Chapter 15
RAFAELLE
Rotor wash rattles the cabin windows like hail.
Beneath us, the Riviera is a smear of night-black water stitched with yacht lights. Cesare sits opposite, blazer off, sleeves rolled up, displaying tattoos we’ve been inking jointly and separately since I was sixteen and he was seventeen.
That punch of memory soothes for a minute and I watch him updating a shared file on his tablet before I return to running a final check on the burner SIMs we’ll hand over after signatures.
‘Six delegates from the Jade-Dragon Tong,’ he reminds me, voice pitched low over the engine thrum.
‘Chairman Lu’s son runs point, but we treat Elder Tang as the real decision maker.
No jokes about age, no eye-contact linger on the facial scar.
And definitely no popping kneecaps for shits and giggles like you did to Kamirov’s man back in Azerbaijan. Got it?’
I smirk. ‘Scar looks like art. I might ask who did the brushwork.’
Cesare flicks me a glare that would freeze lava. ‘Try professional tonight, brother.’
Professional I can do. It’s emotions that keep tripping the wire.
He exhales, sliding the tablet away. ‘We’re green on intel, but I need your read on distribution. France wants deniability. Spain’ll pay extra for hush routes.’
‘We double the transit fee,’ I say. ‘They’re desperate. They’ll eat the cost.’
We lapse into silence, but Cesare’s gaze keeps drifting – past the clipboard, past the gear bag beside him – onto me. He’s working himself up to something.
‘Spit it out,’ I mutter.
‘You slept with her?’
I lift a brow. ‘Define “slept”.’
‘Cut the shit. Did you fuck Sofiya?’ He rubs the space above his brow, then carries on before I can deliver the ‘none of your fucking business’ I planned. ‘I was ready to chalk the past few days to… I don’t know… a take-the-edge-off skirmish. But Maddie thinks there’s something going on—’
‘And how would she know if you didn’t tell her?’
His glare sharpens. Deepens. ‘I like my balls exactly where they are, which means I know better than to keep secrets from my wife. Her bullshit radar is top class,’ he adds with a hint of pride.
Then he exhales. ‘I know things aren’t as copacetic as you and I would like them to be, but if anything happens—’
‘Family first. Always,’ I cut in. ‘Sofiya is, believe it or not, the reason things aren’t… a little more fucked.’
He stares, waits. As if I’ll crumble under the Underboss routine. ‘Care to expand on that?’ he snaps after a handful of seconds.
‘Nope.’ I let the ‘p’ pop in a way I know will irritate the fuck out of him. ‘But I won’t screw with the current directive, such as it is. The rest you’ll have to take on trust.’
He scoffs, shakes his head. ‘You’ve never let the family down; I’ll give you that. Doesn’t mean I want a war bride sequel.’
I lean forward, elbows on knees. ‘She’s a means to an end.’ My gut calls me a liar, and I hate how loud it sounds. ‘You want reassurances? I’ll try not to be the one who kills her.’
‘Saints fucking preserve us.’ He pinches his nose, half-laughing, half-miserable. ‘Maddie’ll skin me if Sofiya ends up on a slab. And I’ll stay alive long enough to fucking skin you.’
‘Then all incentives align, frate. Leave it.’
He studies me – old habit, reading micro-tells from our street-fight childhood. Finally he nods once, steel in his spine. ‘We get the contract, we exfil, then you go get Sofiya. My wife needs her rest and that sister of hers is…’ Whatever he sees on my face makes his words trail off.
I smirk. ‘Sure thing. If she’s not blowing up my phone first,’ I murmur, surprising myself with how much I hope she does.
23:08 – Nice, Port Lympia – Private Freeport Warehouse
The Tong picked a discreet venue.
A concrete bunker with a mezzanine draped in red silks to hide the cameras. Six men wait at a lacquered conference table flanked by bodyguards in bespoke suits.
Elder Tang rises. Early seventies with a thin silver braid, cheek scar like a white river delta. His gaze pins Cesare, then me. ‘Salvatore brothers. Your reputation precedes you.’
‘And yours keeps me awake at night,’ Cesare answers in flawless Mandarin. Good opening – respect plus implied parity.
I switch to Cantonese, just to showcase another arrow in the quiver. ‘Let’s talk numbers before dawn steals the luck.’
His eyes slide back to me. Rests. Assesses.
Beyond his shoulders, shadows move in the dark.
‘Drink, first.’
I bite my tongue, swallow a trite comment.
I’ve never understood the need for mobsters to drink before a deal. A sliced throat? A bare-knuckle fight to establish who’s got the bigger dick? That I understand. Respect even. Fucking around with alcohol to see if I lose a sliver of inhibition? Bullshit.
But I feel Cesare’s silent warning. And I nod.
Chairs slide. Whiskey appears – top-shelf, exquisite crystalware, no ice. I grudgingly admire their class.
‘To gathering sand and collecting harvests,’ Cesare says, glass raised.
The old man’s eyes glint with a hint of respect.
We drink.
Then the bare-knuckle negotiations begin.
Contracts are offered, weapons manifest, shipping corridors disguised as medical-supply lanes.
We haggle over percentages, off-loading sequence, fallback ports if Interpol sniffs too close.
Lu’s son tries to grandstand; Elder Tang silences him with a single knuckle rap.
Two hours later, the ledger is signed in disappearing ink. And not a single moment do I get a hankering to reach for the long knife resting against my right ribs. More’s the pity.
At the final handshake, my palm slides across Tang’s scarred knuckles, his thin lips curving. ‘To future harvests,’ he intones.
‘May they be bloody and bountiful,’ I reply.
If he’s offended, he hides it behind a smile sharp as a scalpel.
01:32 – Return Flight
The rotor beats feel slower on the way back – mission success kind of calm. Cesare locks the USB ledgers in a biometric case, then buckles in.
He glances over. ‘You gonna check in or shall I?’
‘Soon as we land.’
‘Good.’ He taps the armrest twice – our old code for ‘watch your six’. Then he lets his eyes close.
I stare out the cabin window at the black sweep of sea. Nice recedes; Monaco neon-flares on the horizon like a pulse. Somewhere in that glow, Sofiya will be pacing Maddie’s suite, half-annoyed, half-relieved I’m not dead.
She’s worked it out by now. Kill me and another will take my place. There are enough Salvatores to keep our decades-long vendetta going.
I thumb open my phone, type a message I never thought I’d send to a Mancinelli assassin:
Wheels down in 15. Still breathing. You?
Three dots appear almost instantly.
My chest does a stupid, weightless lurch I pretend not to feel.
Still breathing. Maddie fed me tiramisu and scolded me. Why are you texting me, Enforcer? You bored?
Not bored. Far from it. Withdrawal symptoms from the taste of your cunt? Most definitely.
The speech bubble ripples, then dies. As I knew it would.
I pocket the phone, a grin tugging despite myself, imagining her pink cheeks and elevated breathing.
Means to an end, I remind the traitor voice in my head.
Yet for the first time in years, victory tastes sweeter than blood.
02:05 – Monaco Airfield, Idling on the Tarmac
The rotor whine fades and the cabin hatch thumps shut behind Cesare and me. Before the generators spool down, Cesare pulls out an old-school satellite handset the size of a brick – Orazio swears encrypted cells ‘steal your soul through the glass’.
Traditional, stubborn as Sicily. And yet the same man who’s addicted to playing Candy Crush on his iPhone.
He hands it over. ‘You closed the deal; you get the honour.’
Lucky fucking me.
I pace away from the fuselage and thumb the cranky keypad. Three rings. Click. No hello – only the gravel rasp of the man who ran the Salvatore empire before indoor plumbing reached half our villages in the Old Country.
‘About fucking time one of you called,’ Orazio barks.
‘Ciao, Nonnu.’ I keep my tone even, respectful.
I may be a pain whore, but I swear the sting from my grandfather’s fist is laced with voodoo to make it hurt more.
And I don’t believe in the fucking crap.
‘We locked the Triad contract. Full container allotment to start, double haul price, delivery windows set.’
His snort crackles the line. ‘Guns and powder – good. Money keeps the famigghia fat and happy. But where’s the real trophy? You find that goat-humping Mancinelli yet?’
A sixty-seven million deal is tossed over his shoulder like the husk of a sucked-out langoustine. Onto other… better things.
I exhale. Don’t blame him. He was there right alongside me and my father the evening Cesare told us what he’d learned from Maddelena. That contrary to our beliefs, it wasn’t the Russians who gunned down my mother and two other innocents in the church in Manhattan.
That Bonafacio and his progeny had a direct hand in it.
‘I’m chasing leads,’ I say. ‘We located one safehouse tonight.’
I catch Cesare’s sharp interest at that.
Orazio sputters, ‘Leads? Pah. You boys used to drag assholes home by their intestines.’ He hacks a laugh that turns into a cough. ‘You want me to come down there and show you how to twist a knife? I might be eighty-one, but I can still shove steel up a culo faster than your TikTok generation.’
I glance at Cesare; he rolls his eyes skyward, mouthing Good luck.
Orazio keeps going, Sicilian fire in every syllable. ‘That bastard Bonafacio blew up half our home, put your mother in the ground, and now he hides like a church mouse? Unacceptable. I didn’t build this family so my grandsons could finger-paint business deals and let old debts rot.’
The jab lands dead centre – your mother. The familiar ache hums in my ribcage. ‘We’ll settle it,’ I grind out. ‘Soon. You have my word.’