My hand slowly balled into a fist.
Vladimir. The Russian. The one the ledger kept naming without naming. The one who’d watched us at the casino with snake eyes and a thin little smile.
“If Vladimir is truly working with Tesauro Vincino,” Roman said, words precise, “then I’ll deal with him.”
“You have to cut the head off the snake in your yard before he can pass along anything else,” Blackjack said. “The ledger’s already in play. The shit they wrote in it is getting kicked off. They’re acting on it now. You saw it. They’re hitting my businesses. They hit the Vipers. You don’t hit your own snake, he’s going to keep whispering in Tesauro’s ear while we bleed. And if we bleed out, you’ll be standing all alone.”
Roman let out a slow breath that wasn’t quite a sigh.
“You think I don’t know that?” he asked. “You thinkI haven’t spent the last day staring at that man wondering how long it would take for me to be certain before I put a bullet in his skull?”
“No one’s asking you to be certain,” I said before I could stop myself.
Heads turned. Blackjack shot me a quick look that wasn’t quite a warning.
Roman didn’t sound offended. “Jersey Boy,” he said. “You there?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Speak,” he said.
I shifted my weight, palms on the back of the chair in front of me.
“The ledger isn’t just a theory anymore,” I said. “Parts of it are happening. Routes listed in there? Versions of them are being hit. Names tied together? They’re showing up in the wrong places at the wrong time. We knocked their go/no-go stage out of alignment when Miami grabbed the bike with the ledger in it, but they didn’t throw the plan away. They’re improvising with the pieces they remember. Tesauro doesn’t need the ledger in his hand anymore to start swinging. He’s got more than enough of it in his fucking head.”
Valkyrie’s eyes flicked toward me, sharp and approving.
“The book still matters,” I went on. “It’s got faces and fronts and side deals mapped out that could help you when you start carving people off your tree. But as a playbook? It’s already opened. We’repast stopping them from starting the war they wanted. We’re in the middle of it. Hiding behind audits and hoping your rat slips will just give him time to dig deeper and start burning anything that ties back to him.”
Blackjack nodded once. “He’s right,” he said. “We fumbled one piece of their opening. They adjusted. Tesauro’s not crying over lost ink. He’s going after assets he already knows by heart. Mine. The Shore Vipers. Your bigger assets are next if they’re not already getting tapped. The Shore Vipers were only hit because Miami went down on their turf and they got dragged into it. They never planned on them being a part of this.”
“I’m aware,” Roman said. The edge in his voice sharpened. “You think I haven’t seen men loitering where they don’t belong? Cars idling too long near my restaurants, my hotels, my bars?”
“Then you know there’s no more ‘maybe’ here,” Blackjack said.
Silence again. Then Roman spoke, quieter.
“I don’t trust many people,” he said. “You know this Alice. My circle is small for a reason. But small doesn’t mean empty.” A pause. “Tesauro thinks he’s clever. Thinks I’ve been asleep at my own table. He doesn’t know that I have my own fail-safes. People close to him who are closer to me. Men who’ve been at his side for years that he thinks are his, but are in my pocket.”
“You going to use them?” Blackjack asked.
“Yes,” Roman said simply. “Vladimir is not the only one who can pass informationquietly. I’ll pull on my own threads. Harder. I have… plans that I didn’t discuss in that casino because I don’t discuss my fail-safes openly.”
“You’re discussing them now,” Blackjack said.
“I’m informing you they exist,” Roman corrected. “You don’t need the specific details. All you need to know is that I’m not going to sit on my hands and let the Vincinos and Bolivars carve up everything I built. I will move. And when I do, it will draw Tesauro out. Him, or his favorites. I’ll make it very tempting for him to step onto a board he thinks he’s in control of.”
He didn’t say how. He didn’t have to.
A spark lit in the back of my brain. Hotels. Construction sites. Family. The kind of bait a man like Tesauro couldn’t ignore.
Blackjack rubbed his jaw. “Whatever you’re planning,” he said, “just remember we’re already in it. You pull the pin on something big, we’re going to be the ones catching the shrapnel on our blocks while you’re doing root canals on your family.”
“That’s why I called,” Roman said. “To tell you that whatever comes next isn’t me abandoning you to handle my mess. We’re in this together. I declared my side. I will act like it. And to tell you this. Watch your six. Tesauro won’t stop at your clubs or bars. He’ll come for your home if he thinks it’ll break you faster.”
“Same to you,” Blackjack said. “You go poking bears in your own house, don’t be surprised when one of them turns around and takes a swing. Don’t turn your back on anyone until you see what they do when youbleed.”
Dead air for a breath.
