The next night might kill one of us.
But for this heartbeat in between?
The rest of us were all still standing.
Eighteen
Tesauro Vincino
From the penthouse windows, Philadelphia looked almost honest. Rooflines. Streets like capillaries. Tiny cars creeping along the arteries. You couldn’t smell the rot from up here. Couldn’t hear the men under bridges counting grams instead of blessings. Just glass and sky and the slow, constant hum of money moving.
I was standing with a drink in my hand I hadn’t touched yet, watching the river catch the midday light. The glass wall reflected myself back—dark suit, darker eyes, no tie, top button open like I had all the time in the world.
Because I did.
Behind me, the penthouse was a study in obscene restraint. White stone. Black wood. Art that cost more than some of my employees’ lives. The city buzzed under my feet. The Bolivar Cartel buzzed at the back of my skull.
“You’re brooding.”
Isabella’s voice drifted in from the doorway.
I let my reflection ghost over theglass before I turned and glanced at her. Floor-to-ceiling windows, polished stone, a spread of leather and steel and art I’d paid too much for to impress men I didn’t respect behind closed doors. Isabella fit right into it.
She padded in barefoot across the polished white marble floor, silk dress clinging to her like poured blood, hair up, neck bare except for a gold chain with enough diamonds on it that could’ve paid off someone’s house. No makeup except the red on her mouth. She didn’t need more than that.
“I’m thinking,” I corrected.
“Same thing,” she said, stepping up beside me to look out over the skyline. “They hit the Devil’s assets. Their armory. One of those Giorlando boy’s little playgrounds by the ocean. Your plan is moving. My cousins are pleased.”
I heard the weight under the word cousins.
The Bolivar Cartel didn’t bankroll little men with little dreams. When I’d first taken their calls, years ago, I had two blocks, three bars, and a handful of scared dockhands. I wanted more. Territory. Docks. Buildings that touched the sky. Their money built it faster than my father ever could’ve imagined. Once I decided that ambition mattered more than sleeping easy, money poured into my veins.
Money came with strings though. The same money that built half the towers I could see from here would smother me if I stopped being useful.
“You sound surprised,” I said.
“I sound cautious,” she replied. “They like results,Tesauro. You know this. They funded your expansion when you couldn’t get your own people to think past South Philly. But if the profits slow, they won’t care what my last name is. They only care about their money flow and product reaching buyers.”
She tapped her nail lightly against the glass, a small metallic click.
“They’ve killed husbands before,” she added. “Made widows, remarried the women into better investments. You’re not unique. But this isn’t a surprise to you either. You know all this already. Knew it when you asked for my hand all those years ago.”
I smiled faintly. “Your way of saying you’d miss me?”
“My way of saying don’t get sentimental about this war,” she said. “We started it. Now we finish it fast, or they’ll finish you for wasting bullets and bodies.”
I turned away from her and back to the view.
Sin City with its neon and cheap perfume. The Lodge with its darker corners. Outlaw Armory. All the little revenue streams they’d just rattled. Then a bigger target, The Black Velvet. Dante, Roman’s second son’s glass-and-light ego box.
I imagined the panic in that club. The glass raining down. The bodies scrambling over each other like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
I smiled.
“Dante lives,” Isabella said. “That’s what the report said. That and his two bodyguards didn’t. Which means your plant didn’t make it either.”
A soft chime sounded from deeper in the penthouse.
