Chapter 5
Felix
Tessa thought I couldn’t hear her when I left. But I would always hover outside the front door, just long enough to hear her scream, “Fuck you, Felix!” into the void of the house, where it echoed off the walls.
I didn’t move. Didn’t respond. There was a small, private thrill in knowing how tightly she clung to her indignation—how every word carried equal parts fire and fear. And maybe, just maybe, a little awe. I stayed long enough to savor it, letting the sound of her frustration settle in the air.
It was questionable judgement taking her as payment instead of her old man. The smarter move would have just been to take Howard, even if we couldn’t sell half his organs because they were fucked from years of being a drunk.
But after I saw Tessa on her hands and knees, I knew I had to have her.
It would have been so much easier if I could have just put her to work at the strip club.
Broken girls like her usually blended right in, losing themselves under the lights and music.
She would have earned back her debt quick enough shaking ass on stage, and I wouldn’t have to think about her every second of the damn day.
But Tessa wasn’t like the others. Too proud. Too angry. Too stubborn to bend the way I wanted. And that made me want to break her all the more.
I groaned and rubbed my temples with my knuckles.
I really didn’t think this through. Now I would have to live with her, be tempted by her every time she walked into a room.
The sound of her voice, the fire in her eyes, even the way she bristled when I pushed too far.
It all scraped against my control like sandpaper.
I had gotten into this situation because of my grandmother.
My grandmother—God rest her soul—had unfortunately passed away a few months ago. In her will, she had left me a very expensive, and very abandoned, brownstone. The only clause? I had to take residency within 180 days or I lose my inheritance rights.
And even though the building looked like a piece of shit, it was already worth a fortune before renovations. There was no way in hell I’d let money like that go to waste.
The problem was, I’d waited until the end of the damn 180 days.
Now I was scrambling, trying to get the place livable enough to count.
I should’ve brought in a crew months ago, but I kept putting it off, too busy running my business, too distracted with everything else.
And now, instead of contractors, I had Tessa—stubborn, sharp-tongued Tessa—standing in the rubble, armed with nothing but a rag and her spite.
There was something intoxicating about the way she squared her shoulders, glaring at the mess as if sheer defiance could scrub away a decade of rot. Most people broke when I pushed them. Tessa dug her heels in, and every time she did, I wanted to see how much further I could push.
But the longer I thought about it, the more the bitterness crept back in. Rocco hadn’t lifted a damn finger, and he still got his payout clean and easy. Cash in hand, no strings attached. Hell, even my cousin had gotten a small amount of cash and my grandmother barely liked him.
Meanwhile, I was left with a crumbling brownstone and a deadline breathing down my neck. If my grandmother wanted to teach me responsibility, she’d sure as hell succeeded.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, slicing through the thought. I pulled it out, jaw tight, and saw the name flashing across the screen. Fucking Dino.
“What is it?” I barked into the phone.
There was something off about Dino that I couldn’t quite place my finger on.
Dino was great at gathering information.
The kind of guy whose smile never reached his eyes, the type who listened more than he spoke, and somehow always knew more than he should.
He was fiercely loyal to the boss, too loyal sometimes, but that loyalty made him invaluable.
You could rely on him to get the job done, even if he had a way of keeping a little mystery in his movements.
“Hello to you too,” Dino said into the phone.
I rolled my eyes at the cheerfulness facade. “Dino, I didn’t answer to have a chat about who won last night’s game.”
“Oh, I’m not one for sports,” he said airily into the phone. “But I am one for information.”
I snorted into the phone, a humorless sound. “Then get to it. I don’t have time for small talk.”
“Well,” Dino said, as if he were talking about the weather. “I acquired some documents, and I found out some very interesting financial information about your businesses.”
My eyes narrowed. Every muscle in me tensed. “Interesting how?” I asked, voice low, controlled, but every syllable loaded with warning. I didn’t like surprises, but I never ignored threats—or opportunities, for that matter.
“Oh, that’s not something I want recorded,” he said, like he was declining a dessert menu at a restaurant. “Are you free to meet now?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting against the wave of frustration that threatened to spill over. “Where?”
“The warehouse by the docks.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” I responded, and tossed my phone in the center console.
Thirty minutes. Enough time to plan, to anticipate, to make sure I was ready for whatever Dino had uncovered. I checked my watch, ran through every possible scenario, and imagined the documents and the leverage they might provide.
A thrill ran under my skin, sharp and dangerous. Part of me was looking forward to it. To see the information laid out, to understand the moves I could make. By the time I made a U-turn at the light, my pulse was steady and controlled, but every sense was tuned to what was coming.
The drive to the warehouse was uneventful, the streets blurring past like a bad dream.
I should have been sharpening my focus, replaying Dino’s words, preparing for angles I hadn’t considered.
Instead, my mind kept dragging back to Tessa—her mouth full when she tried to talk to me, the way her eyes flashed when she snapped, the sound of her cursing me out when she thought I couldn’t hear.
She was irritating, distracting, and more dangerous to my focus than I wanted to admit.
I tightened my grip on the wheel and forced my attention back to the road. She was a complication I didn’t need, and yet, no matter how much I tried to shove her out of my head, she kept bleeding into the edges of my concentration.
By the time I reached the docks, the sky had gone dark, the air heavy with salt and rust. The warehouse sat at the end of the strip, its corrugated metal siding catching the glow of a single streetlight.
I killed the engine and sat for a beat, letting the quiet settle over me, forcing my pulse back to even.
When I stepped out, the crunch of gravel under my boots was the only sound. The building loomed ahead, hollow and unwelcoming, but I didn’t hesitate. My stride was steady as I crossed the lot and pushed open the side door, the hinges groaning in protest.
Inside, the space was dim, lit by a few weak bulbs strung overhead. Crates lined the walls, shadows pooled in the corners, and the faint drip of water echoed somewhere in the distance. And there, at the center table, stood Dino.
Dino was an enigma. While most of the men in the mafia could be summed up as dark, violent, and dangerous, those words never seemed to stick to him. He carried himself with a cheery ease, always approachable, dressed like he’d stepped out of a fashion catalogue rather than a backroom deal.
And yet, beneath that polish, there was something deeply unsettling.
His smile never reached his eyes, his friendliness always felt a touch too practiced.
It was the kind of charm that made you forget, just for a second, that he wouldn’t hesitate to have your body dumped in the river if it suited him.
“Ah, Felix,” he said, shooting me a smile that looked like it was out of a toothpaste commercial. “Good to see you again.”
I really wished Rocco was here, because he had far more patience for Dino than I did.
“Dino,” I said with the slightest nod, my irritation flared at his incessant cheer. “Get to the point. What did you find?”
Dino gasped, clutching his chest like I’d wounded him. “Straight to business? No warm greeting? No asking about my day?” His grin widened, playful, though his eyes stayed flat and unreadable. “You’re going to hurt my feelings one of these days.”
I doubted Dino had feelings to hurt. Not real ones, anyway. Whatever warmth he showed was a performance, and I wasn’t about to applaud it.
“Show me what you found,” I said, stepping towards the table.
“Fine, fine. Well I was doing some digging on an… unrelated matter, and happened to stumble across this.” Dino laid out a stack of documents with numbers plastered all over them.
I glanced over the top page, skimming the rows of figures, and felt my jaw tighten. These weren’t just any numbers—they belonged to me. Revenues, expenditures, movement across shell companies. Every line, every margin, was a reflection of the businesses I ran.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“Can’t say,” he responded, not a care in the world. Dino leaned back slightly, like we were having a casual conversation.
Of course he couldn’t. With Dino, there was no telling what corners he crawled through to get his hands on something like this.
“Anyways,” he went on breezily, “I’ll give you a synopsis. Someone’s been skimming money from your businesses.”
The words hit harder than I expected, my grip tightening on the paper as I scanned the numbers again, the pattern coming into sharper focus.
“There is no way,” I said. “Something like that would have been caught.”
“It appears it wasn’t,” Dino replied evenly.
“How are you even sure?” I asked, leaning closer, my eyes scanning the documents again.
Dino’s grin widened, smug and unbothered. “Well, I am rather good at accounting,” he said, like he was bragging about a party trick instead of pointing out a hole in my operations.
I glared at Dino, every muscle in my jaw tightening. Furious didn’t even begin to describe how I felt. And more than a little embarrassed. Of all people, it had to be Dino—the eternally cheerful, annoyingly polished mafia member—who uncovered this mess in my operations.
And I knew he wasn’t lying. Dino would be a snake to get the information he needed, but he was fiercely loyal and would never lie to Ettore, the Don, or anyone who worked with him. That loyalty made his findings undeniable, and dangerous if left unchecked.
I leaned over the table, eyes scanning the stacks of documents, tracing the movements and the holes in the accounts. Every number told a story, and every story pointed to someone bold enough to bleed my operations dry.
“Alright,” I muttered, more to myself than Dino. “Time to figure out who has been skimming.”
Dino’s grin widened, his tone annoyingly bright. “You’re welcome.”
Even though I was irritated, I couldn’t deny it. Dino had done a great job, which pained me to admit.
“Thank you,” I gritted out, voice rough and clipped.
I let out a long, controlled breath, pushing Dino’s cheerfulness to the back of my mind. The numbers were clear, the theft undeniable. Whoever had been skimming from my businesses would pay, and soon.
I stacked the documents neatly, my fingers tightening around the edges. Plans would have to be made, moves calculated, and a message sent that no one crossed me without consequence.
Outside, the faint hum of the city carried on, indifferent. Inside, I let the weight of what I’d just uncovered settle over me. And beneath it all, a spark of anticipation flickered. I was ready for what came next.
I stepped back from the table, letting the shadows of the warehouse swallow me as I prepared to turn discovery into control.