Chapter 10
Six months before the wedding…
Getting into business with Mario is the game-changer I needed to get my own gig rolling. After Doc Brown stitched me up, Mario takes me back to his place, where he fills me in about his predicament over a glass of bourbon.
“I don’t have proof yet,” Mario starts, pouring and refilling without looking at me.
“But Smiley’s up to something. New car, new clothes, girls he’s parading like trophies.
Says he’s winning at the track.” He pauses and shakes his head.
“Smiley wouldn’t know a horse from a dog if it bit him on the ass. ”
“So you want me to find out what he’s up to?” I ask. The stitches tug when I move my mouth.
“Keep it quiet,” Mario warns. “I don’t need this in Carlos’s ears.”
Good advice. Carlos doesn’t forgive. The side of my face is a reminder he doesn’t forget either.
Fingers get nipped off for less. Men disappear for cheaper.
Mario’s smart to want to keep it hushed up; he hired the rat; he’s on the hook if that rat squeals.
I don’t blame him for wanting the problem buried and tidy.
“Whatever he’s doing, I’ll find it,” I say, then toss the bourbon down like it’s a dare. Mario refills the glass and watches me drink.
Forty-eight hours later, I’m back at his place with what I need.
“You were right,” I tell him. “Smiley was talking to the Venezuelans.”
Mario’s brow knots. “What the hell do the Venezuelans want with a lowlife rat like Smiley?”
I shrug, I've asked myself the same question, and relayed it to Smiley; unfortunately, he didn't have any answers. I had to keep my torture clean, so as not to leave any marks. But I'm certain he told the truth about that.
Mario stares like I handed him a scalpel. “You sure he was talking to them?”
“He was.” I keep it short. No one needs to know I tasted the metal of his fear while I worked. No one needs to know how clean I learned to make violence, so it looks like it never happened.
He stares at me in a way that isn’t the usual: not a check being cashed, not a favor being traded. He’s sizing up a partner. "Let me be honest here," he says, setting his glass of cheap bourbon on the table in front of him. "I'm not going to stay in this dump forever," he indicates the living room.
I wouldn't call it a dump. It's a nice apartment in Manhattan, and it costs more than I can afford.
But I'm not one to begrudge a man who wants to better himself.
I look at Mario in a new light. If he has the same aspirations as I do, we might be able to work together.
As long as he understands he might outrank me here in Carlos's organization, but not in the one I'm about to build.
“I’ve been watching you,” he says. “You’re sharp. Times are changing—Carlos runs extortion the old way. But data? Money in the dark? That’s where the Contis live. When the old ways collide with the new, someone dies. I don’t want it to be me.”
I nod. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Carlos is a dinosaur with a bat. The Contis are ghosts with servers. When they clash, the one with code wins.
“What are you suggesting?” I ask, rubbing my jaw where the skin catches. “I tried to get out from under Carlos—look where that left me.” I tap the stitches with my thumb.
“You did it the stupid way,” Mario says, flat. His words land like a slap—the wrong eyebrow lifts. I don’t flinch at the pain. I’m learning to listen.
“If you want in with Stephano’s crew, he needs to ask for you,” Mario continues. “He needs to want you on his team. You don’t walk in and take a slot. You become the problem someone else wants to own.”
It’s logic. Old men trade pieces. A capo buys talent sometimes. It’s rare, but it happens. More importantly, if Stephano wants me, Carlos can’t just cut my head off without making a headache for himself. Being wanted by someone else is protection—sometimes.
Five months before the wedding…
Mario gets me out of the house security detail I thought I would be stuck in for the rest of my career, especially after pissing Carlos off.
He told Carlos that he had better use for me and that this way he could keep an eye on me.
Carlos agreed, hating the sight of me in his house even more now than before.
For all appearances, I'm Mario's new protégé. Maybe even Mario thinks that way, I'm not sure. But I'm nobody's anything. I'm here to listen, learn, and figure out how to build my empire that will give me the means to get a woman like Sophia—if not her.
My next assignment is Kevin Jasper, the new state attorney. Carlos wants him in his pocket. I get to work.
I don't stop with the usual routine background pulls. Mario wants dirt—something to push on, something to make the State Attorney keep his mouth shut. I start with DMV and court records and then let curiosity do its work.
What looks like dead paper isn’t. There are settlements and quiet payoffs tucked behind a law-firm letterhead Jasper used to work for.
There’s a DUI that never sees trial because a donor puts down a check and closes mouths.
There are texts from a burner to a lobbyist that mean nothing on paper, but everything in practice.
I spent two nights with a laptop and terrible coffee. I pull a file the size of a brick: bank transfers, location data, photos. I stitch them together and print the last two years of a man’s compromises.
When I hand Mario the file, I watch him open it like a man opening a safe. He lets the facts land. “You sure this is all real?” he says finally, incredulous.
“You’ll find out when you use it,” I tell him.
He grins then—the first real grin he’s shown since I’ve known him. It changes something in both of us. That file buys leverage, buys trust. It buys me the right to be more than muscle.
Three months before the wedding…
"Stephano is looking for a guy." Mario starts without preamble.
I plop into the chair in front of his desk, not showing how much his words set my adrenaline flying. I've been waiting for something like this. "It's hush-hush; Carlos cannot find out about this."
I understand. It's Carlos's job to find all the dirt on lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and everybody down to the cleaning crew. Mario and I exchange a glance; we were right in our assumption that sooner or later the Contis would make a move on the Orsi territory.
The question of how Mario knows this lies on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it down. We all have our secrets, and it seems Mario already has an in with the Contis. If I pull this off, it'll make him look even better to them and give me the in I've been looking for.
"What is it?"
Mario holds out a USB stick to me. "Get to the main server at the Consolidated Judicial Records Facility, insert this, and call Stephano; he'll tell you what to do next."
He hands me a burner phone and an ID card that says my name is Pablo Esteban, with IT.
"Give me twenty-four hours, and I'll call Stephano."
Mario holds on to the phone and ID card as I try to take them. He locks eyes with me, "This is it. Don't fuck this up."
Don’t fuck it up. The phrase tastes like blood in my mouth. I tuck the stick into my jacket; it feels heavier than it should. This is the hinge I’ve been building toward. One good job, one clean move, and Stephano stops being a voice on a burner and starts being someone whose nod matters.
The Consolidated Judicial Records Facility sits behind a strip of anonymous facades, the kind of building designed to be invisible until you need it.
I walk up with the badge on my chest and a resentful frown on my face, like I don't want to be here, keeping the slowly scarring mess that is the right side of my face averted. The security desk is full of bored men who’ve seen every variant of human drama and graded it for interest. I hand the card over like it’s routine.
They look. They punch something into a terminal.
A light turns green. The little rituals of bureaucracy are ideal for people who want to blend in seamlessly.
The service elevator descends to the basement, where the servers reside.
The air there tastes like metal and recycled breath.
Racks rise in rows, blinking like a city of small, patient stars.
Technicians move in measured paths; nobody looks up from their panels unless something punctures their routine.
I scope the racks fast and quiet, the way I measure a man’s weakness in a fight.
The device Mario gave me is colder than I expected.
It fits in my palm like a promise. I don’t know the language of their machines, and I don’t need to.
My job is a thing of movement and timing: be the hand that places a key where no one’s heart will race at the sight of it.
A tech rounds the corner with a cup of coffee and headphones looping bad jazz.
For a breath, I think he’ll clock me. He just nods instead, eyes sliding past, because men who work in rooms like this see a hundred faces and train themselves not to care about any of them.
I slide along the aisle, press the tape-wrapped stick into the small, hidden hollow I scoped yesterday, a crease behind a labeled panel, the sort of place that looks accidental to anyone who isn’t looking for it.
My palm lingers a beat longer than it has to; I let the warmth of my hand stay there like a signature I never sign.
I press between two servers, pretending I'm checking on a panel, and call Stephano on the burner Mario gave me. He answers on the first ring, "You're in?"
No hello. No flourish. Just the thing that matters.
“Yeah,” I say, keeping it just as short and to the point, “It’s in place.”