I felt the words, heavy and true.
Dante tapped the table once, final. “We go live at twenty-one hundred tonight. Pietro, you’re with the girl. Tonio, you’re roving. Sal, you coordinate with Santo on the tactical. Marco, get me the local PD’s comms so we can kill any outside noise. Nobody else needs to know.”
Tonio said, “Understood, boss.”
Sal just nodded.
Dante looked at me, the way he had when we were kids and he was about to tell you something that would change your life. He said, “Do what you have to do to keep her normal. After, you can tell her everything. But until this is over, she’s in the dark.”
He stood, straightened his cuffs, and turned for the door.
Marco waited until Dante was gone, then looked at me across the table. Just one second, the kind of look that says: You’re not alone, even if it feels like you are.
I closed the folder, ran my thumb along the edge, and watched the steam off my mug. I thought about her, how she’d look if I told her the truth now, how it would ruin everything we’d built in a week.
I told myself I could do it. For forty-eight hours, I could hold the line.
But I didn’t believe it.
It was supposed to be over. But my hand hovered over the folder, and the words clawed their way up before I could lock them down.
I said, “She’ll know, Dante.”
He didn’t turn. “Then make her believe you. You’ve lied before. Your brothers tell me you’re good at it.”
I stood. “No. I mean it. If she finds out after, she’ll never trust me again. You want me to run point, let me do it my way. Let me tell her.”
Dante’s back stayed to the window. “Absolutely not. The more people who know, the more risk. You want to help her, you keep her safe. You want to keep her, you do it my way. Or walk.”
“Don Arturo—” I started, and heard the edge in my voice, sharper than I’d meant.
Dante spun, slow, face like stone. “Don Arturo would have you skinned alive if you fucked this up. You know that.”
Tonio looked at the ceiling, jaw tight, but didn’t disagree.
I gripped the edge of the table, hard enough to feel the wood creak. “This is your call, Dante. Remember it.”
He nodded, and just like that, the argument was over. A finality settled in the air, like a gunshot in a closed room.
Marco looked at me, eyes softer than the rest. For a second, I thought he might say something—tell Dante to go easy, to let me have this one—but he didn’t. He just held the look, then turned it away, disappointment landing in the space between us like a dropped plate.
Assignments went out. Tonio was to run the exterior, shifts every three hours, nobody else. Sal and Santo would coordinate tactical; Santo was already moving, probably armed and itching for a fight. Marco had the finances—he could choke off every wire transfer in a hundred-mile radius, and he would.
Dante put on his coat, dark wool, cut like it belonged on a king. He looked at each of us, then paused at me.
He said, quiet, “Take care of her, Pietro. She’s family now.”
He walked out, door closing soft.
I let go of the table, felt the blood return to my hands in a sick rush.
She was family now. Not just a client, not a mark, not a chess piece.
Mine to protect. Mine to save. Or mine to lose.
It was the worst kind of loyalty, because it cut both ways.
ThedrivebackupRiver North felt longer than usual. The city had gone blue and hard, the river shining like a cut glass in the dirty light. My hands on the wheel were steady, but only because I forced them.
