“Santo — you’re bleeding through your shirt. Sal’s been shot. I have glass in my hair and a—“
“No.” The word again. Not angry. Not harsh. Absolute.
“We’re still going,” he said. “Have to. We’re in danger until the family sit down.”
Midge trembled inside my jacket. The small body vibrating against my ribs with the sustained, fine-grained tremor of a creature who had been terrified beyond her capacity to process and was now operating on the auxiliary systems — the deep, old wiring that said stay close, stay warm, stay alive. I pressed my hand over her. Felt the heartbeat. Still fast. Still there.
I looked at Santo. The blood on his shirt. The suit that was ruined. The dark eyes that held mine with the specific, unshakeable quality of a man who had just taken gunfire and covered my body with his own and was now telling me they were still going because the mission mattered, because Maria mattered, because I mattered enough to fight for and the fight wasn’t over.
“Okay,” I said.
“I need you to be safe. You understand?”
I nodded.
We drove to Marchetti’s.
Chapter 17
Cora
Thebloodgotusthrough the door faster than any name could have.
Marchetti’s was dim. Old-world lighting—wall sconces throwing amber circles on dark paneling, the kind of restaurant that hadn’t changed its bulbs since the Clinton administration and considered that a selling point. The host saw us and his face did something complicated. His eyes went to Santo’s shirt first—the bloom of red spreading from the ribs, the charcoal jacket failing to hide it—then to my forehead, where the glass had opened the skin above my eyebrow, then to the general condition of two people who looked like they’d crawled out of a car wreck, which was exactly what we’d done.
He didn’t ask questions. He led us through.
The private dining room was through a door at the back—heavy, wood, the kind of door that absorbed sound and kept secrets. It opened and the room—full of the voices of powerful-looking men—went silent.
The oval table. Just like the napkin. Dante at the head in his dark suit, the bruise on his jaw faded to yellow, his hands flat on the table in that deliberate open posture. Marco beside him—phone absent, face stripped of charm, the analyst visible underneath. Around the table, the families. Men I didn’t know but recognized by type—the particular way powerful men sat in chairs, the way they held space, the way their eyes moved when a door opened.
Every one of those eyes was on us.
I sat down beside Santo. The chair scraped against the floor. Glass fell from my hair—a small bright fragment that hit the tablecloth and caught the candlelight. Midge shifted inside the jacket against my ribs, her body a tight knot of warmth and tremor.
“Jesus Christ,” Marco said. Low. The words leaving him before he could stop them, the charm completely gone, just his brother bleeding through a dress shirt in a room full of people who needed to believe the Carusos had everything under control.
Dante’s face didn’t change. But his hands left the table. A fraction of a second—the composure cracking at the seams before the seams sealed themselves. His eyes moved over Santo, over me, performing the same rapid assessment Santo had done in the car. Cataloging damage. Filing it. Moving on.
“Sit-down hasn’t started yet,” Dante said. Calm. The voice of a man who had decided that two bleeding people at his table would be incorporated into the presentation rather than allowed to derail it. “Good timing.”
Santo sat. The motion cost him—I saw it in his jaw, the compression deeper than usual, the teeth clenched against whatever his ribs were telling him. He placed both hands on the table. The scarred knuckles. The blood at his cuffs.
“We were hit on the Eisenhower,” Santo said. Flat. Clinical. The debrief voice. “Two vehicles. Dark blue Altima, blackSUV. Coordinated—boxing maneuver, attempted push into the barrier. Gunfire from the trailing vehicle. Our driver took a round through the shoulder. The SUV went into the median. Altima broke off.”
The room absorbed it. I watched the absorption happen—the way bodies shifted in chairs, the way hands moved, the way eyes found other eyes across the table and exchanged information in the silent language of men who understood what a highway ambush meant.
“The Valentis.” The words landed like lead.
A man across the table spoke. Older. Silver hair, heavy build, a face that had been making decisions for decades and showed the wear. “That’s a significant accusation, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying.”
“I’m saying exactly what you think I’m saying, Don Lombardi.” Dante’s voice didn’t waver. “Enzo Valenti has been conducting operations against this family for months. The hit today is the latest. It won’t be the last.”
He reached beside his chair, retrieved a leather folder and opened it. Spread the contents across the table with the deliberate precision of a man who had organized this moment the way he organized everything: carefully, thoroughly, with the understanding that what he was presenting would change the map.
Photographs. Financial records. The shell companies traced through Delaware. Pushkin’s bank transfers. Ferrara’s face—the grey hair, the leather jacket, the garden-gate crest. The chemical analysis linking the community center accelerant to two prior Valenti operations. Each piece placed in sequence. Each piece connected to the next.
“Antonio Ferrara,” Dante said. “Valenti underboss. He recruited a civilian to infiltrate our household. When the infiltration didn’t produce results, he contracted Bratvaoperatives through a fixer named Pushkin to eliminate her. The same financial pipeline funded the firebombing of the Bridgeport community center. It all traces back to Valenti Hospitality Group.”
