Margarita sighs; the sound drips with disappointment. "Isn’t it obvious, dear boy? The capos needed to be… distracted. It was the only way they’d accept Edoardo as their new Don. They would have never agreed otherwise, not with him being so young."
Roberto lets out a humorless laugh. "Great. And now we owe those motherfuckers? For the rest of our lives? Why?"
Margarita’s voice drops, and the edge of irritation becomes more obvious. "If you think I’d allow us to owe anybody anything, you’re not as clever as I thought."
The conniving and cunning nature of this woman has pulled me away from scrolling, though I still stare at my phone, pretending not to listen. But just then, the captain announces that we’re about to take off. A flight attendant appears to take our drinks, and we strap ourselves into our seats. Roberto and Margarita fall silent, and I can finally continue my scrolling, but my mind is still racing with what I just heard.
I knew that Edoardo becoming our Don had been contested by several capos. He was barely of legal drinking age when his father died. The thought has me shooting a quick glance at Margarita. Before she can catch me, I turn it back to my phone to look up Leonardo Zanello. At the time, I was too young to pay attention to his death or the political fallout. All I knew was that we were at war with the Venezuelans and that war cramped my style of going out. Shit, I wish I had those kinds of worries again.
The plane accelerates. I hate the feeling of becoming airborne, like somebody is pulling out the carpetunderneath my feet. My stomach plummets, and I’m glad for having the distraction of looking through my phone; otherwise, I’d be a nervous mess.
A headline from the past stops me cold.
Prominent New York Businessman, Two Others Killed in Fiery Wrong-Way Collision
I click, and the screen fills with the familiar face of Leonardo Zanello—the Don of the New York Cosa Nostra before Edoardo.
NEW YORK, NY — In the early hours of Sunday morning, Leonardo Zanello, 52, was killed in a fatal collision on the Long Island Expressway. According to police reports, Zanello’s vehicle, driven by long-time employee Benno Damato, was exiting an off-ramp in Queens when a wrong-way driver struck them head-on at high speed. Both vehicles erupted into flames upon impact.
Zanello and Damato were pronounced dead at the scene. The other driver, identified as Víctor Manuel Reyes, 38, of Caracas, Venezuela, was also killed instantly. Reyes leaves behind a wife and three children in his home country.
I scroll down, scanning faster now and feeling my pulse quicken. It can’t be a coincidence. A Venezuelan driver. The middle of the night. A head-on collision with the Don of the New York Cosa Nostra.
My fingers tremble slightly on the screen as it becomes clear to me that the Venezuelans killed Leonardo intentionally. They killed him to start a war. And Margarita was in the middle of it.
But why?
My eyes flick up from the phone to Margarita, sitting across the aisle, calmly sipping her champagne, as if she hasn’t been at the center of bloodshed that claimed hundreds of lives—not just Venezuelans and Cosa Nostra soldiers, but civilians too. Why? Because she wanted Edoardo to be Don?
Again, why?
And now she wants Roberto on the throne?
The jet pitcheslow over the brown haze of Caracas. I’m leaning forward, my palms are slick, and my pulse is thrumming like a warning flare, when my burner phone starts vibrating. I snatch it up before the second ring, my eyes flick to Pierre, who’s hunched over a laptop across from me, and then to Mario, who’s already buckled in and scanning the tarmac through the window like there’s a sniper waiting for us on every rooftop.
I answer. It’s Valentina, my eyes and ears in half the airports south of the equator. She talks in clipped Spanish, "They’re here, boss. Roberto, Sophia, and Donna Margarita. Their jet landed early this morning."
For a moment, I can’t even process the last name she dropped. "Donna Margarita?" The jet brakes hard, slamming me back, and I almost drop the phone.
Valentina confirms it. "Sí."
I close my eyes and imagine her face: Donna Margarita Giordano, matriarch of the Giordano family, eyes black as volcanic glass, cheekbones so sharp they could probably gut a man. I've seen her a few times, and she’s looked through me like she does through all the foot soldiers. I’ve heard stories that she married off all three daughters to rival clans—two for power, one for spite. That she is behind the death of her late husband, and that she is running the Giordano family. Legends, but the kinds that gain traction because they’re close enough to being possible. I picture Sophia surrounded by that kind of darkness, and the seatbelt buckle digs into my palm until my fingers ache.
We taxi straight to a private hangar, where several black SUVs are waiting for us. Mario's on the phone as soon as the door pops, speaking in a low growl to his contacts on the ground. Without being bothered by passport control or customs, our group heads straight for the armored SUVs. I catch my own reflection in the glass—shadowed, jaw locked, eyes already mapping the city like I’m fighting it—and I get that old taste in my mouth, carbon and copper, the flavor of impending violence.
Inside the SUV, I take the laptop from Pierre and swipe through the images he’s already assembled. The airport CCTV footage is grainy, but it’s them. Roberto’s easy to pick out, with that lazy swagger and a suit that costs more than most cars on this street. Sophia is behind him, looking, as always, like the goddess she is. There’s a tremor in her walk, and I wonder how I had ever missed that before.
Next to them is Donna Margarita, flanked by two massive men in matching black. Her tight blood-red dress makes her stand out and look much younger than her seventy-something years. An illusion, like everything else about her. The group moves through the airport like a procession. People scramble out of their way by instinct, no doubt sensing the predators in their midst.
I flick to the next set of photos: the black stretch limo that picks them up, the route it takes out of the city, the stop at a nondescript high-rise in Las Mercedes—probably a safehouse or a war room—before the final leg through the traffic-choked sprawl toward the coast. Pierre overlays the data, and I see it now: the destination is a cliffside mansion overlooking the Caribbean. The property is tagged in the dossier, and the owner’s name jumps out at me: Don AurelioEl LeónValverde.
I turn to Mario, who’s been reading over my shoulder. "You know this guy?"
He grunts. "Never met him, but know enough to know you don’t want to. He’s a legend here. Runs the ports, the city, the airspace. Controls the police, the unions, all the dirty work. Even the cartels don’t mess with him unless they have to. Rumor has it his father tried to get his legs into New York; it looks like the son is trying now."
Pierre adds without looking up, "His security is ex-FARC, ex-military, and ex-KGB. A hybrid pack of psychos."
I chew on that, watching the city go by. The last time I tried to hit a house modeled after a fortress, I lost twoguys and spent a week crawling through rat-infested tunnels with a bullet in my thigh. Valverde’s mansion is even worse. Satellite images show twelve-foot walls, electric fencing, watchtowers on every corner, and something that looks like a private airstrip carved out of the jungle behind it.
