Chapter 21 Enrico
ENRICO
The desk was covered in reports, maps, a glass half-empty of whiskey.
My phone buzzed every few minutes with updates from the docks and safe houses.
A soft knock. Marco didn’t wait for an answer before stepping inside.
He carried the morning on his shoulders — coat unbuttoned, tie undone, gun at his back.
“They’re moving. Two of the smaller crews didn’t check in last night. One warehouse burned. Nothing inside worth torching.”
I leaned back. “Then why?”
“They must be after you.”
Who was working with Russo? Why were they so adamant about taking me out? What the fuck was going on in my city?
“They were careful. Left one body. No ID. Message carved into the wall.”
The empire you built is crumbling.
I poured whiskey and pushed the glass toward him. Marco didn’t take it.
“I want names.” Everyone needed to work around the clock until the person responsible was dead.
“You’ll get them. Could be foreign.”
He stopped, jaw tightening. “Could be an inside job.”
I nodded once, slow. “Of course it could.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it was heavy. Marco broke it first.
“You want me to hit back?”
“No.”
He looked at me like I’d started speaking in tongues. “No?”
“They’re expecting that. That’s the move our father would’ve made. Quick, loud, bloody.”
“Your father survived every war he fought.”
“And left corpses to climb over.”
Marco didn’t argue. He lit a cigarette instead, smoke cutting through the air. “You think waiting will scare them?”
“No, but it’ll confuse them. Confusion buys time. Fear follows.”
He exhaled a rough laugh. “Since when did patience become your weapon?”
“Since I found something I can’t afford to lose.”
He stilled. “Mia.”
I didn’t confirm it. I didn’t need to.
He stubbed the cigarette out in the nearest tray. “She’s not built for this.”
“Neither was our mother.”
“And look how that ended.”
The air cooled around us. I sat the glass down too hard; whiskey sloshed over my fingers. For a moment, the flashback was too sharp to ignore—my mother standing in this same room years ago, pleading for mercy for a man who’d betrayed my father. She hadn’t been wrong.
My father’s answer had been efficient. Public. A lesson.
“Mercy,” he told me that night, blood still drying on his cuffs, “is an infection. It weakens judgment, poisons power. You give it once, and the whole body rots.”
I was young. I believed him because he was God in those days—until I learned gods could die screaming like anyone else.
Marco spoke again, softer. “You can’t protect her from this.”
“I can try.”
“You'll be putting her in a cage. She doesn’t want that.”
“She’s already in one.”
Marco swore under his breath and pushed away from the desk. “I’ll send word to the men. No retaliation until you give it. But Enrico—”
“What?”
“Don’t wait too long. Patience can look a lot like weakness to people who don’t know better. And we both know what happens to Kings when they appear weak.”
He left before I could answer. The door shut, sealing in the quiet again. My brother and I hadn’t always seen eye to eye, especially when it came to the family business, but… since I took over, he’d had my back on every occasion.
I stared at the maps on the desk. Red pins marked ports, warehouses, routes. Lines crisscrossed like veins. Every inch of this city carried a cost I’d paid in loyalty or blood.
My phone buzzed again. New message. Unlisted number. Just an image this time — a raven perched on broken glass. No text. A symbol, then. A calling card.
Who the fuck was coming after me? And why choose now? Why not before I married Mia? Or… does this all have to do with her?
I forwarded it to Marco, typed: Find origin.
Then I rose. My reflection stared back from the window — same dark suit, same guarded eyes.
Upstairs, a soft sound—footsteps, maybe.
The faintest creak in the boards above me.
It reached me like a pulse. For a heartbeat I let myself imagine a different life: no guns, no empire built on fear.
Just her laugh in the kitchen, morning light across her face.
The thought was dangerous precisely because it was possible.
The phone buzzed again, breaking it. Another message.
Marco: A body found near the river. Our man. A note pinned to his chest.
I opened the image file.
Black ink on paper, letters deliberate and neat:
Your throne bleeds.
No signature.
The anger started low, like a hum under the ribs, rising in increments. I set the phone down carefully.
I called Marco. “Pull everyone from the docks. We lock the city down. No shipments. No collections. We freeze movement until I know who’s playing this game.”
He hesitated. “That’ll cost us.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck.”
He started to say something else, then thought better of it. “Understood.”
When the call ended, I poured the rest of the whiskey and drank it slowly.
The glass left a ring on the report beneath it—one more small imperfection in a world obsessed with order.
I thought again of my father’s creed, the one he’d carved into my head like scripture: Rule through fear, not affection.
He’d believed love made a man weak. He’d never met Mia.
I turned toward the window again. The sun climbed higher, spilling over the gardens. Two guards crossed the courtyard below, rifles slung casually but eyes alert. Beyond the gates, somewhere out there, someone was waiting for me to falter.
They would not get what they wanted. They could strip my docks, burn my warehouses, poison my name. None of it mattered. The empire could bleed; it had bled before and survived. But the woman upstairs—she was the one thing I couldn’t rebuild.
I pressed my palm against the glass, the fog of my breath vanishing as quickly as it came.
They want a war. Then they’ll get one. My hand dropped back to my side, steady now. But they won’t touch her. Not while I breathed.