Chapter 3 MASSIMO
The next day…
The Sovereign never sleeps. Its heart beats in time with the city, a pulse that thrums inside my own chest, making me as restless as the machine I've built.
The casino is alive at all hours, all seasons, all states of the soul.
No matter who you are or where you come from, if you step onto my floor, you belong to me for as long as I want you.
You might not know it, but that's the only thing keeping you safe.
I had the Sovereign constructed for a single purpose: to be unbreakable and unbreachable, as inevitable as gravity.
But even the best machine is only as good as the people who run it, and so every corridor, every secret camera, every reinforced door, and silent elevator is an argument against human error.
I have spent years learning that no matter how you engineer a system, it's the flesh that betrays you first.
I step through the private entrance, the one guests never see, and take the elevator that requires both a thumbprint and a code that is changed daily.
The world outside the elevator shrinks as I rise: the gaming floor, oxygenated and cacophonous, fades into nothing, replaced by soundproofed silence and the kingly monotony of carpet meant to last generations.
By the time I reach the top, the only thing that matters is what's on the other side of the door.
The private conference room was modeled on a Roman triclinium, minus the louche decadence.
Instead of couches, there are leather chairs.
Instead of mosaics, there's a view: the entire valley, the Strip curling below like a neon necklace.
The windows are triple-layered, bomb-resistant, and cleaned every morning before dawn by a man who never takes the same route to work twice.
If you know where to look, you can see the penthouses where most of the major players sleep, the rooftop pools where their wives and mistresses get sunburned ‘til noon, the little alleyways and garages where their foot soldiers and capos negotiate the price of betrayal.
These are not the things outsiders notice. But I notice everything.
I pause just outside the conference room, listening through the open door, just for the pleasure of knowing these men have already forgotten that nothing in the Sovereign belongs to them, not even their secrets.
"…I'm telling you, if I had that kind of luck, I'd start believing in God again," someone says, and the laughter that follows is sharp and genuine.
I know that voice. Damiano Ferrante: raised in Summerlin, first arrested at twelve, a man who never met a rule he couldn't bend or break.
His family is big in Vegas and disowned him when he turned eighteen; now he's a billionaire in his own right, buying out his family's businesses one by one.
He's good with numbers, even better with people, but what sets him apart is the way he enjoys every minute.
Most men in this business develop a death wish or a self-preservation instinct. Damiano managed both.
"Luck?" another voice scoffs. Alessio Vitali is the only man I've ever seen crush someone's windpipe with one hand and keep talking like nothing happened.
His father is a low-level enforcer with the Black Mesa Reapers, an organized MC in Vegas that's overdue for a reckoning.
Alessio's mother left when he was eight.
Raised by a volatile alcoholic with a permanent chip on his shoulder, Alessio learned early that emotions were liabilities.
He buried his until there was nothing left to show.
He dealt coke before he could legally drive.
Killed before he could legally vote. Fear doesn't touch him, because the people who should have loved him already walked away.
Except us. We didn't. And that changes things.
"You don't have luck," he continues. "You have blunt force trauma and a short attention span."
"That's still better than being boring," Damiano fires back, never missing a beat.
"Gentlemen," a third voice intervenes, this one steady, the only one that matters if things get strange.
Gabriel D'Amato: my consigliere, the only person in the world who can say exactly what he thinks to my face and survive.
He's built like a swimmer, probably because he spends more time in the pool than at the gym.
His voice is dry. "If either of you had luck, you wouldn't still be alive. "
That earns another round of laughter, with an edge that's more respect than amusement.
The last presence in the room is silent, but I know he's there.
He is always the last presence in every room, the one everyone else orbits around but never quite approaches.
Enzo Carbone. Old enough to be any of our fathers, and sometimes he plays the role, only he's the kind of father who makes you dig your own grave as a lesson in character.
In the old days, Enzo ran muscle. Now he's the last word on discipline.
There is no sentimentality in him, only a kind of minimalist violence that cleans up after itself.
I watch their silhouettes through the glass, the way they lean in and out of the light.
I know who will speak next, who will laugh, who will look away.
We are all roughly the same age, except Enzo.
Thirty-something, but with mileage. We grew up in parallel, tracing the same city blocks, learning the same lessons, breaking the same commandments.
We knew each other long before money or blood or power made the distinctions permanent.
Before bloodlines became weapons instead of bonds.
Before the world decided some of us would be kings and some would be casualties.
I don't let myself get nostalgic. Nostalgia is for men who think the past won't come hunting.
I push open the door, and everything stops.
Not a chair moves, not a voice stirs. The air in here is always chilled to sixty-eight, and it's always a few degrees colder once I enter.
They look up in unison, four sets of eyes tracking me the way predators track something that might be carrying a weapon.
Or a treat. Enzo's expression is unreadable, but the other three show it: a flicker of tension, the tiny recalibrations, the way their hands go from idle to alert.
It's an old dance, and everyone knows the steps.
Alessio elbows Gabriel, muttering, "Stalking again?" in a voice pitched just above a whisper. It's meant to irritate, and it does.
Gabriel's phone is out, casting a ghostly light onto the table; images reflect on the glass walls, changing too slowly for anything but obsession.
Damiano leans over and squints. "You serious right now?"
Gabriel doesn't look up. "Just tracking movement patterns."
"Bullshit," says Alessio, and this time the word hangs, inviting a fight.
Gabriel finally glances up, unbothered. "She's married."
"Yeah, that should be your first clue to leave her the fuck alone," Damiano points out, grinning.
"I'm not bothering her. I'm just making sure she's okay." Gabriel's voice is sharper now, something brittle at the edges. The way it gets before someone gets killed. I've never heard it before because of a woman.
"Right," Alessio says. "Like when you sent the Gucci purse a few weeks ago?"
Gabriel's jaw sets.
"Or when you paid for her car repair?" Damiano chimes in, as if it's a game and he's winning. I knew about the purse, but this one is new. "What did you tell her this time? Congrats, you won a mystery contest? One you didn't know you entered?"
Alessio laughs loudly. "You know, sooner or later, she's gonna run out of those. Or her husband will start to ask questions. That'll be fun."
Gabriel says nothing. He makes a show of turning the phone off, the screen going black with a decisive flick of his thumb.
"Fine," he snaps. "Fine."
He glares at the table, and by extension, all of us.
I've never had to worry about Gabe, but ever since he's become obsessed with that woman, he hasn't been himself.
It started a few weeks ago, and it has only gotten worse.
He's never been possessive of a woman or stalkerish.
This is new territory for him and me, and I'd better keep an eye on him.
He has that look. The one I recognize that stared back at me in the mirror ten years ago. We might need to have a chat.
Enzo watches this with the calm serenity of a father, proud of his sons.
In another life, we might have been exactly that.
He lifts his glass and almost smiles, almost. Enzo doesn't really drink or smile.
Not the way the rest of us do. But he appreciates the ritual.
That's how you spot the old-school men: they understand that everything is theater, and that theater is also everything.
I don't know if he's ever enjoyed a single minute of his life.
He wasn't built for pleasure. He was built for endurance.
For decades, that endurance was tested. His wife ran out on him with their children when they were still small.
No note. No goodbye. No trail. And no matter how much power Enzo amassed, no matter how wide his reach stretched, he never found her.
Not until recently.
One of his daughters, grown now, contacted a DNA testing company of all things, chasing answers, not knowing what she was setting in motion.
That was the stone at the top of the hill. Now it's rolling. And for the first time since I've known him, Enzo has been smiling. With reason.
"Relax," I tell Gabriel, realizing he's close to snapping. Unexplainably, this woman has gotten under his skin. "If you're going to do something stupid, at least do it clean." Gabriel's head snaps toward me. "Just shoot the husband," I continue. "Comfort the widow. Simple."
The words hang in the air for one, two, three seconds. It is not a joke.
Gabriel holds my gaze, and something in his face fractures. "I can't hurt her," he says, the words quiet but unmistakable. "She loves him."