2. Niccolò
Niccolò
Fear has a distinct scent. It smells like sour copper, stale sweat, and cheap adrenaline.
I’ve breathed it in my entire life. I’ve lived on it.
I step through the heavy wooden doors of The Neon Crow, the hinges groaning in protest. The air inside is thick, choking on the stench of spilled liquor and unwashed bodies.
It’s a shithole. A breeding ground for the city’s rats.
But rats always return to the dark when they think they’ve outsmarted the trap.
"Place smells like a fucking ashtray," Alessio murmurs beside me, his boots crunching over peanut shells and sticky residue on the floorboards. He adjusts the cuffs of his bespoke suit, a casual, dangerous smirk playing on his lips. My younger brother treats violence like a sport. He’s charming, volatile, and itching for a reason to ruin his knuckles tonight.
"Focus," Enzo says from my other side. His voice is a flat, icy monotone.
Our Consigliere doesn't do thrill. He does math.
He calculates risk and eliminates variables.
"Pietro owes us three hundred grand. Don Roberto wants the ledger balanced by morning.
We get the location of the cash, and we get out. "
"We get out when I say we get out," I reply quietly.
My voice barely carries over the booming bass of the jukebox, but both men instantly shut their mouths.
The hierarchy isn't just a title. It’s a physical law of gravity.
I am the Underboss of the Severato Syndicate, but every man in our world knows the Don’s crown is already resting on my head.
My father is an old man clinging to a throne I built for him.
We walk deeper into the bar.
The reaction is immediate. The noise dies. The laughter cuts off as if someone severed a cord. Men twice my age take one look at my face and step back, practically pressing their spines into the dirty brick walls to get out of my way. They lower their chins. They avert their eyes.
It is a primal display of submission. The sheep recognizing the wolf.
And it bores me out of my fucking mind.
I don't look at them. I don't care about their fear. Fear is cheap. It’s a biological reflex. I demand it and use it, but I stopped feeling anything from it a long time ago.
My eyes scan the crowded, dimly lit room, cutting through the red haze. I am not here to play king. I am here for Pietro, the rat who skimmed from our containers.
"Booth in the back," Enzo says quietly, tipping his chin toward the far wall. "Three o'clock. He’s trying to slide under the table."
I shift my gaze.
Pietro is wedged into a corner booth. His face is a sickly, pale white. He has spotted us. He is trying to push himself out of the booth to make a run for the back exit, his hands shaking so hard he knocks his beer bottle over. It shatters on the floor.
"I'll take the back door," Alessio says cheerfully, unbuttoning his suit jacket. "Just in case the rat learns how to sprint."
"No," I say, my eyes locked on our target. "We go straight to him."
I take a step forward, charting a direct path through the parting crowd.
But as my focus zeros in on Pietro’s booth, my peripheral vision catches movement. Someone who isn't scrambling out of the way. Someone who isn't pressing their chin into their chest.
She is wiping down an adjacent wooden table.
She is small. Maybe five-foot-four. Her dark hair is pulled up, exposing the long, delicate line of her neck. She wears a cheap black uniform that hides her shape, a damp rag clutched in her hand.
I don't know who she is. I didn't come here for a woman. I came here to break a man’s fingers until he gave me my money. But as I walk down the center aisle, the air in my lungs stalls.
The women with their blouses unbuttoned, the ones who usually throw themselves at customers, are cowering. They are looking at the floor, terrified.
But not this waitress.
She stops wiping the wood, slowly straightens her spine, and then, she looks at me.
Not at my suit. Not at the guards flanking me. She looks me dead in the eyes.
Her eyes are wide. I can see the rapid, frantic pulse beating at the base of her throat.
Her body recognizes the apex predator in the room.
She knows exactly what I represent. But her mind refuses to submit.
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't look away.
She lifts her chin a fraction of an inch and holds my stare with a blazing, reckless defiance that hits me like a physical punch to the sternum.
In a world where everyone kneels before me, this tiny girl in a dirty apron refuses to bow.
Something dead inside my chest cracks open.
She is an anomaly. A glitch in the control I exert over my city.
I want to see what she does when the cage is rattled. I want to see if that fire in her eyes is a fluke, or if it burns all the way down to her core.
I pull my gaze from her and look back at Pietro.
"We do it here," I order.
Enzo frowns slightly, his steps slowing. "In the open? It’s sloppy, Niccolò. We drag him out the back. No witnesses. No noise."
"I said we do it here."
Enzo doesn't argue. He nods once, stepping to the side to block the front entrance, crossing his arms over his chest. Alessio just grins, falling into step right behind my right shoulder, eager for the blood.
I walk the rest of the way across the room. The silence is deafening. The only sound is the heavy thud of my shoes against the floorboards.
Pietro doesn't make it out of the booth. His legs give out before he can even stand. He slumps back against the vinyl seat, his breathing fast and shallow. Sweat is pouring down his forehead, soaking his collar.
"Don Niccolò," Pietro gasps as I stop at the edge of his table. He uses my father's title. It’s a desperate, pathetic attempt at respect. "I... I have the money. I swear to God. I just need two more days. I didn't steal it, the Irish skimmed the top—"
"Shut up," I say.
The two words are quiet, but Pietro’s mouth snaps shut.
I don't look at him. I look past him.
The defiant waitress is standing less than ten feet away. Her hands are perfectly still. She is watching me.
"Stand up," I command the rat in the booth.
"Please," Pietro begs, his voice cracking. Tears well up in his eyes, spilling over his cheeks. He presses his hands together in a prayer. "Please, Niccolò. I have a daughter. I have—"
I don't give him the chance to finish.
I reach across the table. My hand wraps around his throat.
His skin is clammy and wet. I grip his windpipe, cutting off his oxygen instantly, and haul him up. He weighs a hundred and eighty pounds, but the adrenaline and cold rage make him feel weightless. I drag him entirely over the wooden table.
Bottles shatter. Glasses crash to the floor. The sound of breaking glass echoes like gunshots in the dead quiet of the bar.
Pietro thrashes, his hands clawing uselessly at my wrist, his boots kicking at the air.
I throw him onto the sticky floor in the center of the aisle. He hits the wood with a sickening thud, gasping frantically for air.
Alessio steps forward, his heavy boot coming down hard on Pietro’s chest, pinning the rat to the ground.
"You stole from my family," I say. I unbutton the center button of my suit jacket, crouching down so I am hovering right over his face. "You lied to my Consigliere. You thought you could take three hundred thousand dollars and drink it away in a dive bar on the South Side."
"I... I..." Pietro chokes, spitting blood onto the floorboards from where his lip split against the wood.
I pull a switchblade from my inside pocket. The metal clicks open, a sharp, deadly sound that cuts through the silence.
"Alessio," I say softly, keeping my eyes on Pietro’s terrified face. "Give me his right hand."
Alessio smiles. He leans down, grabbing Pietro’s right wrist, and yanks his arm out flat against the floor. Pietro screams. It is a high, piercing sound of pure terror.
I raise the blade. I am going to pin his hand to the floor, make him bleed out the money he stole, and then let Alessio finish the job in the alley.
It is business. It is the only language this city understands.