We then followed him down the hall.
***
Blackjack’s office felt smaller with so much war in it.
He sat behind his desk, phone in the middle on speaker, the screen glowing bright against scratched wood. Spade leaned against the filing cabinet, Mirage took up space by the window, Ace was perched on the arm of a chair. 8-Ball closed the door behind us and stayed near it like a wall.
Roman’s voice came through the speaker low and controlled. The kind of voice you got when you’d built an empire on other men’s bones andgot tired of shouting about it.
“…three places simultaneously,” he was saying as we had stepped in. “No coincidence. Calculated.”
Blackjack jerked his chin at us, then at the phone. Sit down and shut up was universal language. I stayed on my feet.
Valkyrie stood to one side of the desk, arms folded. I took the other side, near the corner. Close enough to see the phone.
“You believe us now?” Blackjack asked.
He didn’t sound rattled. He sounded insulted.
“I believed you before,” Roman replied.
Blackjack leaned forward, forearms braced on the desk. “This is the part where you say the words out loud,” he said. “So, my men know what side of this you’re standing on.”
Another small silence.
“The Giorlando family,” he said slowly, “stands with the Devil’s Aces and the Shore Vipers. Tesauro Vincino has made hostile moves against our shared interests, our docks, and our people. That makes him my enemy just as much as yours.”
Spade let out a low breath. Mirage’s jaw flexed.
“There it is,” Blackjack said. “War it is, then.”
“War was already declared,” Roman replied. “I’m just acknowledging it formally.”
“Doesn’t change the problem we talked about at the casino,” Blackjack said. “You still got rot in your walls. You know it. That ledger just gave you names forsome of the mold. But you still don’t know which beams are carrying it.”
Roman exhaled quietly. “I’ve had conversations,” he revealed. “Dock captains. Accountants. A few middle-men who seemed to be living slightly above what I pay them.”
“Let me guess,” 8-Ball said. “Everyone swore loyalty. No one knew anything.”
“Not anything they were willing to admit while still attached to their fingernails,” Roman said dryly. “I’ve made it very clear that anyone caught feeding the Vincinos information will wish they’d died in their mother’s womb and were never born. People get stupid when they’re scared. Sometimes they get honest. So far, I’ve only gotten stupid.”
“Talk is slow,” Blackjack said. “And we’re out of time.”
Roman didn’t argue.
Blackjack glanced at me, then at Valkyrie, then at the phone.
“You know as well as I do that a ledger this detailed doesn’t just happen overnight,” Blackjack said. “The Vincinos didn’t wake up last week and decide to fuck you. To fuck us. They’ve been building this for years. Buying people. Stitching a takeover together. You poking around now is just making whoever’s in on it dig deeper and clean up behind themselves.”
“Suggestions?” Roman asked. He didn’t say it like a man asking for help. He said it like a man asking what weapon you were about to handhim.
Blackjack didn’t hesitate.
“Vladimir was in the next room when I told you what we’d found. He was the only one there you said when I sent you those photos. Then Tesauro’s boy shows up at my gate talking about you sitting with me and ‘passing pictures’ around like he’d been in the room himself.”
Roman’s silence was heavier this time.
“You can run your audits,” Blackjack said. “Talk to your captains. Check your numbers. But it won’t matter if you let the man with a direct line to Tesauro keep standing next to your throne. You don’t just have a leak, Roman. You’ve got a fucking faucet. You know exactly what I’m saying.”
