“Talk.” The word is flat, stripped of anything that might be mistaken for patience. I don’t waste time easing into conversations like this. Whatever waits on the other end has already been determined that it deserves my full attention.
I know something’s wrong the second I hear his voice.
“We have a problem.”
Bianchi isn’t a man prone to dramatics. In all the years I’ve known him, he has never wasted breath on theatrics or exaggeration. But there’s a tightness threaded through his voice now that doesn’t belong there. Not panic, he is far too disciplined for that, but something sharper, every word clipped down to its bare bones before it reaches me.
That alone makes it concerning.
There are only so many things capable of rattling a man like him.
“About?” I ask, even though my gut is already filling in the blanks with things I don’t want to think about, let alone deal with.
“Rumors are spreading among the other syndicates in the area. About Elena and her son.”
Something inside me stills.
It isn’t fear. That is reserved for men who don’t know how to respond when shit goes sideways. What settles over me instead is a brutal clarity. Every irrelevant thought falls away, even those that I had been holding onto not so long ago. That fragile peace I allowed myself is now gone.
Only threat remains.
He continues. “There’s a price on the kid. Half a million, apparently. They… know he’s yours.”
For a moment, the hallway seems to narrow around me.
Half a million.
That isn’t rumor-mill nonsense tossed around for sport. That is incentive. Real, tangible motivation, and enough of it to make desperate men reckless and stupid ones ambitious. It is also the declaration of someone willing to gamble that my response won’t be swift, or brutal enough, to make an example out of them.
“Who the fuck talked?” I snap. And who the hell had been stupid enough to believe this wouldn’t get back to me?
Both questions rattle around inside my head. Information like that doesn’t just drift into the wrong ears by accident. It is sold and traded, whispered with purpose until finding the righthands to fall into. Which means somewhere inside my territory, someone has decided my son is worth enough to use as a bargaining chip.
“There’s no way to pinpoint the leak,” Bianchi says. “And at this point, it’s irrelevant.”
My hand fists at my side.
Irrelevant,I nearly bite back at him.
Coming from anyone else, I would hear that word as an excuse. A failure. A slight against me. From Bianchi, it’s something else entirely.
It’s his practicality cutting straight through the noise. The reminder that knowingwhotalked matters far less than knowing exactlywhatthey’ve set in motion. The damage is already done. The bounty exists, men have heard it, and some are now weighing whether the risk of potentially starting a war is in any way comparable to the reward.
The leak, as I know Leo would inevitably tell me, can be dealt with later.
“Also,” he adds after a moment, his tone shifting just enough to tell me this is worse, “Enzo has gone MIA. No one can find him.”
I close my eyes and lift my hand to pinch the bridge of my nose, breathing in slowly through my teeth.
What a goddamn mess.
It’s bad enough that I’m finding out my child’s life now carries a price tag. Worse still that someone, somewhere, thinks my family can be used against me for monetary gain. Now I don’t even have a clean direction for this anger to travel toward.No throat to wrap my hands around. No face attached to the betrayal to slowly watch the life drain from.
Enzo disappearing is a problem all on its own.
He isn’t just another soldier who failed to check in. He’s the only remaining thread tying together Matteo’s death and the money transferred into Giovanni’s account to fund the hit. Now he’s gone, which means the answers may have gone with him.
The timing is another concern.
