Chapter 27
Raze
The cigar lounge was the only place in the city where time moved at a different pace.
Steady. Restrained. Unhurried.
No phones on the table. No raised voices. No unnecessary interruptions. Just leather chairs, low lighting, and men who had spent their entire lives carrying the weight of a name older than most governments.
Atlas was already there when I arrived. He was always the first to arrive. Because Atlas was nothing if not punctual. Practical.
He didn’t lean or lounge or sprawl the way lesser men did when they let their guard down. He sat upright, one arm resting along the chair, a glass of dark liquor in his hand, gaze steady in that quiet, observant way that had earned him the title people used when they thought he couldn’t hear them.
Don of all dons.
Not because he demanded it. Because he didn’t need to.
Marcello sat to his right, flipping a lighter open and closed with absent precision, his posture relaxed but his eyes alert in a way that never truly switched off. Years of protecting what was his had wired him that way.
Gianni was the last to arrive before me, already mid-complaint as he dropped into his chair.
“If one more supplier tells me ‘shipping delays’ like it’s a personality trait,” he swore, loosening his cuff, “I’m going to start personally auditing their warehouses.”
“Good evening to you too,” Marcello greeted dryly.
Atlas glanced up as I approached.
“You’re late.”
“By four minutes,” I countered, taking my seat.
“Still late.”
Small talk came first. Not because it was meaningless, but because it established the temperature of the room before anything heavier was placed on the table.
“How’s Mikayla?” Marcello asked Gianni.
Gianni’s expression softened immediately, which in itself was mildly disturbing.
“Pregnant. Again.” It sounded like he was announcing a mild inconvenience instead of a life event. “She says it’s my fault.”
Atlas lifted a brow. “It is.”
Gianni pointed at him. “I came here for support.”
“You came to the wrong table,” I retorted.
A low chuckle passed between us.
“And the girls?” Atlas inquired.
“Running the house,” Gianni stated the obvious. “I live there. They rule it.”
“You wouldn’t have it any other way, cousin,” Marcello reminded him.
Atlas turned to me next.
“And you?”
The question was simple. Direct. It carried more weight than it should have. I felt the tightness rise in my throat before I forced it down, steadying my voice before I forged on.
“There’s a war looming,” I warned.
Marcello’s lighter stopped clicking.
Gianni leaned back slightly.
Atlas remained silent, but his attention was sharpened.
“Start at the beginning.”
“Cenk Chernov. Runs a small time Russian outfit. He’s peddling drugs in Siena.”
“Alongside Navarro Nato?” Marcello frowned.
“Nato’s out,” I informed them. “He stepped away, leaving the door wide open for all the wannabes.”
Marcello frowned faintly.
Gianni tilted his head.
Atlas took a slow sip before responding.
“I’ve heard the name. Vaguely. A Russian outfit that’s expanding their interests. I did not consider him significant enough to warrant investigation.”
“He wasn’t,” I informed them. “Until now.”
Marcello leaned forward slightly.
“What changed?”
“Ambition,” I told them. “He’s backing a desperate debtor. One who attempted to leverage someone under my protection as a financial solution.”
Gianni’s expression darkened instantly.
“Which someone?”
“A woman. Under my care. You haven’t met her.”
A merciless silence followed. Atlas set his glass down with deliberate care.
“And Chernov’s involvement?”
“Indirect. It’s more strategic. He wants repayment. He also wants regional influence. Supporting the debtor serves both purposes.”
Marcello’s jaw tightened.
“So he’s testing boundaries.”
“He is threatening our bloodline,” I explained.
That got their full attention.
All three of them leaned in, not physically, but mentally. Focused. Alert. Engaged.
Atlas’s gaze sharpened.
“You’re certain.”
“Yes.”
“Where is your intel coming from?”
“Partially from Archie Popovich.”
Gianni reacted immediately. Visibly. His shoulders stiffened. His jaw flexed. His glass hit the table harder than necessary.
“I cannot believe,” he fired back, “that you are still in contact with that fucking Russian.”
Marcello exhaled slowly. Here we go.
“That fucking Russian,” I ground out, “has earned his stripes repeatedly.”
Gianni scoffed.
“He is Bratva. His loyalties are conditional at best and suicidal at worst.”
“He has provided actionable intelligence that has prevented three separate operational failures in the last year,” I reminded him.
“And one day,” Gianni shot back, voice rising slightly, “his own kind is going to be the end of him when they realize he’s in bed with the Italian mafia.”
Atlas raised a hand slightly. Not to silence the conversation, but to regulate it.
“Gianni,” he said evenly, “Archie has been crucial to our operations.”
Gianni leaned back, clearly agitated.
“He’s a liability.”
“He got us out of the Palermo bind,” Atlas pushed forward. “He got us ahead of the Marseille shipment ambush. And he will likely get us out of more situations if we allow him to go on doing what he does best.”
Marcello’s gaze moved between them thoughtfully. Then, slowly, his expression changed to something that resembled understanding.
“Ah.”
Gianni glared at him. “Don’t.”
Marcello leaned back in his chair. “That’s why you’re angry,” he surmised.
“I’m angry because he’s Russian and untrustworthy.”
“No,” Marcello returned calmly. “You’re angry because Mikayla thinks he’s dead.”
Silence dropped like a stone. Atlas blinked once. Then looked at Gianni.
“You haven’t fucking told her?!?”
Gianni ran a hand down his face.
“I didn’t see the point in reopening that chapter,” he argued.
I let out a slow breath through my nose.
“Mikayla has history with Archie,” Marcello reminded us.
“Yes, thank you, historian,” Gianni retorted.
“And she believes he’s dead,” Atlas surmised.
“Yes.”
“And you have not adjusted that misconception,” I pointed out.
Gianni angled uncomfortably in his seat.
“She’s pregnant. Emotional. Stable. Happy. Why would I introduce unnecessary complications?”
Marcello smirked slightly. “Maybe because the man keeps walking into family operations like a recurring guest star.”
Gianni glared at him.
“I don’t know why I’m even bothering,” he shot back. “His own people will kill him eventually anyway.”
I leaned back in my chair and studied my cousin in silence.
Gianni’s irritation suddenly made a lot more sense when you looked at the history he preferred not to discuss.
Mikayla had once been engaged to Archie. Not by choice. By arrangement.
Then Gianni met her. Or, more accurately, collided with her—literally—when he hit the runaway bride on her own wedding day and decided, in typical Gianni fashion, that the situation was now his responsibility and his problem to solve.
What followed had been less of a romantic triangle and more of a controlled disaster.
Gianni fell for her quickly. Intensely. Predictably.
Archie, inconveniently, was still the man she had been promised to.
There had been a confrontation. Loud. Violent. Personal. The kind of altercation that stopped being about a woman halfway through and became about pride, territory, and who would concede first.
That was how Archie got knee-capped.
Gianni had not missed. And he had not intended it as a warning, either. He had intended to kill him.
The situation would have ended there, permanently, if Atlas hadn’t stepped in at the exact moment Gianni raised the gun for the kill shot. One intervention. One command. And a decision that kept a bullet out of Archie’s head.
Not out of mercy, but out of necessity.
At the time, the “crazy Russian,” as Gianni so fondly called him, possessed information Atlas needed badly enough to justify keeping him alive. Strategic value outweighed personal grievances. It was simple math, really.
Since then, Archie had done what very few men in his position ever managed to do.
He stayed.
He didn’t retaliate. Didn’t disappear. Didn’t attempt to sever ties after nearly being executed by the very family he now worked alongside.
Instead, he embedded himself into our operations with consistency, providing intel that proved accurate often enough to make his continued presence less of a question and more of an inevitability.
Somehow, despite the history, the knee-capping, the attempted execution, and the ongoing hostility from Gianni, he had become a fixture. An uncomfortable one. But a permanent one nonetheless.
I still couldn’t fully explain his loyalty.
A rational man would have walked away. A sane man certainly wouldn’t keep showing up to meetings where one of the attendees had once tried to put him in the ground.
And yet Archie continued to return, cane and all, calm, cooperative, and useful in ways that made eliminating him impractical and trusting him complicated. Go figure.
“You have nothing to worry about,” I finally addressed Gianni.
He narrowed his eyes.
“Oh?”
“You did a very thorough job,” I drawled, “of knocking your wife up. Twice. She has given you two beautiful daughters and is currently carrying a third child.”
Marcello snorted into his drink.
Atlas’s mouth twitched faintly.
“She is not going anywhere in a hurry,” I finished.
Gianni stared at me.
“…That is the least romantic reassurance I have ever received.”
“It is practical reassurance,” I explained.
Marcello chuckled.
“He’s not wrong.”
Gianni grumbled something under his breath about traitorous cousins.
Atlas let the moment breathe before steering us back to the matter at hand.
“Chernov,” he reminded us.
The room refocused instantly.
“What are we looking at?” Atlas wanted to know.
“Regional dominance. He believes destabilizing us through indirect pressure points will fast-track his rise. His entry point, regrettably, is Nathan Azzopardi—the idiot who stole from them.”
Marcello’s expression hardened.
“He’s ambitious.”
“He’s miscalculating,” I scoffed.
Atlas steepled his fingers.
“If he is backing a debtor who targeted one of ours, then he is no longer a peripheral nuisance. He is an active threat.”
Gianni leaned forward now, fully engaged.
“So we respond.”
“Yes. The question is-how?”
Silence settled over the table as Atlas weighed the options. His mind moved in a methodical rhythm—strategic, precise, and deliberate. It wasn’t always obvious to outsiders, but the man was operating several steps ahead at all times. A genius, whether he cared to admit it or not.
“We do not react emotionally,” he said at last. “We do not engage publicly. And we do not allow a Russian outfit to believe they can test our boundaries without consequence.”
Marcello nodded once.
“Now we’re talking.”
Gianni’s eyes lit with cold satisfaction.
Atlas looked at me.
“Set up a meeting with Chernov. Somewhere remote where we can remind him that this region is not unclaimed territory.”