Chapter 3 STEPHANO #3
The second shot comes from Dre, but I don't pay it any attention. The corridor behind us fills with panic-screams and running feet, the nurse, the one who took the cut, is somehow still on her knees, clutching her neck, eyes huge and wild. She’s alive—for now, at least—but none of it matters because I’m at Ana’s side, tearing away what I can of the blood-soaked sheets and medical tape.
There’s blood everywhere, but not hers. The monitor shrieks, then settles.
Her red hair is matted; her face is a mess of purple and yellow and dried blood from the earlier trauma and the surgery. Her left eye is swollen shut, and the cheekbone beneath it is ballooning. It doesn’t matter to me. Something in me changes shape.
MINE.
Mine to protect.
Mine to possess.
Mine to punish the world for touching.
That's not me. I’m not that man. I don’t do mine; I do ours and theirs and what it costs. But the idea of that knife on her throat turns the floor under me into something that wants to break.
"Boss." Dre’s voice is low and steady. He’s already moving bodies with his boot, kicking blades away, clearing the corners. "We’re not alone."
"More men," I bark, not looking away from her. "Now."
He’s on his phone before the words land. "Two full teams to St. Raphael’s, ICU. Go."
I press two fingers to her pulse, even though the loud beeping of the monitor already tells me that her heartbeat is strong.
I need to feel her skin. Her pulse. It's there, strong enough to fight.
I straighten as uniforms stack outside the door behind the glass, hands hovering near their weapons, brave now that the noise is over.
One of them pokes his head in. "Sir, we need you to step away from the patient and speak with—"
"No," I don't even look up. "You want a statement, get my lawyer. Otherwise, you’re going to need a lot more than a badge to get me out of this room."
"Sir, that’s not—"
Dre intercepts the officer at the threshold; his empty, deadly smile meets the man's. "He said lawyer. Unless you have a warrant, or you’re arresting us, You. Back. The. Fuck. Up."
The cop hesitates, recalibrates, and you can see him mentally running through the Rolodex of who we are and who will make his life hell if he pushes the wrong button. He holsters his gun, but the look in his eye says this isn’t over.
"Fine. But if anyone else dies tonight—"
"They won’t," Dre interrupts, then winks, "unless they try to make it through that door."
Outside, the hospital’s panic has reached full boil: alarms, people shouting for Code Black, security guards with walkie-talkies pressed to their faces like lifelines.
Less than a minute later, the blue uniforms are replaced by a scared-looking hospital administrator in a suit that’s two sizes too big. He peers through the window, then gestures to his people to clear the hallway, silences the alarms, and does anything he can to make this go away.
The hospital is moving on instinct. A crash team arrives, puts Ana into another bed, and rolls her out. A doctor barks orders I approve of because they sound like fix-it-now, not talk-about-it-later.
I hover, as close as they’ll let me, hand on the bed rail while they push. Her lashes flicker. Nothing else does. They roll her into a new room with fewer windows and more machines, and I take the spot at the foot like I'm a paid rent a cop.
Dre slides in beside me with his tablet and a look I know. "There's more."
I don't look away from the unconscious form on the bed, drawn to her in a way I can't explain. It's not tenderness. Thank fuck. But this newfound possessiveness isn't me. "Talk."
"There was an incident this morning at Teterboro. It’s still hush-hush; the press hasn't got wind of it yet.
A Cessna landed off-schedule, a woman got out, then shots were fired, leaving several Venezuelans dead.
" He jerks his chin toward the corpses cooling in the other room.
"Like these two. Thirty minutes later, this woman was brought here. By an Uber."
Who the hell is this woman?
My gaze moves over her still form. She's taller than most women, and she looks athletic from what I can see with the sheet covering her.
Trim, fit. I take her right hand, as if it will give me all the answers to the questions running through my head, and pull it up to my nose.
It's barely there, but enough for me to recognize: gun oil—acrid and metallic, like a match struck in a room that’s already on fire.
This woman fired a gun not too long ago. Several times.
"Yeah, it's her," I confirm Dre's suspicion.
"Who the fuck is she? Do you recognize her?"
I stare from the swollen face to Dre pointedly. He shrugs. Indicating her body, inferring I should recognize it. My hand itches with the urge to deck him. For looking at her, that way. What the fuck is wrong with me? No, I'm not going there. Not now. Not yet.
Venezuelans. Pops into my head. Thank fuck.
Always the fucking Venezuelans.
Voices in the hall turn my attention. I jerk my head at Dre, who goes to investigate. "Right here."
From the corner of my eye, I notice movement. My men have arrived. They'll bar the door to anybody who isn't involved in this woman's medical treatment. Even the cops, as one gets into a heated discussion with Dre and I catch… can't talk to an unconscious woman, you idiot.
Dre comes back in, "Kyle is going through security footage, both from the airport and here. Mallard is on the Uber driver."
"Good."
With a sigh, I pull out my phone and hit a contact I’m not finished being angry at.
Raf answers on the second ring, in a voice that sounds too casual to be anything but.
Not too long ago, he worked for me. Now he's a capo, and I'm still not sure if I want to invest in a bullet to send through his head or take him out for a drink.
"Stephano." He greets me with the same reserved emotion that’s running through me.
"Tell me everything that happened in Caracas." It's a conversation that's been long overdue, but… things have been happening.
"That's a long conversation," he answers evasively.
I remind myself that he no longer works for me, that, in fact, he and I are peers.
It's been a long time since a self-made man made his way up to capo.
Not that his illicit blood relation to Edoardo hasn't helped him, but still, the organization he built from the shadows is quite impressive.
I have to give him something before he will give me the information I need.
"I’m at St. Raphael’s, at the bed of a woman who was shot twice by Venezuelans. Before they operated on her, she claimed to be my wife."
I ignore Raf's sarcastic chuckle. He knows I don't have time for women, let alone for marriage. "There was also an incident at Teterboro this morning that left several Venezuelans dead and landed said woman here."
He whistles softly. I don’t need to elaborate. Raf deals in information and secrets, and he’s one of the best hackers I've ever met. He'll figure out the details.
"You all right, Steph? You sound… stressed."
I run a hand through my hair. There was a time when I would have considered Raf my friend. That was before I found out all the shit he'd been doing behind my back. I look at the bed. At the red hair. At the pulse under gauze, the one I didn’t know I needed to hear until I did.
"No." The admission isn't easy. But I need to know where Raf and I stand. I won't trust him again. Ever. But he might make a decent ally, like the other capos.
"Caracas was a shitshow," he admits, "Don Edoardo sent Roberto and Donna Margarita there to clean up a mess with a cargo ship."
He's omitting that Roberto's lovely wife, now widow, Sophia Giordano, was there too, but I let it slide.
I have a feeling that I'll soon find out what it's like to feel the need to protect a woman.
And it will probably have something to do with the one whose hand I'm still holding and don't seem able to let go of.
"Tell me something I don't know." I remind Raf who he is talking to. I'm not Marcello or Toni, who don’t deal in information.
"Right," he huffs, another chuckle, "Fine." I can see him running his hand through his hair, trying to figure out what I know and what he should divulge.
"Look, we're all in the same boat," I push out, "Don Edoardo is a pain in all our asses."
The line goes silent for a moment as I feel Rafael weighing the truth of my words. Marcello’s, Toni’s, and Enrico’s war with Don Edoardo is personal in a way mine isn’t—yet. Blood grudges. Public insults. Wounds that were never given time to scab. My position is… different.
My father still plays both sides. I don’t like it, but liking it has never been part of the job.
Gustave Conti isn’t reckless. He’s careful.
Deliberate. He believes in balance, in keeping the wheels turning without flooding the streets with blood.
As mafia men go, he’s always struck me as measured.
Fair. The kind of capo who understands that restraint can be as effective as violence when it’s applied at the right moment.
I’ve trusted that judgment. Deferred to it.
Not because I’m blind, but because he’s earned that deference over the years of my watching him keep this family intact.
He has me stand openly with Marcello, Toni, and Enrico—lets me carry the risk, take the heat—while he keeps his channels to Edoardo intact.
He calls it diplomacy. Insurance. I’ve never challenged him on it.
In our world, you don’t question the man holding the house together just because you don’t like the way he stacks the bricks.
Bridges matter.
Even when you’re not sure which one you’ll eventually have to burn.
What Raf doesn’t know—what none of them know—is that somewhere beneath all that strategy, I’ve already reached a decision. Edoardo needs to go—now.