Chapter 39
GIANNI
"Burn them."
Spackman looks up from the spread of documents on my desk. "Which ones?"
"All of them. I want hostile takeovers on any subsidiaries connected to Marino. His logistics outfit, any of his construction companies. And I want it done by the end of the week."
Spackman regards me for a moment, as if he wants to make sure he heard me correctly. “That’s aggressive.”
"That's the point."
I'm standing at the window, looking out at a city I've controlled for twenty years, and for the first time in my career, control feels like a thing I'm grasping at rather than holding.
The skyline hasn't changed. The buildings are the same.
But the world underneath has shifted, and every hour that Marino and Dawson spend together is another hour of planning and plotting that I have to somehow get in front of.
Theresa gave them my home address. I’d had a few on file, and my route home is taken every day with the express purpose of losing any tail that might be following. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d managed for years to keep my home a secret.
Until now.
Not only that, she gave them schedules and security information. That’s to say nothing of what they got out of her through violence, assuming it wasn’t all a performance.
Either way, my perimeter is compromised. My enemy knows where I, Patrick, and the woman carrying my child sleep.
Patrick. My thoughts linger on him for longer than expected. He’s not my son, but with each passing day he feels more and more like it. And Lance sure as hell isn’t a father.
"Marino’s logistics company alone has forty-seven million in annual revenue," Spackman says. "A hostile takeover isn’t just a matter of putting a gun to some lawyer’s head and getting him to sign on a dotted line. A move like this has to be done slowly, through boardrooms and negotiations.”
I narrow my eyes. "Then do it."
"It's not that simple—"
“Then make it simple.” I turn from the window, and Spackman flinches just a little. “I don’t care what it takes, and I don’t give a damn what it costs. I want Marino to wake up one morning and find out half of his revenue streams no longer exist. I want him to feel the walls closing in.”
Spackman sets his pen down, his eyes on me with the measured calm of someone who’s seen me angry before but understands that this is different.
This isn’t strategic anger, the kind I’ve used for two decades to build and control.
No. This is personal, a different sort of anger, the anger of a man who saw those bruises on Theresa’s face and imagined them on Violet’s.
It’s the anger of a man in charge of protecting a boy in more danger than he can possibly understand.
Spackman takes a slow draw of air, measuring his next words very carefully.
“Gianni, this is risky. If we make moves like this out in the open, we expose ourselves. The capex alone will make investors nervous and twitchy. And if Dawson gets wind of what you’re doing, targeting Marino while the investigation is still active—"
"Dawson is a problem I'm solving separately."
"Dawson is a problem that's connected to every other problem. You can't compartmentalize this anymore. Marino, Dawson, Theresa, the custody filing, they're all the same fight. And if you start swinging wildly—"
"I am not swinging wildly."
"You're standing at your window telling me to burn Marino’s revenue streams. That’s a warpath.”
The silence that follows is heavy enough to press against the walls. Spackman holds my gaze without flinching, because that's what I pay him to do, to tell me the truth when the truth is the last thing I want to hear.
He’s right and I know he’s right. I didn’t build what I’ve built by lashing out. I built it by being patient and precise, thinking three moves ahead.
I can't afford mistakes. Not now. Not with what's at stake.
"Fine," I say after a deep breath. "Scale it back. The logistics company first. Find the leverage point, minority shareholders who are unhappy, board members who can be turned. Do it quietly. No fingerprints."
"That I can do."
"And the construction firm?"
"Give me two weeks. I'll find an angle that doesn't set off alarms."
"One week."
"Ten days."
"Done."
Spackman gathers the documents, straightening them with methodical precision. He’s clearly not happy with his orders. But he’s a loyal solider; he’ll execute them either way.
"One more thing," I say. "Kylie's latest report. Where are we?"
“She’s deep into Dawson’s digital history. Found irregularities in a few of his cases.”
“What kinds of irregularities?”
“Evidence logs that don’t match chain-of-custody records, modified witness statements, that sort of thing.”
“We collect enough of those, it could be enough to get him to back off. Or even bury him.”
“That’s her thinking too. Build a pattern and a case. But she said it’s going to take another week or two. At least.”
"We may not have two weeks."
"I know." He pauses at the door. "Gianni, I just want to be clear. You’re pissed and I get it. Anger can be good fuel. But it’s a potent one. And fuel needs an engine and purpose. Otherwise, it just burns everything in its path.”
He leaves, closing the door gently behind him.
I stand at the window and take a slow, steadying breath. As far as the rest of the building is concerned, this is just an ordinary Wednesday morning. The rest of the staff have no idea what’s happening on the forty-second floor, how close everything is to changing forever and irreversibly.
I think about Violet. She's downstairs at her desk, doing the job she was hired to do eleven months ago—managing schedules, filing documents, answering phones. And as she works she has to pretend that none of what is happening is actually happening.
I think about the baby. Seven weeks now. A cluster of cells with a heartbeat, becoming a person inside the body of the woman I—
I stop the thought in its tracks, right before I consider the most important word. It’s true. I know it. But I can’t say it, can’t think it. If I do, I make it yet another vulnerability.
And I have more than enough of those.
A sound interrupts my thoughts. No, not a sound.
A wall of sound. The stairwell doors on every floor slamming open simultaneously, the thunder of boots on marble, voices shouting in the flat, authoritative cadence I've heard before but never like this—never this loud, never this many, never with this much force behind it.
"FBI! Nobody move! Federal agents!"
I’m at the door in an instant, pulling it open just in time to watch the entire floor erupt into chaos. Agents in tactical vest are pouring in, and it’s not the small team Dawson had scraped together before in order to intimidate me.
This is a full tactical outfit of a dozen, maybe fifteen, maybe more, men and women with badges and weapons in a raid designed to overwhelm.
Employees are on their feet, hands up, some frozen at their desks, others backing against walls. Someone screams. A coffee mug hits the floor and shatters. An agent is shouting instructions and the noise is enormous, filling the floor like floodwater.
I scan the room. My eyes move through the chaos with practiced focus. Violet. Where is she? This is the time of day she’d be on this floor, checking inventories and finalizing C-suite schedules. But she’s nowhere to be found.
I start moving through the crowd, past the agents, toward the elevators, toward the stairs, toward anywhere she might have gone. I need to find her. I need to know she's safe.
"Gianni Russo!"
I turn to see three agents moving toward me, one of them with handcuffs at the ready. They’re not asking questions, and they’re not presenting documents. They’re here for one reason and one reason only, to place me under arrest.
"Gianni Russo, you're being detained for questioning in connection with—"
"Where's your warrant?" I cut them off with a snarl I can’t restrain.
"—ongoing investigation into racketeering and—"
"I said where is your warrant?"
The lead agent pulls a folded document from his vest and holds it up.
I don't reach for it. I don't need to read it to know what it says.
Dawson's name will be on it, and whatever evidence he used to obtain it will be the kind my attorneys will challenge and eventually destroy, but not today. Today, the paper is enough.
"Turn around, sir. Hands behind your back."
I could resist but resisting arrest accomplishes nothing except ammunition for Dawson's case and footage for the evening news. I turn around and I put my hands behind my back. The cuffs click shut, cold and tight. The chaos calms; the team have found what they’d come for.
They lead me through the office past the desks, past the frozen employees, past the shattered coffee cup on the marble floor. Every eye in the building is on me. The head of Russo Industries, handcuffed, escorted by federal agents through the company he built.
My face is empty, my spine is straight, and my stride is unhurried.
My mind is racing. Violet is missing, and I don’t even know if she’s still in the building. All I care about is keeping her safe, keeping Patrick safe.
The agents push me into the elevator, and as they do one question forms in my mind: where the hell is Lance Dawson?
This should be a big day for him, the day he finally has me in cuffs. One would think he’d be front and center, a pleased grin on his face.
But he's not here. He's not leading this raid. And I’d bet he's not in the building.
Which means he's somewhere else.
The elevator doors close.
Where is Violet?
I have never been more afraid in my life.