Chapter 5 MASSIMO
Later that same night…
Blood dries fast under club lights. That's the first lie people believe about violence: that it lingers, that it stains, that it leaves some kind of mark that a mop and a rag can't erase.
But the truth is, even the worst of it can be buffed away in minutes as if nothing ever happened, unless you know where, or how, to look.
By the time I arrive, the floor's already been mopped, the broken glass swept, the music back to its loud, predatory pulse.
Neon breathes over polished chrome and tables, undulating across black tile as if the club was exhaling.
The only thing that lingers is the chemical tang of bleach beneath cologne and spilled cocktails.
The manager stands rigid near the bar; his tie loosened, sweat painting a dark V down the center of his pressed shirt. He doesn't speak until I look at him directly.
"Two shots," he fills me in quietly, his words are rushed by apprehension. "Near the VIP stairs." He's trembling. He should be, the clusterfuck happened under his nose. In my club.
"Dead?" I ask.
"One. The other critical."
I nod and move past him. The smell is still there, more than just bleach, the copper tang of blood, the oily note of gunpowder, the sour adrenaline of panic.
Even under the scrub of industrial cleaner, it's unmistakable.
I follow it up the stairs, past a velvet rope and security men who stiffen into statues the instant I pass.
This is my club. My pride, my flagship, my fortress.
Neutral ground.
Someone violated it anyway.
Enzo joins me at the landing, Bello Capelli right behind him, both men cut from the same cloth, impeccable, disciplined, lethal.
I read the situation in the way they stand: Enzo's jacket is unbuttoned, his hand never strays far from his holster; Bello's eyes track every movement in the room, cataloguing threats, calculating trajectories.
"This wasn't random," Enzo mutters, his jaw working a piece of gum to pulp. "The shooter knew the layout. The cameras were looped for ninety seconds."
"Inside help." I rotate my head to make the stiffness there less painful.
"Or borrowed access," Bello offers in a flat voice. He's Enzo's second-in-command, and I trust both of them implicitly. They've both been with me since the beginning. Bello had been my eyes and ears while I was out after the accident. "Either way, they were not amateurs."
We stop at the exact spot where it happened.
Unless someone pointed it out, you'd never know.
Fresh paint is already drying on the wall, the bullet hole perfectly patched, and a row of new glasses lines the shelf.
That's how we do things here: not just clean, but immaculate, the illusion instantly restored.
Bello's sacrifice was more than just manpower; he'd burned favors to keep the cops out of this. Called in markers that will take years to repay. I make a mental note: that's loyalty, and it'll need to be returned.
"Who was the target?"
Enzo hesitates, just long enough to betray the weight of the answer. "Mia Pascale is the casualty. Her bodyguard's the critical."
"Fuck," I mutter.
Mia Pascale is a minor celebrity, a social influencer, the kind of woman with her own perfume line and a rabid horde of followers. The kind of woman who makes headlines if she so much as sneezes in public. Just like the entertainer runs through my head, and I file that thought under later.
My phone vibrates, the name on the screen makes my scalp tighten: Damiano.
"Is this important?" Already sensing it will be.
"Not sure yet." Damiano's voice is a little too level. "But I'm pulling chatter off the police bands and private lines. Something big went down tonight."
Enzo and Bello lean in, their attention shifting as if guided by an invisible string.
"Go on," I command.
"There was a home invasion in Summerlin," Damiano continues. "High-end neighborhood. A bodyguard is dead. The wife escaped, but the husband and kid were taken."
Nothing that public happens in my city without my knowledge, much less my permission.
"Names?" Enzo asks.
"They're keeping it quiet so far," Damiano says. "But the husband—he's political, state level."
The phrase people use about feeling like someone walked over your grave finally makes sense to me. I feel it now; it's like an electric chill in my molars. Someone's digging up something I worked a decade to bury.
"When?" I ask.
"About an hour ago. Same window as the club hit."
Two public strikes. Two violations. Different signatures. Same intent.
"This isn't noise," Enzo wagers.
"No," I agree. "It's a message."
"And it's sloppy," I add.
Enzo shifts his weight.
"They want us chasing smoke," I continue. "Cartels don't work like this. Locals don't either. This is someone who understands optics, not territory."
"Political," Bello guesses.
"Exactly."
"My screen's lighting up," Damiano says. "Sending you the address."
My phone buzzes with a string of digits: the Summerlin house, a sprawling estate in a gated community with twenty-four-hour surveillance and private patrols.
"Anything on the wife?" Bello asks.
"She's in PR," Damiano says. "High-level. Does comms for the husband and her father."
That stops me cold.
"Who's her father?" I keep my tone too careful as every nerve inside me tenses, and every muscle stiffens.
Damiano hesitates, but only for effect. He likes to make things dramatic. "A state senator."
Enzo snorts in impatience. "Name?"
"Preston Kingsley."
The name detonates in my inner ear. I don't show it. I've spent too long training my face to betray nothing, not even to myself. But something old and ugly stirs in my chest, a memory with teeth. Ghosts that don't want to stay hidden.
"Wait," Damiano says, "there's more."
He whistles, low, like a man witnessing his own funeral. "The husband is Carter Whitford."
The name has barbed wire wrapped around it. A symbol. A hero. The only man I ever failed to have killed. The one man who deserved it more than any other. If he could be called a man.
Damiano keeps talking, oblivious to my churning gut, the low burning fury that's simmering underneath my skin like a volcano about to erupt. "The wife is Jenna Whitford. And the kid they took is Amauri."
Son.
I never knew she had a son. Good for her.
I haven't spoken to her, haven't so much as Googled her in ten years. When her face flashes on a newsfeed, I change the channel. When someone mentions her name, I walk away. That kind of distance doesn't happen by accident. It's built. Maintained. Enforced. Necessary.
Enzo is watching me, waiting for orders, reminding me that I don't have time for ghosts. Not now. Not ever. Whatever she was—whatever we were—it's dead. Buried where it belongs. And I have no intention of digging it back up.
"Get me everything," I press out, glad my voice is even. "Every dollar, every link. Who backs Kingsley. Who wants Whitford gone? Who profits from new drug laws?"
"What about Kingsley?" Enzo asks, with the caution of someone defusing a bomb, he knows me well enough to sense that I'm holding something back.
Rightly so. I am. But this ghost I don't want to resurrect.
Not ever. God have mercy on her if she ever so much as shows herself in my orbit.
I'd love nothing better than to wrap my hands around her tantalizing neck and squeeze the life out of her lying body.
I force my mind back to Kingsley. The New York family owns him. Enzo has ties there. Ties that might come in handy.
"Later," I cut him off with a flick of the hand.
For a moment, we all just stand there, the club noise rolling up from the floor below, laughter and music and the illusion of safety. But what I hear is the clock starting, counting down to whatever comes next.
Someone just reached into my past and pulled out a ghost.
Deliberate?