it starts, they can prevent it. We don't have the evidence yet, but we believe that he ordered the car bombing that almost killed Monte and his men. Thanks to you, we believe he had the woman killed and Grillo framed for it."

"Yes, Major, about that. This is a clone of a hard drive that we found that will show that Greco, Rosetti's CGI guy, handled the alteration of the footage. You will find the original of this in Greco's safe at the Cinebrava offices." Chuck slid the hard drive across the table to Volta.

"Thank you, Chuck. I assume I don't want to know how this came into your possession?"

"You do not," said Chuck

"Very well. I have the file on Puma for your team. We have him working a double shift today, so we can keep an eye on him." He slid a flash drive across the table to Chuck.

Sarah said, "Let me have it, Sweetie. Marie and I will go talk to his wife this morning and see what we can get out of her."

"Ok, good luck," said Chuck.

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Sarah and Marie rang the doorbell of the Puma's apartment in Rome and waited for a response. There was silence on the other side of the door. They tried again. Nothing.

They walked to the neighbor's apartment and rang the doorbell there. A somewhat elderly woman in an apron opened the door and said, in Italian, "May I help you?'

Sarah gave the woman a charming smile. "So sorry to bother you, Ma'am. We are from the grammar school that Mrs. Puma has enrolled Angelica in." The Puma's daughter, Angelica, would be six years old and about the right age to start school, so they thought this would be an acceptable explanation. "We were supposed to meet them here today to see the little girl, but she doesn't seem to be in."

"No. She must have forgotten. She's taken the baby out to visit her mother in Artena."

As the older woman was speaking, Marie appeared to be checking her phone. She said, "Umm. Bea," addressing Sarah, "It was us. We messed up the date. The appointment was for next week. So sorry to bother you, Ma'am."

Back in the car they had borrowed from the Palones, Sarah called Chuck, "Have Major Volta give us the address for Mrs. Puma's mother in Artena. Neighbor said that's where they are staying. We're heading there now."

Chuck said, "The Major is here. We'll have the address for you soon. I'll call you back enroute."

Artena was about 45 minutes outside Rome. As they drove they chatted about this and that. Eventually, the subject of Victor Federov came up.

"The government is negotiating with him to get information on the African rebels," said Marie.

"How's that going?"

"Well, it would be going great, but there's some asshole in my outfit that is causing a real headache. He is insisting that Victor give up Feliks for the murder of the undercover guy they tried to get into the organization...before I tried. I argued against it. Told them that Victor would go to prison for the rest of his life before he gave up Feliks. So, they are at a stalemate. I keep arguing that they should take what they can get on the Africans while the intel is still fresh, but...well, you know how it is sometimes. I'm worried that the whole operational success we had will be squandered by someone's need for revenge. Jean-Luc...you remember Jean-Luc? Anyway, he's fighting the good fight in Paris while I'm taking the time off in Nice."

"I'm sorry, Marie. That must suck. After everything you went through," said Sarah.

"Yeah...I have to say, it's nice to hang out with John these last few days. He takes my mind off Victor." They fell silent for a while. Then Marie asked, "You ever had to go that deep, Sarah? Seduce a mark like that? Months at a time?"

Sarah was just taking a breath to answer when the phone rang. It was Chuck with the address of Puma's wife's mom. After they hung up with him, the conversation turned to their approach to the woman. They settled on a strategy.

The town of Artena is built on the side of Monti Lepini in an area that has been inhabited for thousands of years. The town was a beautiful collection of old houses packed densely along the slope of the mountain. As picturesque as the town is, Sarah and Marie were heading to a more isolated house a bit outside of the center of the town itself and on comparatively flat ground in the valley.

The small house was tidy with a well tended lawn in front and pretty curtains in the windows. Nothing seemed out of place. They knocked on the door and a young, somewhat haggard looking woman opened it. They recognized her as Giacomo Puma's wife, Sofia. She said, in Italian, "Yes?"

"Hello, Mrs. Puma. I wonder if my friend and I might be able to speak with you for a moment?" said Sarah.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"We are reporters from Il Tempo," she said, referring to a generally conservative Roman newspaper, and hoping it honored the police in its municipal coverage. "Your husband in the Carabinieri has been one of the bodyguards for the murderer Enzo Grillo. I was wondering if we might speak with you about his experiences in that position."

Sofia's eyes got a panicked look and she moved quickly to try to slam the door. Marie's foot stopped her. "Mrs. Puma, please. We just want to talk to you," said Marie softly.

"No, no, no...leave me alone...leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you."

An older version of Sofia came to her side, "Leave her alone. Can't you see she's upset. Leave her alone. You aren't welcome here."

Marie and Sarah looked through the open door and into the spotless little house, with nothing out of place. Marie said, "Where's Angelica, Mrs. Puma?"

"She's upstairs. She's taking a nap," the woman said, almost frantically. She was breathing as if she'd just finished a race and her fingers were pulling at her dress at her hip again and again. She couldn't look at them, or, it seemed, anything for more than a moment.

"LEAVE," screamed her mother, pointing a finger in the direction she wanted them to go. She didn't seem afraid of waking the napping child.

Sarah looked around again and said, in an almost hushed tone, "Where are the toys?"

Sofia started to cry. Sarah stepped forward, into the house. "Where are the toys? Where are Angelica's toys?" She spoke gently, but firmly.

Sofia lost it and, crying hysterically, crumbled to her knees in slow motion. Her mother tried to push Marie out of the house, but Marie gently held her ground.

Sarah went to her knees next to the sobbing woman and took her in her arms. She knew what was coming and it made her white hot with fury. "There are no toys here, Sofia. There should be toys. Tell me." Sofia Puma shook her head no. "Tell me, Sofia. Does Rosetti have Angelica?"

At the sound of the little girl's name Sofia let out a shriek of anguish and, leaning into Sarah's strong embrace, nodded her head yes. Sarah was crying herself when she looked up at Marie and said, almost with a snarl, "That bastard has their child."

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Volta slammed his fist into the dining room table and stood with his fury and anguish. "He kidnapped the daughter of a Carabinieri officer...I'm going to kill the bastard. I'm going to fucking kill him with my bare hands. I'm telling you, the Carabinieri will rip the city apart. We will dismantle this prick's organization brick by fucking brick." In his excitement, he reverted to Italian and repeated the word "Cazzo" [Fuck] multiple times. Switching back to English, "We are going to round up and question every single Rosetti man we can find and squeeze them until we get what we need." Volta's poet's eyes were violent in their passion.

Casey, standing against the wall in the dining room, with his arms crossed said, calmly, "No, you can't Bert. It would have to be totally silent. And anyway, if there's a dead man's handle, we'd be done. You can't let Rosetti's men know that we know about the kidnapping."

Chuck said, "What's a dead man's handle?"

"It's what they put on trains. If the driver dies and lets go of the handle, the train stops. What if the only thing keeping the little girl alive is a regular message from Rosetti?"

"Cazzo," said Volta, furiously.

"Fuck," said Chuck, equally furiously.

Pietro looked at Volta and said, with almost preternatural calm and speaking softly, "You can't do what you want to do, Major Volta. You are police and you have to obey the law." Turning to Chuck he said, "Chuck, please give me the file you have created on Leonardo Lupo, Rosetti's top man."

Chuck dropped the file onto a flash drive and gave it to Pietro.

Pietro said, "Thank you, Chuck. Please tell Ginevra, Antonio and Megan that I will be gone for a little bit, but I will be back as soon as I can."

On the way out of Villa Palone, Pietro took a small portable radio from his belt and spoke a few words into it. By the time he got to the front of the house, a half dozen very tough looking men were assembled and waiting for him. In the twenty seconds that followed, another half dozen arrived at a run.

Sergente Maggiore Pietro Caron (retired) began to brief his men.

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Leonardo Lupo left Rosetti's offices and got into his car. He was heading to the warehouses near the port in Ostia to check on a shipment of heroin that was due to arrive this evening. His mind was otherwise occupied, thinking about the logistics of the delivery when he stopped at a traffic light. He wasn't entirely sure he could...

A man dressed all in black and wearing a black ski mask rose up from the floor of the back seat of Lupo's car and jammed a stun gun into the side of his neck discharging its full voltage.

At the same time, from the black unmarked van stopped at the traffic light next to Lupo's car, the side door flew open and three men also dressed in black and wearing black ski masks leapt to Lupo's car. They opened the door, cut the seatbelt and pulled Lupo's insensate body from the car. One of the men pulled a black hood over Lupo's head as they moved him to the van. A man stepped from the van dressed in a suit and tie. As Lupo's body was pulled from the driver's seat and the man in the back exited the car to get into the van, the suited man put the car in gear and turned right at the traffic light. The van turned left. The entire incident took about fifteen seconds.

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When Lupo again became aware of where he was, he realized he was naked and strapped to a sloping table, with his head down and his feet up.

The hood was pulled off his head and he faced five men in ski masks just past the bright light shining in his eyes. He started to laugh, then he screamed at them in Italian, "You idiots think you can scare me. You cops don't have anything you can threaten me with. I've faced you assholes down my entire life. You think this theater is going to scare me? You are all just a bunch of pussies. You can go fuck yourselves."

One of the men nodded to the others and he began to roll up his left sleeve. On his left forearm, on all their left forearms, were tattoos of a parachute behind an anchor surrounded by the wings of a screaming eagle. Under that design was a single word on a scroll. It said, "INCURSORE" [Raider]. Lupo looked up at the men, all of whom were displaying the same tattoo. He couldn't see their faces behind the lights and masks. Col Moschin. The Italian commandos. The Italian Army equivalent of the British SAS or the American Delta Force. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. These were not at all the kind of people he could deal with. Lupo and his pals thought they were tough, but the men of Col Moschin were fucking devils.

The man who had commanded the others to show their tattoos, spoke softly, "You've never faced us or anyone like us, Lupo. We are not the police, asshole. We want some information from you and you are going to tell us what we want to know."

Lupo was a tough dude and, notwithstanding his fear, said, "Go fuck yourself."

The soft-spoken man didn't respond verbally. Instead he put three layers of towel over Lupo's face and poured water on the towels. Shortly, water began to enter his nostrils. Lupo tried to breathe through the wet towels, but his inhalations merely pulled the wet cloth more tightly against his nose and mouth, admitting no air. When he found he couldn't breathe, he determined to hold his breath. That plan was interrupted when one of the men tapped him in the solar plexus with two fingers, triggering an exhalation of the air in his lungs. Helplessly, he gasped for air and found none available. He gasped again and again trying to get air through the wet towels and failing. He began to thrash on the table, desperate to get the towels off his face. Wet as they were, they were too heavy to buck off. When that didn't work, he began to jerk his head back and forth to throw them off, but that didn't work at all either.

His head was throbbing and he could hear his heart beating like a loud drum in his ears. His attempts to breath when he couldn't continued with no success. He was going to die. He was going to die. Right here on this fucking table. He was going to die.

The towels came off his face. He gasped for air. Again and again. Air. Air. He had taken it for granted his entire life. Air. He coughed, from the water he had aspirated. But he could breath. He could breath.

The leader leaned down and spoke softly to him. "Where can I find Angelica Puma?"

Before he could say anything the wet towels were back on his face and more water was poured on them. He went through it again. Being drowned by these hard men. The terror, the thrashing, the certainty of imminent death. Once again, just before he passed out gasping convulsively from lack of oxygen, the towels were removed.

He gasped out, "You're going to kill me. You're going to kill me."

The leader leaned down and said, again softly, "Listen to me, you fucking evil prick. We just came back from Afghanistan. We have done this hundreds of times and haven't lost a single man accidentally. We can keep you alive forever...or at least until we get bored. Where can I find Angelica Puma?"

Again, they put the towels on his face. The terror of what was coming overwhelmed him. He began to scream. That used up the air in his lungs faster and he ended up desperately short of air that much sooner. He was gasping again and getting weaker when they pulled the towels off his face.

The soft voice in his ear. "Where can I find Angelica Puma?'

As he was taking a breath to respond, the towels went back on. "NO," he screamed. "NO." But that use of air was not helpful. He began to cry, and cry hysterically, trying to drum his heels on the table but restrained by the straps holding him down. Tears streaming down his face and were absorbed into the wet towels. He peed himself, but the men merely hosed him off and kept going. The moment the towel came off he screamed an address outside Gaeta, a rocky promontory along the coast south of Rome.

The soft voice, dripping with venom, "Lying motherfucker." The towels went back on. "NO," he screamed in despair. Again, he felt as if he had almost died from drowning before the towels were removed.

He was gasping and sobbing and sobbing and had lost the ability to form conscious thoughts. He just kept repeating, "I swear. I swear. I swear. She's there. The girl is there. Please, please, just stop. Please. I swear. Please. I can't...I can't."

The soft voice. "Lying motherfucker."

It continued.

After a few hours, the men were satisfied that they had all the information they had sought.

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A/N3: The statistics Major Volta quoted over breakfast regarding the extent of the influence of organized crime on the Italian economy are accurate as of 2008.

A/N4: Santino Di Matteo was arrested for murder in 1993 and agreed to become a government witness (a pentito in Italian) against the Sicilian Mafia. In response, his 11 year old son, Giuseppe, was kidnapped with the simple message: if you testify, the boy dies. Santino testified. Giuseppe, who had been held and tortured for years by that point, was murdered in 1996. This history would have been on the minds of both the Carabinieri and the veterans of Col Moschin, and would have influenced their reactions and behavior in my story.

A/N5: As Lupo recognized, Col Moschin, more fully known as the 9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment "Col Moschin", is the Italian Army's special operations unit. At the time this story is set (2008) it had recently worked with other allied nations' spec ops units in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as Caron told Lupo. It is composed of highly respected and skilled soldiers who have worked closely with the US Navy SEALS or the British SAS or other similar top tier elite forces. Pietro Caron and his friends are very dangerous hard men. In my research about the unit, I came upon the story of one of its most famous veterans, Paolo Nespoli. He is a veteran special forces commando, a pilot, a parachutist, a scuba diver, an engineer and, because all of that is somehow not enough, he's a freaking astronaut. He is, in my opinion, the single coolest guy ever.

A/N6: I am not an advocate of waterboarding. In fact, quite the opposite, I'm am happy that my country no longer engages in that form of torture. However, at this time (2008) in the world, amongst the top spec ops operators facing an implacable and violent enemy, this practice was not at all considered abhorrent (or even torture, really). Having said that, I have no knowledge that Col Moschin has ever engaged in this technique, or anything similar. I was uncomfortable enough with including this scene that I warned the readers beforehand and reached out to Smatterchoo and jwatkins for their wisdom and guidance. Thank you, guys. Both of my friends encouraged me to include the scene, although the decision to add it was mine alone and any criticism to be had should be directed at me alone. I encourage anyone interested to read the late Christopher Hitchens' superb article in Vanity Fair from August 2008 in which he was himself waterboarded to more fully engage in the debate about its morality and efficacy.

A/N7: L'Shana Tovah, for any of my Jewish readers. All things considered, leaving the last year behind sounds like a pretty good idea.

A/N8: Please leave a review and please stay safe.