Page 4 of Merciless Daddy

“Marco Bellini,” she said, before her coat was off. “Sixty-eight years old. Split lip, bruised hip, and apparently in possession of your handkerchief, Salvatore, which he is telling the entire kitchen at Caruso’s he intends to have framed.”

“He earned it.”

“He earned a raise. See that he gets one.” She draped the coat over the chair nobody else ever used and stood in front of the desk, absorbing the information. Sera had our grandfather’s mind and her father’s eyes, and eleven weeks ago Gianni had made both of those inheritances into weapons pointed at himself. “A tow crew. At dawn. On a Caruso lot, under a Caruso sign, in daylight.”

“Forged lien,” I said. “Northbridge Freight.”

“I know. I’ve known since seven o’clock.” Of course she had. “What concerns me is not the forgery. What concerns me is the daylight. He’s stopped hiding. A man only stops hiding when he believes the people hunting him can’t finish the job.”

“Then let’s finish it,” Pietro said.

Serafina turned to look at him. My brother is not a man who fidgets, but something in him recalibrated under that look.

“Go on,” she said. “Present your plan. I assume it has fire in it.”

“He tested us in daylight. If we don’t answer, he tests again, closer. Next time it isn’t an old man’s lip. Next time it’s the old man.” Pietro’s voice stayed level, which was how you knew he meant every word. “Gianni owns a warehouse on Cicero through two shells. It’s insured. Nobody sleeps there. By Friday it can be a very educational hole in the ground.”

“And what does the hole teach him?”

“Not to play with fire.”

“No. It teaches him that if he prods us, we will react exactly how he expects.”

The room was quiet. Even the espresso machine downstairs seemed to have the sense to keep its voice down.

“Here is what you will do.” She faced me directly now, and the order of the room arranged itself around that axis. “You will prove that Gianni controls Northbridge Freight. You will prove that Gianni controls Halberd Capital. And you will establish—precisely, in documents—what he gains from this marriage. Every clause. Every share. Every dollar the Sokolov alliance moves within his reach.”

“I say we just take the bride,” Tonio said, calmly. “Who cares exactly how much he’ll make. Let’s just stop it happening.”

Serafina’s eyes narrowed.

“Cugino, listen to me. You may observe. You may bribe. You may steal every record on the Eastern Seaboard for all I care. What you may not do is seize the bride, touch the wedding, or hand Lev Sokolov a reason to put the bratva into this war on Gianni’s side. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” I said.

“Understood,” Pietro said, in the tone of a man filing an objection for the appeal.

“Tonio?”

“I was only joking. I’d never seize a bride,” Tonio said. “Carrying them is murder on the back.”

The corner of Serafina’s mouth moved a quarter of an inch, which from her was a standing ovation.

I should have left it there. The orders were clean, the mandate was clear, and I have spent my whole life being the man who leaves it there. Instead I heard my own voice ask the question I had been carrying since two in the morning.

“And if she’s being forced.”

Serafina turned back to me slowly. Behind her, on the wall, the woman in the grey coat crossed her Brooklyn sidewalk forever, chin up, pale eyes already done with the camera.

“Explain the question.”

“Clause nine grants him irrevocable power of attorney over her shares. No one negotiates the word irrevocable into her own leash. Lev Sokolov is selling his daughter to a patricide for a fee we haven’t found yet. I’m asking what our position is if the woman at the center of this contract is a hostage to it.”

My cousin studied me for a long moment.

“Concern,” she said finally, “is not evidence.”

“I’m aware.”