Leone returns his attention to his drink, but I can see the satisfaction in his expression. Teasing me is one of the few luxuries he allows himself in this job.
Most men would not risk it.
Leone knows the difference between a threat and a warning. And he knows I rarely repeat either.
Across the table, Matteo Moretti watches the exchange with mild curiosity.
Matteo is one of the youngest Dons among us, and it shows sometimes. Not in his intelligence or his instincts, both of which are excellent, but in the way he still studies the rest of us as though searching for the invisible rules of the room.
He will learn them eventually.
Giovanni Gallo sits beside him, swirling bourbon in his glass. Giovanni is sharper than Matteo, though he hides it behind humor and sarcasm more often than not.
The others will arrive soon. For now, the table is quiet.
My attention drifts back across the dining room without effort.
I watch the head waitress moves toward the bar again. She speaks briefly with the bartender and the florist perched on the stool beside her, then disappears between two tables with another tray of drinks.
She’s efficient. Always efficient.
Leone clears his throat. I don’t need a soothsayer to know he’s caught me staring again. Observing, actually.
“You realize everyone in the restaurant will start to notice eventually,” he says.
“What?” I feign ignorance.
“The way you watch her.”
“They will notice nothing,” I mouth.
“Maybe not the customers.” His gaze flicks toward the bar. “But the staff notices everything.”
That is true. Service workers survive by paying attention.
I lean back slightly in my chair. The truth is that Leone’s comment doesn’t concern me as much as he probably expects.People can notice many things without understanding them. It’s the understanding that’s the dangerous part.
Across the table, Matteo glances toward the door.
“Romano and Lucchese are late,” he says.
“They will arrive,” I reply calmly. Two people being less than an hour late to dinner gives me no reason to worry.
Matteo studies me for a moment before nodding.
It is not leadership that places me at the head of this table. No one elected me to that role. But time has a way of settling authority into certain places whether anyone acknowledges it or not.
I am older than the others. Not by a vast margin, but enough. Pushing fifty now. Old enough to remember things the others only learned about through stories.
The Borough War, for example.
The young ones call it that like it was some distant legend, something their fathers told them about over dinner. They never saw the smoke rising over the city. Never heard gunfire echoing through entire neighborhoods for weeks at a time. Never watched families bury their dead because a handful of powerful men decided pride mattered more than peace.
I was ten years old when the war started. Old enough to remember. Young enough that no one thought to shield me from it.
The memory has stayed with me longer than anything else in my life. Because wars like that begin quietly. Not with explosions or gunfire. With small incursions. A shipment that disappears. A territory that becomes suddenly unsafe. A man who vanishes one night and is never seen again.
At the time, those things felt like isolated problems. Minor disturbances. But if you look at them long enough, the pattern reveals itself.
