Massimo’s eyebrows shoot up. "You got married?"
"Yes," I say, clipping the word. "Try to keep up."
"And you brought your wife," he huffs, "to Caracas."
"She insisted," I say.
"She always insists," Oksana corrects.
Massimo stares at her like she’s a puzzle he doesn’t have time to solve.
Fine. Better this way. He doesn’t need to know who she really is.
Raf steps forward, arms crossed. "What are you doing here, Manetti?"
Massimo rounds on him. "What amIdoing here? What the hell areyoudoing here? All of you? Inmywar zone?"
His war zone?
Interesting.
Raf tilts his head. "We have business with Valverde."
Massimo laughs; it sounds sharp and humorless. "No. You don’t."
Oksana raises a brow. "We don't?"
Massimo points at her. "You." He points at me. "And you." He points at Raf. "And definitely you—" His jaw tightens. "All three of you need to get the fuck out of Caracas before you turn a controlled situation into a fucking crater."
"Controlled?" I echo, incredulous. "Don’t tell me you’re in bed with the Venezuelans."
He steps into my space, close enough that I can smell expensive cologne and old anger. His voice drops, sharp and contained. "No. I’m containing them. There’s a difference."
I scoff. "Funny way of doing it, considering your casinos are laundering their money."
His mouth curls, not into a smile. "Funny thing about leverage," he growls calmly. "Sometimes you let it flow so you can see where it goes. And sometimes you wait until everyone forgets whose hand is on the valve."
His voice drops, final. "You want blood, take it somewhere else. Because if you light this city on fire now, you don’t just create chaos—you create collateral damage."
Raf smiles. Not wide. Not friendly. The kind of smile a man wears when he’s just spotted the hidden wire in a bomb.
"Collateral damage," Raf repeats thoughtfully. "Yeah. That’s the part that gets messy." Raf tilts his head, casual as a man discussing the weather. "But if what you actually need is two extractions, clean, alive—no explosions, no headlines, no congressional phone calls—then blowing up Caracas isn’t the move."
That gets Massimo's attention. He becomes very still. Not stiff—controlled. Dangerous in the way men are when something private has just been brushed with the back of a knife.
"Careful," he warns quietly.
Raf doesn’t flinch. "I am being careful. That’s my point." He gestures toward the city beyond the glass. "Silvestre and Aurelio don’t just hold cartel leverage. They hold people. People they think make them untouchable."
For half a second, I’m lost. That pisses me off. I don’t miss patterns. Ever. Oksana looks just as clueless as I am. Judging by the tight line of Raf’s mouth, he knows it too, and he’s enjoying it. The bastard wears that slow, demonic smile like a tell, dangling information like a livewire, just out of reach, waiting to see who'll reach for it first. Normally, I’d let him stew.
I’m about to ask anyway when it hits. "Vegas," I say. Flat. Certain. "Of course."
The word lands, and the room shifts into focus. I haven’t been tracking global intel the way I usually do—normally, I know when a train derails in Japan before the smoke clears—but my attention’s been divided lately. Still, somethings punch through the noise. A high-profile kidnapping in Vegas was one of them. The kind you don’t miss.
Carter Whitford. Senator Kingsley’s chief of staff. Groomed golden boy. And his son. Taken clean. No claims. No chatter.
Senator Kingsley—theSenator Kingsley—has been pushing a Nevada bill designed to choke drug import routes under the polished language of anti-trafficking reform. The kind of legislation that makes cartels bleed slowly and quietly. Kingsley also happens to be Carter’s father-in-law. The boy’s grandfather.
