I keep my fingers loose. Inside my jacket, my gun sits against my ribs like a second heartbeat.
Ten minutes pass. The room hums with restrained violence. I watch Vittorio’s eyes. I watch his men shift. I watch the “staff” move, too casual, too present.
I wait. Because that’s what dons do. We wait until the other man shows his hand. Then we take the whole arm.
Vittorio’s voice is smooth. “We both want stability.”
My jaw tightens.Stability. Enzo’s word. The word traitors love because it sounds noble.
I keep my face still. “Stability,” I repeat, neutral.
Vittorio leans back. “We’ve heard you’ve had internal complications.”
There it is. A little probe under the ribs.
I lift my brows. “Have you.”
He smiles wider. “Rumors travel.”
“They do,” I agree.
He glances briefly toward the side of the room, toward one of the flower arrangements. So small, most people would miss it. But I don’t. That flicker is a signal. My pulse steadies. This is it.
Vittorio’s underboss gives a slight nod. Not dramatic. Just decision.
And then, like the room has been waiting for permission, movement erupts. One of Rossi’s “staff” reaches into the flower arrangement. Hands disappear into leaves. A gun comes out. Exactly where Lucia predicted. At the same time, two Rossi men shift toward the exits. Moving to block, to funnel, to turn the corridor into a throat.
They think the table is my trap. They think the exits are theirs. They think I’m ten minutes behind.
I’m not.
I move before the first gun clears the flowers. My hand snaps under my jacket. My chair kicks back. And I flip the table. The heavy slab of wood slams onto its side with a crack that reverberates through the room like thunder. Glasses shatter. Papers scatter.
Cover. Chaos. The first shot fires. It hits wood instead of flesh. My men move as one. Not twenty individuals. A single machine.
The “staff” that Rossi didn’t recognize pulls weapons from trays, from under linens, from places we planted them with Lucia’s blueprint in our heads. A man in a white shirt at the left exit drops his tray, silverware clattering, and draws a pistol in the same motion. He fires. Rossi’s blocker at the exit goes down. The choke point that was supposed to trap me becomes a sealed door for them.
Gunfire explodes. That sound in a funeral home is obscene. Sharp cracks, ricochets, the ugly wet thud of bullets finding bodies.
Twenty seconds. Maybe less.
It feels like a lifetime compressed.
I fire twice. One Rossi guard spins, collapses. Another tries to reach for a weapon near the flowers. Matteo’s man, dressed as a caterer, puts a round through his shoulder, dropping him. The air fills with smoke and lilies and blood.
Vittorio ducks behind his chair, eyes wild now, control gone. His consigliere crawls, scrambling for the second exit. Only to meet another of my planted men already there, gun leveled, calm as prayer.
The exits are ours.
The kill box is theirs.
Rossi’s men realize it all at once. You can see it on their faces: surprise turning into panic turning into rage. They weren’t prepared to be the prey.
Two of my men are hit. One in the arm, one in the thigh. They stay upright. They keep firing. Not critical.
Rossi loses three fast. A fourth drops his weapon and raises his hands, shaking. The room goes quieter in abrupt waves as bodies stop moving and men stop shooting.
The last crack echoes. Then silence falls like a lid.
