1
Lucian
Snow comes down slow and thick, the kind that muffles sound and masks prints. It lays itself across the black suits and the slick of the road and the low stone markers like a white apology no one asked for.
I stand with my hands in the pockets of my coat because there is nothing else to do with them; they would only show the tremor if I let them. The coffin sits open on the lowered platform, my father’s face pale and smaller than I remember. It is always smaller once the life is gone.
The men who stood beside him when he was a monster remain at the corners of the plot, caps pulled low, breath fogging. The family cemetery has always smelled faintly of earth and cold and other people’s regrets. Today it smells like burnt sugar and bitter smoke in the back of my throat.
I thought for a long time I might not come. I thought I could let them bury him and let whatever passes for power in this city settle without me. But the head of the family cannot be a ghost at his own father’s funeral—not if he wants people to rememberthere is still a living hand to steer the ship. So I came. I stand at the edge of the crowd, watching them line up to file past the coffin, each one offering the same gesture, the same flat condolences. They hand me sympathy like a coin. I do not take it.
They talk softly among themselves—sister-in-law’s makeup too bright, Cousin Sal’s new cufflinks, Father’s old men in the house already talking numbers and territories. I hear snippets: “inside job,” someone says, the words skidding out like ice. That is how it feels; the way it happened—door unlocked, guard turned, medicine slipped into a drink. Convenient, surgical. A betrayal you can measure in the blink between trust and a hand on a throat.
My father died because someone from the Morettis decided he was expendable.
The priest finishes and steps back, hands folded, eyes that have seen too many sins to bother pronouncing anything other than the ritual. The camera phones stay carefully tucked away; no vultures today.
My brother Riley is at my side—Riley with his easy jaw and his tendency to laugh at the wrong things. He’s younger by three years, more human in ways that make me impatient. He keeps his head down, but his hand finds mine for a moment and then pulls away. He thinks the gesture means warmth. I know he thinks it means we are still a pair.
I will make them remember us.
I move before I have let the silence fill the cemetery. When I speak, it is not loud; I do not need volume. My voice is a blade, quiet and precise. “Call the Morettis to parley,” I say.
A ripple goes through the congregation. The older men look at each other, calculating. The Morettis and the Romanos have always been polite with blood, arriving at settlements with wrapped ledgers and bitter wine. There are codes they follow like laws. My father used to follow them; my father used to smilewhile he ordered things that would make a man vanish for good. That man is gone. The codes are words on paper that won’t stop a bullet.
“Now?” Riley asks. His eyes flick to me, the shadow of something like panic there. I do not like panic on him. He is careful about mine; he knows it makes me colder.
“Now,” I say. “Tonight. Tell them—come to the estate at dawn.”
Murmurs, disbelief. Someone clears their throat. It is bad form to drag a feud into the coffin, to make a funeral a bargaining table. But my father is buried and the ground has not yet settled; the Morettis should have the iron in the fire while the heat is fresh. They will understand quickly enough that timing is a weapon.
“They’ll come with men,” Cousin Sal says. “They won’t come alone.”
“Good,” I answer. “Bring their men.”
I have a measure of them already. I have men along the hedgerow, men who hold the line and will not flinch when guns become the grammar of the conversation. They will be necessary, and they wait with their coats dusted in snow, hands tucked into gloves, irritation ready behind their eyes. They are the ones who do what needs to be done. I will not send them out to slaughter; I will let the Morettis see the shape of consequence and choose their own humiliation.
I do not choose territory or money. I do not want their warehouses or their shipping lanes; those are numbers, and numbers can be replaced. There is something else I want. My teeth feel the words before they leave my mouth.
“Bring me their youngest son,” I say. “The morning after next. Wrapped in a red silk bow.”
The sound of the phrase is immediate, absurd, and perfect. It cuts through the cold like a thrown match. There is thefast, quiet intake of breath, the catch of a throat, and then another sound—laughter, sharp and disbelieving from the back. A woman clutches her hand to her mouth. A man spits into the snow.
Riley turns toward me, this time not with a hand seeking reassurance but with a heat in his eyes I am not used to. “Lucian,” he says. “You can’t be serious.”
“What I want is not up for negotiation.” I do not shout. I let the words fall into the hush. “I want a product of the Morettis’ arrogance on my doorstep. Wrapped in a bow so bright they can’t mistake it for anything else.”
The bow—red and ridiculous and delicate at the throat—will be a brand. It will say: we took what you thought you kept safe, and you had no power to stop it. I do not want to break the Morettis by numbers. I want to break them in a way that can’t be undone by ledgers. I want the image to sit on their tongues and make their coffee taste of ash.
An older man coughs. “He’s only nineteen.”
“Well past manhood,” I say. “He’s a Moretti, not a child. A bargaining chip. A symbol. They will send him, or they can refuse and come with more men to kill me. But it’ll only be their blood on their hands.”
Riley’s jaw works. He is quick to temper and quicker to regret. He has always been the one who tried to smooth the edges I create by existing. “You have to think about what this will start,” he says. “You have half the police in the city watching. The Morettis will use him as bait. If they suspect we’ll hurt him?—”
“We won’t touch him unless they touch us first,” I say it because it is true in the narrow sense—because there are men who know how to read code and how to keep an agreement—and because I also know that promises are as fragile as the bow I’ve demanded. Men who do not keep theirs die quieter for it.
Riley moves closer, lowering his voice. “He’s nineteen, Lucia. That’s—” He stops himself as if the number itself is an argument. He is not willing to make the statement that would make me look like a monster in his eyes. He never will.
