Thirty minutes. Enough time to plan, to anticipate, to make sure I was ready for whatever Dino had uncovered. I checked my watch, ran through every possible scenario, and imagined the documents and the leverage they might provide.
A thrill ran under my skin, sharp and dangerous. Part of me was looking forward to it. To see the information laid out, to understand the moves I could make. By the time I made a U-turn at the light, my pulse was steady and controlled, but every sense was tuned to what was coming.
The drive to the warehouse was uneventful, the streets blurring past like a bad dream. I should have been sharpening my focus, replaying Dino’s words, preparing for angles I hadn’t considered. Instead, my mind kept dragging back to Tessa—her mouth full when she tried to talk to me, the way her eyes flashed when she snapped, the sound of her cursing me out when she thought I couldn’t hear. She was irritating, distracting, and more dangerous to my focus than I wanted to admit.
I tightened my grip on the wheel and forced my attention back to the road. She was a complication I didn’t need, and yet, no matter how much I tried to shove her out of my head, she kept bleeding into the edges of my concentration.
By the time I reached the docks, the sky had gone dark, the air heavy with salt and rust. The warehouse sat at the end of the strip, its corrugated metal siding catching the glow of a single streetlight. I killed the engine and sat for a beat, letting the quiet settle over me, forcing my pulse back to even.
When I stepped out, the crunch of gravel under my boots was the only sound. The building loomed ahead, hollow and unwelcoming, but I didn’t hesitate. My stride was steady as I crossed the lot and pushed open the side door, the hinges groaning in protest.
Inside, the space was dim, lit by a few weak bulbs strung overhead. Crates lined the walls, shadows pooled in the corners, and the faint drip of water echoed somewhere in the distance. And there, at the center table, stood Dino.
Dino was an enigma. While most of the men in the mafia could be summed up as dark, violent, and dangerous, those words never seemed to stick to him. He carried himself with a cheery ease, always approachable, dressed like he’d stepped out of a fashion catalogue rather than a backroom deal.
And yet, beneath that polish, there was something deeply unsettling. His smile never reached his eyes, his friendliness always felt a touch too practiced. It was the kind of charm that made you forget, just for a second, that he wouldn’t hesitate to have your body dumped in the river if it suited him.
“Ah, Felix,” he said, shooting me a smile that looked like it was out of a toothpaste commercial. “Good to see you again.”
I really wished Rocco was here, because he had far more patience for Dino than I did.
“Dino,” I said with the slightest nod, my irritation flared at his incessant cheer. “Get to the point. What did you find?”
Dino gasped, clutching his chest like I’d wounded him. “Straight to business? No warm greeting? No asking about myday?” His grin widened, playful, though his eyes stayed flat and unreadable. “You’re going to hurt my feelings one of these days.”
I doubted Dino had feelings to hurt. Not real ones, anyway. Whatever warmth he showed was a performance, and I wasn’t about to applaud it.
“Show me what you found,” I said, stepping towards the table.
“Fine, fine. Well I was doing some digging on an… unrelated matter, and happened to stumble across this.” Dino laid out a stack of documents with numbers plastered all over them.
I glanced over the top page, skimming the rows of figures, and felt my jaw tighten. These weren’t just any numbers—they belonged to me. Revenues, expenditures, movement across shell companies. Every line, every margin, was a reflection of the businesses I ran.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“Can’t say,” he responded, not a care in the world. Dino leaned back slightly, like we were having a casual conversation.
Of course he couldn’t. With Dino, there was no telling what corners he crawled through to get his hands on something like this.
“Anyways,” he went on breezily, “I’ll give you a synopsis. Someone’s been skimming money from your businesses.”
The words hit harder than I expected, my grip tightening on the paper as I scanned the numbers again, the pattern coming into sharper focus.
“There is no way,” I said. “Something like that would have been caught.”
“It appears it wasn’t,” Dino replied evenly.
“How are you even sure?” I asked, leaning closer, my eyes scanning the documents again.
Dino’s grin widened, smug and unbothered. “Well, I am rather good at accounting,” he said, like he was bragging about a party trick instead of pointing out a hole in my operations.
I glared at Dino, every muscle in my jaw tightening. Furious didn’t even begin to describe how I felt. And more than a little embarrassed. Of all people, it had to be Dino—the eternally cheerful, annoyingly polished mafia member—who uncovered this mess in my operations.
And I knew he wasn’t lying. Dino would be a snake to get the information he needed, but he was fiercely loyal and would never lie to Ettore, the Don, or anyone who worked with him. That loyalty made his findings undeniable, and dangerous if left unchecked.
I leaned over the table, eyes scanning the stacks of documents, tracing the movements and the holes in the accounts. Every number told a story, and every story pointed to someone bold enough to bleed my operations dry.
“Alright,” I muttered, more to myself than Dino. “Time to figure out who has been skimming.”
