Page 24

The word takes a moment to finish disgusting me. “Policy? Chalk for sick people is fucking policy?”

“Five months of it. Five that we can prove, anyway. Basel says it’s one machine, one operation, running steady.” He sets a second page on the first. “There’s more in the stream, Lupo. This is what two counting teams caught.”

“Who else knows?”

“You, me, Doyle, and two chemists in Basel who bill us enough to stay silent forever. They didn’t want anything to do with this once they knew what was going on. The warehouse crew thinks they impounded stolen perfume.” Nick finally sits. “It stays that small until you say otherwise.”

“It stays that small. That’s the only way to control what happens next.” He nods as I set the report down and square its edges with the desk, thinking.

My grandfather moved cargo under olive oil with Matteo’s grandfather when both their names were worth less than the crates. I grew up hearing all the old stories, filthy, illegal, whatever. They knew me and Matteo would take over one day, so they didn’t spare the details.

But they had a code. You moved what grown men chose to buy for themselves. Luxury goods. Optional things.

You didn’t press chalk into foil and tell a mother it’d help her child’s cancer. Our grandfathers would have beaten Matteo’s ass for that kind of shit.

But I don’t want to start a war with an ally. “Is there any chance he doesn’t know what’s in the crates? Any chance at all?”

“His signature is on everything.”

Fuck. My gut locks. “Sarah’s supply?”

“They’re sourced directly from the manufacturer in Ohio, sealed, couriered, verified twice. Her pills have never touched our lanes.” Nick answers before I finish the sentence because he checked before he walked in here.

“Thanks. I need a walk.”

“Same here.” He departs, and I do too, the other direction.

I go down to the cold room off the kitchen. Sarah’s supply sits in its locked cabinet—factory seals intact, lot numbers matching the log in my own handwriting, weeks of Thursdays accounted for. I stand there longer than the count requires, reading lot numbers I already know by heart.

Somewhere there’s another kitchen table with our foil on it. Some other father counting tablets into a cup, watching his child swallow chalk, thanking God for the medicine. My name rides on the crate that brought it to him.

I might murder my oldest ally. But first, I have to give him a chance to explain what the fuck he’s thinking. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I owe him that much. Just because I can’t conjure a reasonable excuse doesn’t mean he can’t.

I lock the cabinet and go back up to my office, where Nick has already returned from his walk. “Get me a room at Contini’s. Today. Just Matteo.”

Nick’s jaw sets. “You’re nicer than I am.”

“I want to hear it from his mouth. Then we’ll see if he gets to keep his teeth.”

He nods once and makes the call.

Contini’s keeps a private room behind the kitchen with no menu and no windows. Both our families have used it since before I could shave.

Matteo arrives four minutes late. Dyed black curls, a tan from somewhere expensive, cologne arriving a half second before he does. His brown suit wears him.

“Lupo!” He takes my hand in both of his. “Marriage agrees with you. Milan talks of nothing else—the wolf, domesticated at last.”

“Matteo.”

“And a doctor, they say. Beautiful and smart? Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Sit down, Matteo.”

He sits, shakes out his napkin, and admires the wine already breathing on the table. “The Barolo. You remembered.”

“I remember everything. It’s why we’re here.”

We order nothing, because the room already knows what to bring, and I give him the first course and the small talk he needs to open him up. He’s like a woman—he needs foreplay to get him there.