Chapter 2
Turo
Smeared blood on the concrete.A heel mark, dragged through it. A handprint. Someone tried to crawl and didn’t get far.
Rival warehouse, third district. It smells like oil and cold metal and men who think fear is currency. Fluorescent lights hum overhead like insects. Crates are stacked to the ceiling, some stamped with shipping codes, some with nothing at all.
Blank faces in a room full of lies.
My men stand behind me in a quiet line, black suits and blank expressions, hands folded in front like we’re at church instead of an execution site. Across from me, Rossi’s people mirror the posture. Same ritual. Same theater. We all pretend the difference between business and war is a paper contract.
Rossi himself sits on an upturned crate like a king who enjoys slumming. Late fifties. Eyes too sharp. Smile too practiced. He wears his power like a scarf. Casual, visible, meant to be noticed.
He glances past my shoulder, toward the stain on the floor.
“Messy night,” he says.
His Italian has that northern bite. Every consonant a blade.
“Your men should clean better,” I reply.
His smile widens, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “Not mine.”
Of course not. The point is never the truth. The point is what the lie suggests.
A corpse is a statement. A smear of blood is a question.
Rossi’s gaze slides back to me, slow, measuring. He’s counting the lines in my face the way I’m counting the exits. He wants to see fatigue. Weakness. A crack.
He wants to see if my son’s incompetence has loosened my grip on the city.
I keep my expression smooth. My posture relaxed. My hands still. I don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the weight.
But it’s there.
It’s always there.
“Your boy made a mistake,” Rossi says, voice mild as he says my shame out loud. “A deal was agreed. A time was set. My people arrived with paperwork.” He tilts his head toward the blood. “And then your son arrived with… enthusiasm.”
The wordenthusiasmlands like a slap disguised as manners.
Marco. High. Paranoid. Loud. He can turn a simple exchange into a street shooting with one stupid thought and two men who don’t know when to stop him. Violence where there should have been diplomacy.
My jaw tightens once. I let it. A controlled crack, like a warning shot. Rossi notices, anyway.
“He’s alive,” I say.
Rossi’s brows lift. “That is generous of you.”
It isn’t generosity. It’s liability management. If Marco had killed someone important tonight, we’d be cleaning more than blood. We’d be cleaning a war.
“Why am I here?” I ask.
Rossi spreads his hands. “To fix what your son broke.”
That’s the truth. He wants money. Territory. A concession he can parade to his own men as proof the Mancinis are bleeding.
His eyes flick to the stains again, then back to me. “People talk,” he says. “They say Marco is… unstable.”
