I drove one last combination into the bag—left, left, right, the wound screaming, my vision whiting at the edges—and stepped back, chest heaving, sweat running into my eyes. My side throbbed. I'd pulled a stitch. Probably.
Didn't matter. In forty-nine minutes I'd be sitting at Dante's left, where I always sat, close enough to reach a weapon or a throat. I'd keep my mouth shut and my eyes open and I'd watch Enzo Valenti smile his careful smile and play his careful game.
And I'd remember. Every word, every gesture, every lie. I'd file it all away in the place where I kept things that would eventually require answering.
Pain for Dante. Pain for me. Pain for Gemma, who didn't ask for any of this.
Soon enough, Enzo would understand pain too. Not today. Today was politics. But soon.
I unwrapped my hands, flexed my fingers, and went upstairs to shower. The blood on the tape was mine. It wouldn't always be.
Iwasfortyminutesearly.I was always forty minutes early.
Marchetti's smelled like cigars and marinara. The private dining room was upstairs, past the main restaurant where a couple of old men were already eating lunch at eleven in the morning like it was their constitutional right. One of them nodded at me. I didn't know him. I nodded back anyway, because this was Taylor Street and you respected the rituals when you didn't know whose grandfather you were greeting.
The stairs creaked on the fourth and seventh steps. I remembered from years ago, the first time Vito brought me here. I was sixteen, too young for a sit-down, but our father wanted Dante to observe and Dante wanted me close. That was always the arrangement. Dante watched. I stood ready.
I tried to remember what Marco had been doing. Chatting up some girl, probably.
The private dining room hadn't changed. Long oval table, dark wood, scratched to hell and polished to a shine that couldn't quite hide the damage. Eight chairs, heavy enough to be weapons in a pinch. Cream walls, a painting of the Amalfi Coast that was either very good or very bad—I'd never figured out which. Two windows, both painted shut. A sideboard with glasses and a decanter of something amber that was probably older than me.
Two exits. The main door I'd come through, and the service door to the kitchen. I crossed the room and tested the kitchen door's handle, the way I tested it every single time. The lockcaught, held for half a second, then gave. Still broken. It had been broken for three years. I'd mentioned it to the manager twice. Neutral ground was only neutral if the exits were secure, and this one could be shouldered open by anyone with a purpose and a functioning arm.
I made a note. Then I made my way around the room.
Sight lines from the head chair: clear view of both doors, back to the wall. That's where the mediator would sit—whatever underboss the families had agreed on to run the table this time. Sight lines from the east side: main door visible, kitchen door in peripheral vision. Manageable. The west side was worse—the window threw a glare in the afternoon that could blind you for half a second, and half a second was a lifetime if someone came through a door wrong.
I pulled Dante's chair to the east side, two seats from the head. Back to the wall. Both doors visible. I set mine to his left, slightly closer to the kitchen entrance, angled so I could stand and move without the table catching my hips. The wound in my side had its own opinion about sudden movements—a sharp, specific complaint that arrived about half a second after the motion, like a bill delivered late.
My phone buzzed. Dante.
Running 15. Gemma.
That was it. One word for the reason. I knew whatGemmameant in this context. It meant she'd noticed he hadn't eaten. It meant she'd put something in front of him and stood there with those big brown eyes until he sat down and picked up a fork. It meant my brother—the most disciplined man I'd ever known, the man who once skipped sleep for four days during a federal investigation without breaking rhythm—had been derailed by a woman who probably made him scrambled eggs and toast.
He'd told me yesterday on the phone, and his voice had done something I'd never heard before. Not the don's voice. Notthe brother's voice. Something underneath both, quieter, like a room with the lights turned low.She made me sit down, Santo. Me. My Little. Wouldn't let me leave until I finished.And I'd heard the wonder in it. The genuine surprise of a man who'd spent his whole life taking care of everyone else discovering what it felt like to have someone fuss over him.
They were an unusual couple. A Little meant that sometimes, Gemma became childlike, and he cared for her. He was a Daddy Dom—a dominant but also a caregiver. The more I learned about it, the more I was intrigued. Mind you, I didn’t want Dante to know. And Idefinitelydidn’t want Marco to know.
I didn't comment. I never commented. What was I going to say?I'm glad you're eating breakfast? Congratulations on finding a human woman who isn't terrified of you?I wasn't built for those conversations. I was built for the other thing—the chair placement, the door checks, the mental catalog of who sits where and what they're carrying.
I sat in my chair and waited.
Twenty minutes. The room was quiet enough to hear the restaurant below—faint clatter of dishes, a murmur of conversation in Italian, someone laughing. Normal sounds. Civilian sounds. A world that ran on appetite and habit and the simple expectation that lunch would arrive and no one would die over it.
Downstairs, the front door opened. Voices. The first of the families arriving.
I straightened in my chair. Rolled my shoulders once, felt the wound register its complaint, and let my face go flat. The blade didn't have expressions. The blade had edges.
Itwasn’tlongbeforethings got serious.
Enzo Valenti walked into the room like he was coming into church—deliberate, composed, with the particular reverence of someone who believed he was the most important person present and wanted God to know it.
He was flanked by two men I recognized—one heavy, one lean, both carrying under their jackets in ways they thought were subtle but weren't. They positioned themselves at the sideboard like they belonged there, close enough to move, far enough to suggest they weren't worried.
Enzo himself—silver temples, grey suit, pale eyes that cataloged the room in a single sweep—took the center seat across from the mediator without asking. Open hands on the table. Palms up. The universal gesture ofI come in peace, performed by a man who'd had Dante's fiancée dragged from her home ten days ago.
Dante was already seated at my left. He'd arrived shortly after me, carrying the faintest trace of something that might have been coffee on his breath and looking more settled than he had any right to look. He'd nodded at me once. I'd nodded back. That was the extent of our pre-game.
