4. Elio #2
Things are moving fast, as they always do after a patriarch drops.
My father, Vittorio, stands at the head of the table. Sixty-two years old and still built like the fighter he once was, age has not softened him in the slightest.
The raw and reckless violence of his youth has long since been traded for a colder kind of discipline.
Even standing here now in the center of the room, he has always had the look of a man who expects every situation to turn into a brawl.
Tonight, though, his shoulders carry a new weight.
It is not obvious, though nothing about my father ever is.
To anyone else, he might simply look more focused than usual.
His graying hair has been combed back with the same neatness as always, his expression pulled into those familiar hard lines, but I know him too well to mistake it for anything else.
I know what fatigue looks like on him, what fury does to his expression, how grief weighs on him regardless of his ever acknowledging it in the first place.
It doesn’t surprise me even if it feels out of place for a man like my father.
He and Amos have been friends for a long time, a story told so often, it has slowly turned into legend among our syndicates.
Once, when they were young, Vittorio Conti and Amos Russo belonged to rival families clawing for the same pieces of this city.
Their fathers hated each other, and shared streets soon turned bloody despite neither side even remembering what parts they wanted to hoard to begin with.
By all logic, the sons should have inherited that same hatred and continued it.
Maybe it was pragmatism or shared fatigue, perhaps even the simple recognition that they were more alike than either of their fathers ever cared to admit.
Whatever the reason was that convinced both newly fledged men to lower their guns once the reins of their empires were passed down, Vittorio and Amos built something different out of the rubble that was given to them.
I used to think their alliance was invincible simply because I could not imagine either of them allowing the other to be taken off the board.
Now it’s become clear how foolish that belief truly had been.
My gaze flicks briefly to Alessio.
He leans against the wall farthest from the table. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest, his attention fixed on the men moving around the study, turning one corner of the space into a makeshift security hub.
A few of the men glance toward him before speaking, unconsciously checking his reaction before deciding how urgent an answer to their questions are.
At thirty-six, my older brother has never needed to be the loudest man in a room to control its rhythm.
Where I was built to end problems once they become one, Alessio has always been better at seeing them before they fully form.
He is the strategic mind where I am the unbreakable blade.
The architect to my executioner.
The one who can look at a mess of competing interests, wounded egos, and shifting loyalties and somehow see the clearest route through it.
Our father has relied on that balance between us for years.
It has always worked because we understand our roles without question.
Between the two of us, there are very few problems this family cannot absorb or bury. But tonight, looking at him now, I can tell even he feels the strain in the air.
“Elio,” my father greets as soon as the door is shut behind me.
My brother’s eyes lift then and meet mine across the room.
There is no brotherly softness in them, no trace of the man who once bloodied a boy twice his size for breaking my nose when we were children. What looks back at me now is a strategist wanting answers.
Where were you? Is what his eyes ask me.
I give him nothing.
Or try to, anyway.
Unfortunately, Alessio has never needed words from me to know when something is off. He reads what I do not say with infuriating ease.
I see it now in the way his shoulders roll back to press more firmly into the wall behind him, subtle enough that no one else in the room would take it as anything other than getting comfortable for a long day ahead.
I know he has seen enough in my eyes to understand that whatever pulled me away from the banquet and left me unaccounted for hours is not a detail to ignore.
It is a thread he will undoubtedly return to later to unravel when the audience around us is gone.
I move closer to the table before he can hold my gaze any longer.
The reports spread beside the map catch my attention immediately. Amos Russo’s entire life is spread out in excruciating detail—the things he owned, the things he controlled, the pieces of his empire men would kill to take now that he is gone.
All of it has been rendered down to simple lines on pieces of paper.
He had always been known for his quiet ruthlessness for as long as I can remember, patient in a way that made weaker men overplay their hands against him constantly.
He did not posture the way some Dons do.
He was always subtler than that, deadlier in his own way.
To find that a man like that was taken out with two clean shots to the back of the head so soon after appearing at a public event makes this all the more disturbing.
And perhaps what is worse beyond that is whoever pulled the trigger must have known Amos well enough to get that close.
Not to mention the fact that there has been no immediate claim of responsibility from any of our enemies.
That bothers me more than the manner of death.
A killing like this should already have ambitious rivals claiming responsibility as a means to sow fear into all of us, yet none have come forward.
A hit like this either screams of an inside job or a rival with deep pockets that none of us have been aware of up until now.
When I finally lift my eyes from the papers on the table, it’s to look across it. “Are you thinking this is internal or external?”
My father rubs a hand over his face. It is a rare gesture from him. “I’m not sure as of right now.”
While the answer is honest, it still unsettles me. Vittorio Conti does not voluntarily admit to feeling uncertainty unless he can no longer pretend to not feel cornered by it.
This city obeys his rule not because they believe he is invincible, but because he has spent decades making doubt look like something that happens to lesser men.
To hear even a trace of it now, however buried beneath that iron calm it remains, sends a shot of ice racing through my veins.
He continues, lowering his hand, his expression already settling back into stone. “Though, I would wager that whoever is responsible will wait to see what our next move is before striking again.”
My brow lifts. “You think it’s another syndicate?”
“I doubt his own would be stupid enough to do something like this,” he answers.
I let the words settle over me.
Someone outside our network would gain a great deal from taking out a prominent figure like the head of the Russo family.
The temporary chaos alone would be worth fortunes to the right people.
Sometimes, all a rival needs is to create disorder and stir up the very real fear that if one Don can be taken out and left outside his own compound without any witnesses, then no patriarch is untouchable.
I nod to the table, my eyes focusing on the north end of the map. “The Bianchi family has been sniffing around the Russo routes for months. They’ve been loyal to the Russos for some time now, but that loyalty dies once the man who commands it does.”
“Perhaps,” my father says, his eyes narrowing on the map too. “However, the Bianchi family are also not known to be opportunists.”
A fair point.
They are an ambitious family, yes, but I’ve never considered them sloppy. Not usually, at least. They prefer leverage that can be disguised as a mutual partnership, unlike many other syndicates.
Killing Amos in this manner would be a sharp deviation from their usual character unless someone else inside the family has started steering the wheel.
Unfortunately, internal betrayal always remains on the table no matter how loyal a house claims to be.
Men kill for power, insult, fear, and imagined futures just as often as they kill for orders.
But my father is right about one thing.
To take Amos out like this from within would require either breathtaking arrogance or desperation so severe, it borders on madness.
Alessio pushes off the wall then. “Isabella…”
The muscles in my back tighten automatically.
“She was at the dinner tonight, wasn’t she?” he asks, voice still maddeningly calm. “Last seen slipping away with…”
His eyes glance in my direction, quick enough that most of the room would miss it, but I catch it. It is a hook baited with a subtle accusation, and it is meant for me alone. Heat surges through my veins, anger that is nearly violent.
Touch her and I will end you, brother or not.
The thought is instant, primal in a way. I’ve never felt the need to put my brother in his place before, least of all over a woman. We are not like that and never have been.