Chapter 7
PIETRO
“What do you think, Pietrolino?”
I did not startle. At least, not visibly.
I lifted my head from my phone and the photo currently filling the screen, the history table in the library, empty except for the corner of a blue notebook I knew belonged to Emily, and looked up at Matteo Genovese instead.
He stood by the bar with a glass in one hand, infuriatingly at ease, a man who had been feared for so long he took it for granted. Capo di tutti capi, head of the Genovese, and one of the few men alive who still insisted on using the childhood nickname I had outgrown at least a decade ago.
I kept my expression under control.
Then, against my better judgment, I looked past him and met the eyes of my uncle.
Hoka Nishimura saw far too much.
He was in Chicago for Thanksgiving, which meant half the city was pretending not to notice that one of the most powerful men in the country had crossed into our house like it was nothing.
Head of the West Coast and, in practice, the man who carried more influence over the American yakuza than anyone else alive, Hoka had never felt like a distant legend to me.
To me, he was first the man who trained me without mercy.
The man who kept the doors shut while I cursed him, sweated, shook, and pushed past pain I would once have accepted as the limit of my body.
The man who ignored my anger, ignored my pride, ignored every weakness I tried to hide behind until there was nothing left to do but fight through all of it.
More than once, I had known my father was on the other side of the door, wanting to stop him, wanting to stop me, wanting to drag me out before the lesson went too far.
Hoka never let him.
And if I stood here now as something far more dangerous than the boy I once was, if men thought twice before underestimating me, a great deal of that was due to him.
It also meant he was one of the very few people in the world capable of taking one look at my face and knowing exactly when something had changed.
Which was unfortunate.
Joint operations between the Italians and the Yakuza were no longer unusual, not since blood had turned alliance into family.
For the last two years, I had been brought further and further into strategy meetings, negotiations, and the machinery behind our power.
That part came easily to me. Patterns, leverage, timing, risk, I had always understood those better than most.
Emily Hart, however, had turned out to be an area of study for which I was considerably less prepared.
“He’s got the look,” Matteo said.
“He does,” Hoka agreed.
I exhaled slowly. “If either of you says the words ‘mafia curse,’ I’m leaving.”
Matteo’s mouth twitched. Hoka, predictably, looked totally unashamed.
Before either of them could continue, I set my phone face down on the table and stirred the conversation where it belonged.
“The shipment issue in New Jersey,” I said. “Has anyone checked whether the delays are actually customs or if someone’s paying to keep the containers sitting there long enough to bleed us?”
That got the room’s attention immediately.
My father, who had been half listening while speaking quietly to Luca near the fire, turned his head. “Go on.”
I leaned back in my chair, the irritation of the last five minutes settling into something more useful.
“Three delays in six weeks, all on routes that should be routine. That’s either incompetence, which I don’t believe, or pressure.
If it’s pressure, then it’s not about the cargo itself.
It’s about forcing reroutes, costing us money, and making us look unreliable to the people downstream. ”
Matteo lowered his glass. “You think it’s deliberate.”
“I think if it were random, it wouldn’t be so consistent.” I looked between them. “Start with port staff, not customs. Customs is too visible. Someone lower down is more likely to get paid to create the bottleneck while keeping his own hands clean.”
Hoka gave the smallest nod. “And if the ports are clean?”
“Then it’s the buyers,” I said. “Someone testing how fast we shift before they escalate to something more expensive.”
A brief silence followed, measuring my words.My father finally stepped closer, his expression blank in the way it always was when he was pleased and refusing to make that easy for anyone.
“That,” he said, “is exactly where my head was.”
“Then I’m glad one of us is predictable.”
Matteo let out a low laugh. “There he is.”
I ignored him.
“If you want,” I said, looking at my father, “I can handle this.”
That changed the air a little.
Not enough to make anyone visibly react, but enough.
I saw it in the way Matteo’s gaze sharpened. In the way Hoka went still. In the way my father looked at me for a beat too long before answering.
“No.”
The word landed flat and immediate.
I held his gaze. “I can do it.”
“I know you can,” he said. “You’re still going back to Boston.”
My nostrils flared “In one week.”
“And at the end of that week,” he replied evenly, “you’ll still need a degree.”
There it was.
Not doubt. Not dismissal.
Something worse.
Patience.
“You want me in the business,” I said.
“I do.”
“You’ve been bringing me in for two years.”
“Yes.”
“Then let me be useful.”
His expression barely changed, but I knew that look. I had seen it all my life. Alessandro Benetti was immovable once he made up his mind.
“You are being useful,” he said. “You’ve identified the weak point. I’ll have Rudy and Marco follow it through.”
I said nothing.
He stepped closer then, one hand settling briefly on my shoulder, not soft exactly, but firm enough to mean more than the words themselves.
“You finish Hawthorne,” he said quietly. “Then come home and do this properly.”
The room stayed silent because everyone there understood what that meant.
It was not a suggestion, it was a promise.
I looked away first. There was no point fighting him in front of the others when I already knew he was right. The degree mattered. The timing mattered. The role waiting for me at the end of it mattered.
It was just becoming increasingly inconvenient that the life I was meant to return to now had Emily in it.
“Boston,” Matteo said lightly, as if tasting the word for hidden meaning. “You seem very eager to get back there.”
“I have exams.”
Hoka’s silence grew even more pointed.
Matteo smiled into his drink. “Of course you do.”
A few more topics were discussed after that, but the room had lost its appeal for me. Nothing major enough to require my input, just final notes, names, dates, shipments, precautions. By the time my father dismissed the meeting, I was already half out of my chair.
“Pietro.”
Hoka’s voice stopped me before I reached the door.
I turned back.
He was still seated, one elbow resting loosely on the arm of the chair, expression unreadable in that maddening way of his that had once made me want to throw things at him on principle.
“What do you say to a training session? It’s been too long.”
There it was.
On the surface, an offer.
In reality, never just that.
Hoka had always used training as a way to get inside my head without asking questions outright.
There had been entire weeks of my adolescence where the only real conversations we had happened with bruised ribs, a split lip, and sweat burning my eyes.
He preferred truth when the body was too exhausted to dress it up.
My father gave him a pointed look from across the room, the kind that would have warned off almost any other man alive.
Hoka, naturally, ignored it.
And yet the look itself told me enough.
Alessandro Benetti did not relinquish control easily. In fact, he did not relinquish it at all unless the matter involved exactly three people in the world — my mother, my sister, and me. For us, he bent in ways he never would for anyone else.
A small, unwanted part of me was humbled every time I noticed it.
Another part was already annoyed that both he and Hoka had clearly decided I required handling.
I held my uncle’s gaze for a moment longer, then nodded once. “Fine.”
Matteo lifted his glass slightly as if in salute. “Try not to bleed on the floor. Lily will be furious.”
“She’s usually furious with you,” I said.
“That too.”
Hoka rose without another word and headed for the back of the house.
I followed him through the private corridor that led down to the training room my father had built years ago, ostensibly for security drills and private instruction, though in practice it became the place where the men in my family went when words were either insufficient or too dangerous.
The room smelled faintly of leather, steel, and old sweat.
Familiar enough that some part of my body recognized it before my mind did.
Mats covered most of the floor, but the far wall held racks of training weapons, padded staffs, knives, and, behind locked glass, the real steel my father preferred not to leave unattended should Victoria one day get ideas.
Hoka shrugged out of his jacket and set it aside.
“You’ve been neglecting this,” he said.
“I’ve been at college.”
“That is not an excuse.”
“It was not intended as one.”
He gave the smallest nod, which for Hoka was practically warmth.
We started emptyhanded.
He did not take it easy on me. He never had, and if anything, the years had only made him more offensively efficient.
He came at me fast enough to test my balance immediately, forcing me to adjust, pivot, take the impact through my hips instead of letting it knock me off-center.
I blocked, struck back, caught his wrist, twisted, then nearly had him for half a second before he shifted his weight and sent me back hard enough to remind me who had taught me to fight in the first place.
“Distracted,” he said.
I reset my stance. “Rusty.”
“Liar.”
He moved again.
This time I was ready for him. I angled out of reach, used the momentum against him, and drove a short strike into his ribs that would have done real damage if I had not pulled the blow at the last second.
Hoka’s mouth lifted. Not quite approval, but close.