Her head shakes, and her dark hair brushes against her cheek. "No, Raffael. If you didn’t have the brains, you wouldn’t have built what you did. That took more than muscle and brutality; lots of men have that. You have cunning, too. You would’ve figured this out without me. In time."
Her hand slides across the table, her fingers brushing against mine. "Trust me. You were born for this."
And just like that, the storm in my chest shifts. Not gone, never gone, but tempered. I’ve been feared, obeyed, and hated, butbelieved in? That’s rarer than blood in my world.
I curl my hand around hers, mine rough where hers is soft and delicate. Unable to stop the smile tugging at mymouth. "Careful, princess. Talk like that, I’ll start thinking I really can be king."
She clasps my hands, and her gaze is dead serious. "You alreadyare."
The next day…
“Tonight,” the woman on the other end of the line says.
Tonight. My fingers tighten around the phone. Tonight, Carlos takes his last breath. Killing that monster will be the first step in the much larger game for me, taking my rightful spot. It will tell the world that nobody messes with Raffael DeSantis. I will take my revenge for him splitting my face open, and it will be payback for what he did to Sophia.
“Thank you, Oksana. I owe you one.”
“More than one,” she chuckles, and hangs up.
She’s right. For years, Oksana—sister of Grigori Arsenyev, Pakhan of the Bratva in this city—has been my… friend, for lack of a better word. As much as you can call someone raised by a psychopath and carved in his image afriend.
We met about five years ago, both hunting the same ghost. Nestor had sent me to track down a hacker who’d siphoned data out of one of Carlos’s money-laundering shells. Turned out the Bratva was after him, too. Oksana.
We crossed paths online first—two predators stalking the same prey through code and firewalls. I remember noticing her handle and thinking whoever was on the other side of that screen had style—clean, efficient, and very dangerous. She traced me as fast as I traced her, until finally we both hit the same address at the same time.
We agreed, reluctantly, to take the hacker out together. We both had questions, and neither of us liked sharing.
When I finally saw her in person, I almost laughed. She was just a kid. Agirl, barely out of school. Then she put me flat on my ass and had a gun to my head before I could finish the thought.
Ten minutes later, she had the hacker trussed to a chair, calmly extracting answers in a way that made even me take a step back. Efficient. Precise. Brutal. That was the night I realized age didn’t mean a damn thing. Oksana could’ve been sixteen or ninety—it wouldn’t have mattered. She was more adult at sixteen than most men I know at forty.
We’ve been allies ever since. The kind built on mutual usefulness, blunt honesty, and shared blood on our hands.
Neither of us has illusions about loyalty. Hers is to her brother. Mine used to be to La Famiglia. Now it’s to Sophia. Family politics kept us fromsocializing, but we found ways. She took the odd contract for Omertà Infernale; I quietly flushed a few traitors out of her ranks when it suited both of us. When she mentioned that Toni and Grigori were getting friendly, it surprised me until I sat back and looked at the board. Toni isn’t allowed to lay a finger on Carlos—edict from our Don. But the Russians aren’t bound by our leash.
It doesn’t take a genius to see how the Savage King would play it: if he can’t swing the blade himself, he’ll use Grigori’s hand to do the work. And tonight, the pieces fall.
My next call is to Leo, “Do we still have that bypass on the courthouse records?” I ask.
Leo laughs in my ear. “You bet your ass we do.”
Little does Stephano know that I added a little bypass into one of his programs that he had me install a few years ago. It's come in handy over time, and it will be more than useful now. “Find me a meat suit,” I order. “I need a man who's going to jail this morning at the same facility as Carlos."
Keys chatter. “Javiar Donato. Manslaughter. I'll send you the address for the holding facility."
He hasn't even finished his sentence when my phone dings. "Good, get me out at midnight."
"You've got yourself a date," Leo agrees and adds, "I also have news about the license plate of that van you asked about, if you want to know about it now."
"Hit me," Lexy doesn't get spooked easily, and I want to know what or who is staking out the shelter.
"I linked it to a Venezuelan shell company.”
Fuck me. The puzzle keeps twisting. “Why the hell would the Venezuelans care about a shelter?”
“That’s the thing,” Leo pauses, and I can hear the satisfaction in his voice before he drops it, “I don't think they’re watching the shelter. They’re watching you.”
I knew it. Aurelio Valverde’s still nursing that grudge over me planning on breaking into his home. The bastard’s probably doing this behind Donna Margarita’s back. I should be impressed—hell, I am. I wouldn’t let that shit go either. But this? It’s a problem I don’t need right now. Especially since I made him a promise. I told him I’d kill him. And I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.
