Leo blinks. "What?"
"Cracks. Spoofing. Biometric hacks. You know how to vanish a man, make it look like he never existed."
He nods slowly. "I dabble."
I look him straight in the eye.
"What if you worked for me?" I say. "Not Carlos. Not the Family. Just me."
Leo stiffens. "What’s the angle?"
"No more breaking knees for rent money," I say. "We build something better. Something cleaner. Digital. Untraceable. You want out? You earn it. I’ll bury your name so deep no one finds it unless I want them to."
He studies me for a long moment.
"You’re serious."
"Deadly," I say. "I’m done playing dinosaur games. Carlos is going extinct. He just doesn’t know it yet."
Leo flicks his cigarette, still watching me. "What’s this thing called?"
I smile, just a little. "Omertà Infernale.”
Leo raises an eyebrow.
"We deal in leverage, same as them—only we use keyboards, not switchblades."
He whistles under his breath. Then nods once. "I’m in."
Just like that, the wheel turns.
Not with blood.
But with code.
And one more man who sees the future thesame way I do.
Three days after the wedding…
The whirring sound of the tattoo gun irritates my headache. I got drunk for three days. Not buzzed. Not into oblivion.Obliterated.Bourbon, tequila, whatever the hell was in the bottle. I didn’t care. Anything that made the ache quieter. Anything that blurred her face when I closed my eyes.
My Sophia got married.
To another man.
A man who held her hand. Who stood at the altar and promised her forever with a smile I wanted to break in half. I watched her and Roberto board the plane. Stood just far enough from the tarmac to keep out of sight, but close enough to see her smile. She looked happy.
That smile destroyed me more than the wedding because it didn’t look forced. It didn’t look like fear. It looked real.
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter. The result’s the same.
She’s gone. She married a mafia prince, born into a seat at the table I had to crawl across glass to even approach. He’d better cherish what was given to him. Because if he doesn’t… I will destroy him.
The needle bites into my skin, dragging hot ink over the left side of my ribs. It’s a design I sketched out last night, half-drunk and half-mad: A black chess queen, fracturedbut unbroken. Her crown is slightly crooked. Thorns climb around her like a cage and armor all at once. Roses so sharp, they bleed where they bloom.
She’ll never know it’s for her. But it is. Every line. Every cut.
It’s not her name I ink into my skin, it’s what she means.
