Not until recently.
One of his daughters, grown now, contacted a DNA testing company of all things, chasing answers, not knowing what she was setting in motion.
That was the stone at the top of the hill. Now it's rolling. And for the first time since I've known him, Enzo has been smiling. With reason.
"Relax," I tell Gabriel, realizing he's close to snapping. Unexplainably, this woman has gotten under his skin. "If you're going to do something stupid, at least do it clean." Gabriel's head snaps toward me. "Just shoot the husband," I continue. "Comfort the widow. Simple."
The words hang in the air for one, two, three seconds. It is not a joke.
Gabriel holds my gaze, and something in his face fractures. "I can't hurt her," he says, the words quiet but unmistakable. "She loves him."
I study him. Really look. I used to think the only thing that mattered was loyalty, but now I know better. The only thing that matters is restraint. Men like us, we're all born with a flaw—some to violence, some to greed, some to the need to be adored—but the one that gets you killed is wanting what you're not allowed.
"No woman gets that close," I declare. Not to men like us. Not without consequences. A memory flickers across my mind. Brief, uninvited, dangerous. A girl's hair stuck to my palm with blood, the smell of copper and perfume. I crush the memory before it gets any further. There's no room for sentiment here.
Alessio gives a low whistle. "You hear that, Gabe? Massimo just diagnosed you."
Gabriel doesn't blink. But he huffs a sigh that lets us know he's finished debating his private life. Just to be sure we understand, he asks, "Okay, so why are we here?"
I let the silence after the question expand, testing the air for any trace of disrespect, any hint that the men assembled here have forgotten where they are or who I am. But they know. We've all bled for this city, for this organization, and for each other. They were the men beside me when my blood turned against me. The ones who chose me anyway. I trust them to the extent that anyone trusts men like us, which is to say: until one of us stops breathing.
Enzo sets his glass down. The click is a trigger, resetting every set of eyes to him. "Because someone cut our coke, and six people died," he informs them.
The dull, echoing pain of it unspools through the room, invisible but absolute. Killings happen all the time in Vegas, overdoses, disappearances, bodies in the desert, or, if you're really unlucky, the Clark County coroner's freezer. But this? This is a violation. Not the deaths themselves, but the method.
Alessio curses under his breath, a creative string of Italian vowels that would have made my grandmother proud. "That's not a warning shot. That's a billboard."
"One of them was famous enough to get the fucking press all over it," I add, my tone as flat and cold as the marble beneath my shoes.
Enzo meets my gaze with the wordless communication of soldiers: I have your back, and if you die, I'll kill the man who made it happen. Damiano leans back in his chair. His face is built for grinning, all sharp lines and cocky Mediterranean angles, but even he can't find anything funny about this. "So, what? Someone wants to make us look like chumps?"
"Someone wants us to burn," I say. "Not just me. All of us. They want us on the defensive. They want to see if we'll eat our own."
There's a moment of collective consideration, the kind that in other settings might pass for a prayer.
Enzo inhales. "The coke came from Del and Norm. Neither of them cut it."
Gabriel folds his arms and closes his eyes for a millisecond, then opens them razor-sharp. "Del was a pro. He wasn't stupid enough to contaminate supply, not even if he was paid twice what he's worth."
"And Norm," Alessio offers, "was a careless little shit, but he wasn't disloyal."
"Not until he roasted at eighteen hundred degrees," Damiano jokes. It's tasteless, but that's Damiano: he only ever jokes when he wants to draw blood.
The air in the room shifts. My mouth opens, but before I can speak, Enzo puts a hand on my forearm. I let him. If there's one man on this planet who can touch me in front of my own crew and not lose a finger, it's him.
"Easy," he warns. "We need clear heads."
He's right. I exhale once, then twice.
Damiano shrugs; the motion is all bones and bravado. "What? I'm just saying, that's one way to guarantee brand consistency." The others don't laugh, but I notice the smirks.
Enzo leans in, keeping his voice low and surgical. "This isn't a comedy hour."
"Ann cut the product," I throw out before this conversation deteriorates any further.
"Who the fuck is Ann?" Alessio asks, looking from one of us to the next as if the answer might be written on the back of Enzo's hand.
"Norm's girlfriend," Enzo supplies, no judgment in his tone, only the fatalist's acceptance that every man's worst undoing is a woman somewhere, sooner or later.
