"I don't know the specifics." He pulls a cigarette from a pack on the dash and lights it. His hands are steady enough to hold the lighter, which means he's not as far gone as he looks. "I know money is moving into construction projects on the eastern seaboard. Contracts being signed with private security firms, medical suppliers, educational consultants. That combination doesn't make sense for any legitimate business I've ever seen."
Educational consultants. Construction projects. Medical suppliers. A new school being built with security infrastructure and medical facilities attached. The Replication Initiative isn't just a concept. It's already being built.
"There's more," Ferrara says. He takes a drag on the cigarette and blows smoke out the cracked window. "Whoever gave Marco the order to pull the alliance also gave him a name. A man who's supposed to mediate the new territorial arrangement. Someone from outside both families, positioned as a neutral party."
"What name?"
"Billone. Matteo Billone."
I don't react the way I want to react, which would involve punching the dashboard and saying several words that would make Savannah proud. Instead I sit very still and let the name settle into the space next to everything else I've learned about Aurelio's bastard son in the last twenty-four hours.
Yesterday he was a photograph on Alexandra's screen. A jawline I recognized and a trust fund that smelled wrong. Today he's being inserted between both families as a mediator, which is a word that means peacemaker in normal life and means positioning asset in the world I actually live in.
"You know the name," Ferrara says, reading my face the way men in our world read faces, by the things that don't move when they should.
"I've heard it."
"Then you know more than I do. Marco's treating him as legitimate. Connected, credentialed, the kind of man who brokers deals between organizations without getting dirty. But legitimate men don't appear in mafia territory disputes backed by people who financed trafficking pipelines. That's not diplomacy. That's placement."
Matteo isn't mediating. He's being inserted. Placed between the families by the same people who engineered the war, because a mediator has access to both sides and access is what intelligence networks run on.
"I need to tell Leone," I say.
"Tell him everything. And tell him that Renzo Ferrara is not Marco Castillo's man anymore." He looks at me, and the man I'm seeing isn't the underboss who sat across from me at Marcello's with a neutral face and a calculated silence. This man is scared in the way that competent men get scared, not of violence but of irrelevance. Of discovering that his entire career was spent serving a system that was itself serving something bigger. "I don't know what's coming, Emilio. But I know it's bigger than both families, and I know the people behind it don't care which of us survives."
"Renzo."
"What?"
"Thank you. For reaching out. For trusting me with this."
"Don't thank me. I'm not being noble. I'm being practical. Whatever these people are building, it's bad for business. My business. Your business. Everyone's business." He finishes the cigarette and drops it in the ashtray with the others. "One last thing, since you are going down this road. I had a daughter once. She disappeared when she was eight and we never found her. If… if you ever see or hear anything in your travels… please phone me."
I open the door, and step out into the garage. Turn back because there's one more thing I need to say and I don't know why, but it feels important.
"I will keep an ear out. What’s her name?”
“Graziella Ferrera. Probably doesn’t go by that anymore, if she’s still alive, but if you come across anything… you have my number.”
I close the door and walk back toward the SUV. The garage is quiet. My footsteps echo and the SUV is thirty feet ahead and I'm already running through how I'm going to present this to Leone when I hear it.
Tires.
Not one vehicle. Two. Coming down the ramp from the upper level at a speed that parking structures aren't designed for, headlights cutting through the dim concrete, engines screaming off the walls. I know before I see the men. Before the doors open and the guns come out and the first shots shatter Ferrara's rear window. I know because this is the sound that precedes violence in every city in the world, the screech of tires and the acceleration of intent, and my body has been trained to respond to it since I was fifteen.
I pull the gun from my waistband and move. Not toward the SUV. Toward the nearest concrete pillar, thick enough to stop rifle rounds, twenty feet to my right. The next round of shots hit Ferrara's sedan, punching through the trunk and the rear quarter panel, and I hear Ferrara scream in Italian and the engine roar as he throws it into reverse.
Carmelo is out of the SUV before I reach the pillar. I catch a glimpse of him, crouched behind the hood, gun up, already firing controlled three-round bursts at the vehicle on the right. Theman went from passenger seat to combat position in about two seconds. He’s on point, finger pulling the trigger and brain three steps ahead.
Mine needs to catch up. I press my back against the pillar and take a breath, one, in and out, and then I lean around the left side and assess.
Two black SUVs, no plates or plates I can't see from this angle. Four men that I can count, two behind each vehicle, all armed, all firing at Ferrara's sedan as it fishtails up the exit ramp with sparks flying off the undercarriage. Two of them are focused on the sedan. Two have noticed Carmelo and are returning fire at the SUV, rounds pinging off the hood and punching through the windshield.
Ferrara's sedan disappears up the ramp and the shooters on the right redirect toward me. I pull back behind the pillar as rounds hit the concrete, close enough that I feel the chips spray against my neck. The sound is deafening in the enclosed space, every shot amplified and bounced off walls and ceiling until the whole garage is one continuous roar.
I lean out the other side. Fire twice at the vehicle on the left. The first shot goes wide and sparks off the concrete floor. The second catches one of the shooters in the shoulder and he drops behind the bumper, his weapon clattering. His partner sees me, adjusts, and I pull back as a burst stitches across the pillar at chest height.
Carmelo moves. He crosses the gap between our SUV and the right-side vehicle in a low sprint, fires twice into the man who's been returning fire at him, and doesn't slow down when the man drops. The second shooter behind that vehicle turns and Carmelo is already on him. I don't see what happens. I hear it. A short, ugly sound, and then Carmelo is moving again, rounding the vehicle, heading for the left side where my two shooters are still dug in.
