But it’s a weak, bitter lie.
Because the truth is, I want to rip her away from him and never let her go. I want to lock every door behind us and burn every name that thinks it owns her.
And that’s when it hits me one more time, with brutal, surgical clarity: I can’t keep standing still.
If I ever want a chance—any real chance—I have to become more than just another soldier in Carlos Orsi’s army. I have to build something that no one can take from me. I have to make my own kingdom. Built on power, territory, and fear.
The problem is my name, or rather, my lack thereof. The Zanello family controls the other five Cosa Nostra families in New York. Between the DeLuna, Sartori, Giordano, Conti, and Orsi families, all branches of crime have been staked out. If I want to build my own empire, I can't step on any of their feet. It needs to be something that nobody has done so far. Not drugs, prostitution, money laundering, arms trafficking, gambling, and whatever else they have their greedy fingers in. This needs to be different and mine. It needs to earn the respect of the entire New York Cosa Nostra if I want a chance of winning Sophia. And it has to be done in the shadows.
I've already lost a month. A whole fucking month spent circling her like a ghost, convincing myself that I was doing the right thing by staying quiet and still. I won’t lose another.
I can’t become what I need to be while orbiting her like some lovesick shadow. And I definitely can’t do it underCarlos Orsi. The decent thing would be to ask him for a clean break. God knows he owes me that much after what I did. After saving Sophia. No, not just her, but the other capos’ daughters. He wouldn’t have just lost face that night in the alley. He would’ve lost power, respect, and alliances. He knows that. A hundred grand and a crappypromotiondon’t even come close to settling that debt.
But this isn’t about what’s decent anymore.
This is about what’s necessary.
Seeing Sophia every day is like carving out my own heart with a spoon. I know I can’t stay near her. I know I can’t breathe the same air and not want her. If I keep orbiting her, I’ll never rise. I’ll be the same man—just better dressed. Still a shadow. Still not enough.
School smarts have never been my forte. Nobody ever checked my homework or pushed me to aim higher. But I’m good with patterns. Systems. Quiet vulnerabilities. I can’t quote philosophers or solve equations, but give me an encrypted server or a broken man with secrets, and I’ll crack them both open the same way: slow, precise, final.
I’m good with computers. Not flashy-hacker good, not neon-lit rooms, and video-game soundtracks good. Just quietly dangerous. I can ghost through firewalls, vanish from surveillance, scrub a trail until it looks like it never existed.
I can’t glance at a ledger and tell you where the numbers don’t add up. But Icanstare at the same page andfeelwhere something’s wrong, where the flow breaks, where the story stutters. I see the fracture lines others miss, the dots no one else bothers to connect.
That’s why Nestor, Carlos’s second, kept me close. Extortion. Weakness-hunting. I can find a man’s fault line and press until he cracks. And I know, deep down in my gut, that there is more to it than Nestor understands. More I can build on if I choose.
The Contis—especially Stephano—have made an empire out of that.
Carlos Orsi traffics in fear and fists. But the Contis? They steal futures with silence. No blood. No bullets. Just zeroes and ones, spread across a dozen jurisdictions, buried under shell companies and false identities. We’re not talking about fleecing pensioners or running email scams. We’re talking about millions. Gone in hours, lifted clean from offshore hedge funds, corporate tax shelters, crypto laundries. Whole portfolios gutted and rebuilt in their name before anyone even notices the breach.
It’s clean. Elegant. Untouchable.
I can't do anything like that without pissing the Contis off, but I feel there is something there, in between.
Stephano Conti runs his crew like a black-market intelligence agency. He doesn’t just fight the old-world capos—he outpaces them. His men wear suits, not chains. They speak in code and calculus. But I don’t let the polished look fool me—he’s every bit as dangerous as Carlos. Plus, he's smarter, meaner, and quieter.
I’ve been watching him.
Studying him.
Because if I want what he has, I need to learn how he plays the game, better yet, how to beat him at it.
I start drawing up a plan.
I’ll need to step back from Carlos carefully. Not just walk away—I need to sever our relationship. Quietly. Cleanly. No mess. I’ll call it a side project, a personal venture, something I’ve earned. He’ll sneer, but he won’t stop me. He’ll underestimate me. That’s his mistake.
I’ll vanish into the background and begin building from the bones up. My own network. My own rules. I’ll find a way to get close to Stephano, not as a lackey, but as a student.
And, eventually, a rival.
Because one day soon, when the dust settles and the lines are redrawn, I’m not going to stand behind any man’s throne.
I’m going to build my own.
And then… I’ll come back for her.
And when that time comes, I won’t have to watch her love someone else.
