Chapter 31
RAFFAELE
The warehouse is in the industrial district, twenty minutes off the turnpike, on a stretch of road where the streetlights stopped working years ago.
We park two SUVs at the tree line.
I came heavy. Twelve men, two of them carrying long.
Two more in the second SUV with the trunk full of equipment we don’t intend to use unless we have to.
Lorenzo at my elbow. The remaining eight split between the road behind us and the rear of the building, watching for anyone arriving who isn’t on the guest list.
I don’t trust Victor Moreno. I never have. The meeting he proposed at the end of yesterday—neutral ground, midnight, bring whoever I want—is the kind of meeting that has a knife inside it. He knows I know that. He’s counting on me being the kind of man who comes anyway.
He’s right. I came.
“You really think he’s gonna play nice?” Lorenzo’s keeping pace with me as we cross the gravel.
“No. I think he’s going to try something. I want to see what.”
“And if it’s a trap?”
“Then we spring it on our terms.”
“That’s my favorite kind.”
The side door’s unlocked. I push it open with the back of my hand and let it swing the rest of the way on its own. Lorenzo and I go in low, the four men behind us spreading immediately. The long guns find the catwalk first.
Nothing on the catwalk.
Nothing behind the crates. Nothing in the cage office at the far end. Nothing in the side rooms with the doors hanging on one hinge. The warehouse is a long concrete shoebox the size of a basketball court and a half, and there’s no one inside it but us.
Dust. Stacked pallets. The brown rust streaks running down from the windows. A row of forklifts with flat tires. The smell of standing water somewhere.
Lorenzo lowers his rifle.
“The fuck is this?”
I check my watch.
Midnight. On the minute.
“Spread out. Defensive. Crates, columns, anywhere with cover. Eyes on every door.”
The men move without speaking. They take positions on the diagonals. Two on the back wall, two on the side door we came through, the rest fanned across the floor with sightlines that overlap.
I stay where I am.
He’s not here.
I’m working out exactly which kind of stupid that makes me when I hear the engines.
Outside.
More than one. Three at least, coming down the road from the south, gravel under tires, then the longer rumble of vehicles slowing into the lot.
“Boss.” One of my men. At the side door. Looking out the gap. “Three SUVs. Pulling up.”
“Whose?”
He looks again.
“Conti. That’s Nico’s lead car. I’d know it anywhere.”
What the hell are you planning, Victor?
I don’t get to follow the thought any further before the front door of the warehouse swings open.
Nico walks in.
He’s flanked by his people. I count eight, possibly ten in the dark behind him. He’s armed and looks like a man who just got woken up for this.
He sees me.
Then stops.
I see his face do exactly what mine just did.
“D’Amico,” he growls. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I—” He works the next sentence out as he’s saying it. “Victor called me. Said he had information. Said you’d be—”
“Victor told me to meet him here.”
“Him?”
I look at him. “He didn’t say a single word to me about you.”
Nico stops moving.
We stare at each other.
It lands at the same second for both of us. The whole shape of the night rearranges itself in my head.
Victor Moreno Jr. isn’t coming. He was never coming. The fucker is probably an hour north of us by now, on a phone, listening for the news.
I look across the warehouse at the supposed heir to the Conti family, the man who killed Vincenzo. The man whose head I’ve been planning to remove from his neck for seventy-two hours, and I see—clearly, and against everything—that he and I have been played by the same hand.
“That son of a bitch,” Nico hisses.
I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see this coming. But I can’t imagine Victor planned for this encounter to be this… quiet.
The night’s still young. As long as we don’t lose our heads—
Shit. I can see the redness rising in Nico’s face.
“He played us both,” I offer. Don’t lose your cool, you goddamn moron.
Before I can say anything else, there’s the sound of running footsteps behind me. One of my men coming out of his position.
No. No. No.
I can see it happening in slow motion, but my mouth doesn’t move fast enough.
“Boss—” He calls out from a dark corner, clearly unaware of the fragility of this moment. The second he steps into view, Nico lifts a gun in his direction.
He doesn’t fire. He doesn’t have to. One of the young idiots beside him loses his cool. The crack of a single shot breaks through the stale air.
Then the warehouse erupts.