Chapter 24
Constance
I’ve never been so terrified in my life. Even at the club, I didn’t feel so powerless. Maybe that’s because today, it wasn’t just me in danger, but Maximo was in the line of fire yet again.
And I don’t know how much my heart can take.
The moment we step into the house, the scent of garlic and herbs hits me, helping calm my frayed nerves.
The warm, savory air wraps around us like a welcome home hug, almost enough to make me forget everything that just happened, including the gagged and restrained Bratva lieutenant Maximo’s men are dragging between them.
“Get him downstairs,” Maximo tells his men. “Keep working on him. I want him ready to talk later.”
The two soldiers haul the Russian off, his boots scraping the floor. Maximo watches them go before turning to me. “Dinner should be waiting, and I expect our guests have already arrived.”
In the dining room, Chef Francis has laid out another masterpiece.
There’s a perfectly seared lamb, roasted vegetables, and fresh bread that’s probably still warm from the oven.
As we enter the room Leonard pulls out the chair at the head of the table for Maximo.
A middle-aged woman with brunette hair, graying at the temples, is sitting on the left-hand side.
“Constance, this is my mother, Adeline Luciani,” Maximo introduces us as Leonard pulls out the chair on his right-hand side and gestures for me to sit.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I reach across the table and take her offered hand.
She gives mine a quick squeeze and says, “Oh, Maximo, you said she was stunning, but I think you undersold her. It’s so nice to meet you, dear. This is the first time I can remember my son bringing a woman to our family dinner!”
She motions to her left, to a bald, portly middle-aged man. “This is my brother, Maximo’s uncle Phillip. Beside him,” she adds, waving a hand towards a young man I recognize, “is his son, Maximo’s cousin Luca.”
“And down here,” Leonard draws my attention as he sits down to my right actually eating with us for once. “This is my oldest daughter, Cindy, and my son Enzo, who you know well.”
“Where is Donna?” Maximo asks his uncle Phillip, as he pours a glass of wine for me, then one for himself from the bottle by his plate.
“She had a migraine tonight,” Phillip grunts, taking a sip from his own wine glass. “You know how she gets,” he adds.
“I do.” Maximo grins at him. “Donna, Phillip’s wife, doesn’t approve of the family business,” he adds as an aside to me. “She only comes to visit on the holidays, if at all.”
I see Luca and Phillip both flush, and Adeline sputters as she waves Maximo to silence. “Hush, Maximo,” Adeline exclaims. “Don’t tease your uncle. Donna is a good woman, and loyal,” she adds with a raised eyebrow.
“She is loyal,” Phillip repeats. “She might not approve of how I make money, but she certainly approves of the results.”
We all fall silent as Chef Francis appears in the doorway from the kitchen, bringing in a platter with an entire salmon, already partitioned into easy to pick up slices.
“Here is the fish, for our young pescatarian,” he says as he heads over to Luca. Up close, Francis’s smile looks strained. There’s also a tremor in his hands when he sets the platter down, small enough most people wouldn’t notice, but I do. “Bon Appetit, my friends,” he adds before he leaves.
Following Maximo’s lead, I fill my plate, and for a few minutes I just eat and try to forget about the confrontation with Kirill.
The silence between the family members is oddly comfortable considering everything else we have been through so far today.
But the questions in my head won’t stay quiet for long.
“Maximo,” I finally say. “How is it the police haven’t just… come for you? Arrested you outright?”
“I’ve wondered that same thing myself,” Cindy chimes in from further down the table.
Adeline stares at me from across the table, appearing almost shocked at the brazen question, but Maximo doesn’t seem offended as he takes another sip of wine and wipes his mouth on his napkin.
He leans back, a faint smile tugging at his mouth.
“Because I’m insulated. My father set it up that way decades ago.
He helped fund and build many of the businesses in this city.
Those businesses formed small local unions.
You’ve heard their names, the Grocer’s Association, the Eastport Shopping District, and so on.
Each of those groups collects membership fees from its businesses. ”
“And that’s legal?”
“Perfectly,” he replies. “The unions provide surveillance and protection services. You know how there’s a large homeless population in town?
They almost never bother businesses that pay their dues.
The ones who don’t… well, things around them tend to fall apart—loitering, vandalism, slow deliveries, inspectors suddenly taking an interest. Nothing I have to order.
The city has a way of showing them the cost of operating without support. ”
I arch an eyebrow. “So, they’re… pressured.”
Maximo smirks. “Call it incentivized. Membership keeps a business running smoothly. Refusing tends to make problems appear. Most owners figure it out quickly.”
He gestures lightly with his wineglass. “Now, all those unions fall under the umbrella of my family’s corporation, which answers to me.
That structure shields me. Seventy percent of the businesses in this city belong to one association or another.
Whether they realize it or not, they’re buying their way into my good graces and earning the privilege of operating in my city.
And because the associations and the corporation are the ones on paper, the police can’t name me directly in any investigation. ”
Enzo speaks up and says, “The hierarchy is airtight. If there’s a crime at the street level, maybe it’s one of our agents. But responsibility never makes it back up the chain.”
I nod slowly, understanding the elegance of it, and how impossible it would be for an outsider to pull apart. “So, the Bratva can’t really ‘take over’ with their own men or operations. They would have to completely replace you at the top, like kicking a spider out of its web.”
“That’s a good way to think of it. All the city is my web, but to get to me at the head, you have to deal with the thousands of little spiders on every thread before you can ever reach me.”
I open my mouth to ask more questions about how his businesses are arranged, but I pause when Leonard lays a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s stick to lighter subjects at dinner, if you please my dear.”
“Of course.” The men obviously don’t want to get into any more specifics in certain company.
I understand immediately when I see Cindy’s eyes are fixed on me, not vacant, but sharp, as if she’s listening to something I can’t hear.
By the time we finish dinner and say our goodbyes to the family, the weight of the day has caught up to me.
As Maximo and I climb into bed together, my mind is still turning over what he told me, even as sleep pulls me under.
Maximo must have been exhausted as well, because he only pulls me close, draping an arm over me before we both fall asleep.
The next morning, we’re awakened by an unexpected interruption. One of the household staff knocks on our door to report, “Chef Francis hasn’t shown up for work.”
Maximo frowns as he wipes the sleep from his eyes and glances at the clock. “It’s after eight already. That’s odd. Francis has never missed a day.”
“Maybe he’s sick. I thought I saw him shaking last night,” I remark.
“Odd,” he replies. “I’ll have Enzo send someone to check on him.”
“Good. Now, come on,” I say, as I roll out of the bed and pick up the nearby bathrobe to cover myself. “I get nauseous if I don’t eat when I wake up. Let me make breakfast for you today.”
The house still feels off after the events of the past few days, and now Francis missing, and a Bratva soldier is moaning through the vents. Cooking shouldn’t feel normal, but somehow, it does.
We go downstairs together, and I pull the bread and things I’ll need from the pantry, then dig through the refrigerator until I find a pound of bacon and a carton of eggs.
This is the first time I’ve gone through the motions of cooking since the fire, and to my surprise, practicing everything my father taught me doesn’t sting.
Instead, it makes me feel closer to him in a way that’s been missing since the funeral.
Maximo sits at the counter, watching as I set a plate in front of him.
“You know how to cook,” he admits when he sees what I’ve prepared.
“Don’t sound so surprised. I grew up in my father’s restaurant.”
After we eat, Maximo helps me with the dishes.
I can’t leave a dirty dish in the sink after I cook.
Cleaning up after myself is just too ingrained in me.
Once the kitchen is spotless again, we both get dressed, and then Maximo leads the way downstairs to where Enzo’s men still have the Bratva lieutenant tied to a chair.
His face is unrecognizable from the night’s “work,” but the one eye that isn’t swollen shut is still sharp and defiant.
“Ready to talk?” Maximo asks.
The Russian gives him a humorless chuckle. “I already told your men what I’ve heard. There’s a rat in your house. Someone under your roof.”
Maximo’s gaze narrows. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” The man shrugs. “We operate in small units; each one only knows what they need for their jobs. Whoever it is, they’re feeding Kirill enough to keep him ahead of you.”
I see the way Maximo’s mind is already turning, lining up possibilities. Then his expression hardens.
“Feeding him, indeed. Find Francis,” he tells his men. “Now. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he hasn’t ever missed a day of work in his life before today.”
My stomach drops.
Not Francis.
I feel the air in the room shift. If Francis really is gone, it might mean the leak had been sitting, or at least serving, at Maximo’s table all along.
The idea that the chef betrayed us feels wrong. If he really wanted to hurt Maximo, why not just poison him in any one of the many meals he made for him?
“What are you going to do with him now?” I ask Maximo, nodding toward the Russian hostage.
He addresses the men from Paul’s crew who have been helping him since yesterday. “I know you’re exhausted, but I’ve got one more job for you. Take our friend to the junkyard outside the city and get rid of him.”
“You want him in the grinder?” one of them asks as casually as if Maximo asked him to take out the garbage.
“He’s been helpful. Shoot him first, then the grinder,” Maximo replies.
The Bratva agent slumps in his bonds, and my stomach sinks right along with him.
I wait until Paul’s men have carried him from the basement, then turn to Maximo.
“You told me you don’t kill without cause,” I say quietly.
“So, tell me how this is still a cause, Maximo. If bodies keep turning up, even the district attorney you’ve bought and paid for will have to charge you. ”
“You came here for a body count,” Maximo reminds me with a raised eyebrow.
“I came here to find out who murdered my father and kill them. Nothing we’ve done so far has brought me any closer to killing Kirill Volkov.
All we’ve done is leave a trail of bodies that’s eventually going to lead back to you!
I don’t want to see you throw your entire empire away over my revenge. I’m not worth it.”
“This war isn’t just about your revenge anymore, Constance. It’s about you. And you are worth it to me. The Volkov family knows what you mean to me now, and they’ve decided that the easiest way to hurt me is through you.”
“But these men we’ve murdered…” I try to argue.
“Killing a soldier in a war isn’t murder,” Maximo practically growls.
“Those men at the dock shot at us first. There is no crime, no murder in defending yourself. That’s what I’m doing, Constance.
I’m defending myself from these bastards encroaching into my territory.
My family helped build the city, and I’ll be damned to hell before I let the Volkovs take it from me.
If you want out, then just say so, firefly,” he murmurs.
“I’ll put you somewhere safe and let you rebuild.
But if you stay… you stay with me. All the way. ”
“No, I don’t want out!” I protest as I wrap my arms around him and lean my head on his chest. “I’m just worried about you getting hurt.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Then stay with me. Let’s get your revenge and rebuild. Together.”
“Okay,” I easily agree. “What should our next step be?” I ask him as we hold each other close.
“If Francis is the informant, then with him gone, we should be able to make a plan that will catch the Volkovs by surprise,” he says. “We’ll figure out a way to strike back, hitting them harder than they expect.”
And for the first time since my father died, I’m not afraid. I’m ready.