"She's ruthless," he spits, going back to Donna Margarita, but I hear the same reluctant respect that lives in me. "This makes La Famiglia anything but stable. And I’m supposed to send money to Antonio DeLuna while one of the matriarchs brings bastards to the altar?"
I suppress a chuckle. Toni, Antonio DeLuna, is my brother'sfriend. The only friend he has. He can pretend this is about business all he wants. I know he cares about what happens in La Famiglia beyond the business deal he has going.
"Your call," I tell him, once again happy that I'm not the Pakhan. I don't need the kind of headaches my brother deals with on a regular basis. My world is easy: he points, and I kill.
"The Venezuelans want New York—" an eagle screams high up in the sky, I look up to map its flight, a littlejealous of the freedom, "—they've wanted it for years. And now they have leverage over La Famiglia without New York ever knowing."
"Blyad," Grigori repeats.
In the charged silence that follows, I try to make sense of what I've learned. My brother sent me to Venezuela initially because something didn’t add up after the death of La Famiglia’s bookkeeper. Not the death itself, but the silence afterward. Edoardo Zanello did nothing. No retaliation. No escalation. An absence loud enough to raise alarms. That kind of restraint only happens when someone is protecting something—or someone. Add to that the sudden increase in chatter about old ghosts—names that should’ve stayed buried, like Viktor Voronin—the Pakhan before our father—and money trails quietly leading south, and it was enough to warrant my presence in Venezuela. Grigori doesn’t chase rumors. He verifies them.
And then there’s Toni.
Edoardo tried to pin the fallout of his accountant’s death on him, nearly getting him killed in the process. Whatever game Edoardo thought he was playing, that move alone would have earned my brother’s attention. Grigori doesn’t forgive threats against people he considers his own.
That list is mercifully short.
Three names.
His wife.
Me.
Toni.
Further down, a woman sweeps, drawing my attention back to the present. The guard at her shoulder is carrying an Israeli carbine, making me nostalgic for the last time I shot one. Those babies are awesome.
"How?" Grigori asks, calmer now, calculating, returning to Donna Margarita. "How did nobody question the parentage when she wasn't even married?"
"Because every man in that family owes her in one way or another. Because she turns enemies into donors. Because they were too busy counting their money to count the months." I edge farther into the shadows as a third guard lights a cigarette and laughs at nothing. "And because when a woman like Margarita says the baby is holy, no one wants to be the heretic."
He grunts his approval. "You admire her."
"I admire results."
"You admire what she did as a woman."
"I admire that she did it as herself." I let the next line out soft, the way I never do. I can admire a woman with ambition—a woman who forged her way into a man's world.
When I was ten, my father told me my only assets were between my legs and my name as a Bratva princess. Iasked him,What if I prove you wrong?He laughed and said,Then we’ll see.
So I entered the training barracks with the other ten-year-olds: orphans, sons of our soldiers, or sons whose mothers prayed would do them proud. My father gave me a week to throw in the towel, but Grigori knew better.
At eighteen, I put a bullet through Sergei Baranov’s eye in church while he was kissing icons. He was my father's enforcer. A position I deserved. After that, my father stopped laughing, and I became the new enforcer like I should have been two years earlier.
Father is dead now, and Grigori is the new Pakhan. I'm no longer the enforcer; I'm Grigori's secret weapon. One he sends out on more… delicate missions. Like this. Toni can't know that Grigori is working behind his back, even though it's in his best interest.
Suddenly, I catch a name through my long-range directional mic, which is pointed toward Aurelio's office just like my scope.Nicolas Conti.
The name sounds familiar. "Nicolas Conti?" I ask my brother, "The name mean anything to you?"
"Nico Conti, yeah, why?"
"Aurelio just mentioned him."
I can feel my brother's tension through the phone, "What's he saying?"
"I don't speak Spanish," I remind him. I speak several Eastern European languages, Italian, French, and English, but not Spanish.
