Chapter 23
The next morning…
The hospital gives out a mechanical hum of people trying to hold life together.
I sit in a private waiting room that used to be someone’s office, beige and anonymous, and the silence tastes wrong.
Nico is two doors down, sleeping off a chemical sedation under wires and tubes.
The doctors kept him under through the night, saying it was safer that way.
He’s supposed to wake up sometime this morning.
Oksana sits beside me, emanating a reassuring calm.
She has a new bandage at her side and rubs her thumb over my knuckles when I clench them, like she’s smoothing wire, and it helps in a small, ridiculous way.
Her presence is a balm I didn’t plan to need.
It makes me soft where I thought I’d gone hard for good.
My father called earlier—too many times—and tried to come to the hospital again.
I had men posted at the door to stop him, but technically, they're his.
It never hit me like this before. They're his.
We were always a team. He was the boss; I was the heir in waiting. Now I'm not so sure what I am anymore.
And neither are the men. It's in their looks, their discomfort when they greet me. If we don't want the house Conti to fall apart, we need to figure this out. Now. Today.
I have no idea why Nico acted the way he did when he saw our father, but the possibilities enrage me to no end. No scenario that goes through my head comes with a happy ending. Nico wasn't scared of our father; he was pissed. The kind of anger you reserve for the greatest treacheries.
Detached, I watch movement outside the window. An emergency helicopter lands. Doors open, men and women in scrubs pour out, their hair tossed this way and that by the wind from the rotors.
My phone buzzes. It's one of the guards. He is here. I tell the guard to let him in. My father looks older when he enters, wearier.
"I asked you not to come here." I greet him.
"My son—" His voice curls, thin and raw. "I want to see my son." Something about the way he says son rubs me the wrong way.
"For some reason, it agitated him yesterday to see you. He needs some time," I offer. "He's going to wake up this morning, and I will talk to him. Can't you wait that long?"
He spots Oksana and freezes. She stands and nods at him.
"What the hell is she doing here?" The thunder I'm used to is back in his voice and posture.
"She's my wife," I introduce.
"Your—" Dad starts, his voice brittle. "Your what now?"
"Oksana Arsenyev," she says, slow and proper. Then, because she likes theater as much as she likes knives, "Also called Metelitsa."
He blinks at the name like he’s trying to remember whether it belongs to a saint or a blade.
"You’re running with the Russians now?" Hard, accusing eyes land on me.
"She saved Nico," I tell him simply.
He looks at her like I brought a spy into our midst. The way his expression changes would have been comical, had it not been for the fact that there is something eerie to it.
Something that gets under my skin as if a ghost had run its ice-cold fingers down my back.
First, it's incredulous, then he looks like he's about to break out into laughter at a joke only he's privy to, then he seems to get himself back under control, and I see him again as my father.
The way he is when he puts on a performance of a lifetime.
"Thank you," he holds out his hand to her, "for saving him. "
I've never seen him look anything like this, sweat beading on his upper lip, his eyes not quite focusing. He moves like a man who’s been carrying a weight and has finally put it down.
Oksana looks at his hand. Sighs, making it clear she only accepts the outstretched hand because of me.
Their exchange has to be the quickest handshake in history.
"I just—" My father turns back to me. "I just wanted to see my son. I don’t know what happened. If my presence—if it triggered—then perhaps it’s better I keep my distance for now."
"That would be good. It has to be a misunderstanding, I'll talk to him," I'm not sure if I'm trying to convince him or me. Numbers jump in front of my eyes.
GUSTAVE.CONTI → AURELIO.VALVERDE
AMT: 250,000 USD
NOTE: SERV/ROMA–"SCOUR"
REF: NICO/G–GW-11
"What happened?"
I almost miss my father’s question and hasten to fill him in. "The Venezuelans had him. Oksana was on a different mission when she stumbled upon him," I explain, pushing the numbers, the accusations, and the questions haunting me back down. For now.
"The Venezuelans?" I know my father. I've seen his acts hundreds of times when he's playing both fields, and my blood runs cold. Even without the bank slips, I would have known right then. He knew. He knew the Venezuelans had Nico, and he never told me.
For a moment, his face is a hundred moving things, all practiced, all played out before, never reaching his eyes. Then he asks, "They had my son?"
"Yes."
I feel Oksana's eyes on me. If anybody can read a room, it's her. I place my hand on the small of her back, asking her to stand down. I need to play this my way. This is my father.
"They’ll pay—" he starts, but something in my eyes must tip him off; he stops.
We size each other up. Father and son. Suddenly strangers.
"They’ll pay for having him," I vow, finishing his sentence, watching him. "They’ll pay for keeping him."
His voice drops to a whisper. "If you move on them, Edoardo won’t like that." Panic flickers across his features like a guilty animal. "He made it clear. The Venezuelans are not to be touched."
My palms slicken. The memory of the payments—lines marked security and continuity—reaches up and clamps my throat.
Dad had the logic of survival tattooed into his bones from birth: you play both sides.
It's a balancing act; that's how the family survives.
He had been the man who drew the lines, signed the checks, and kept the ledger tidy.
The thought that he used my brother as a column in that ledger unspools something hot and ruthless in my chest.
"They had your son." My voice is cold, and the room tilts with it.
"And I would like to kill them for that," Gustave responds evenly. "But—" He stares hard into my eyes. "When you are capo, son, you learn when to put vengeance on ice for the sake of the family."
My laugh is a broken thing. "When I am capo," I repeat and stop.
Too many emotions are running through me, accusations, suspicions, and anger, to finish the sentence.
Because what do I say? I won't be like you?
I won't bow to Edoardo? I've played his game for a while, and it sickens me.
I am a man of decisions, not a tightrope walker.
He misreads my hesitation. "I'm going to see Nico now."
"No," I step in front of him. "Not now."
He straightens to become the capo he is. "You're not going to stand in my way, pup. Those men out there," he points into the hallway, "still work for me."
Before I can respond, Oksana’s voice rings out cold as a funeral bell. "That might be so, but the Russians out there," she imitates the way he pointed, "listen to me, old man. So, unless you want an old-fashioned shootout, right here in the hospital hallway, I suggest you pack and go."
He stares at her as if she'd sprouted horns. Then at me. His eyes ask, is she serious? I cross my arms over my chest. Try her. I glance at her and feel that small, feral pride that is hot and dangerous and entirely mine.
"You can’t do that," he says quickly. "You can’t—"
Before he finishes, there’s movement at the doorway, shadows folding into the light. Russian faces. Broad shoulders. Cold eyes. Three of them, precise as glass. Oksana doesn’t smile as they approach. They slide in silently and professionally—too smooth to be anyone’s ornament.
Gustave’s face drains another color. He takes a few steps back. "What—"
One of the Russians, a man with a scar that maps his cheek, inclines his head. "Metelitsa," the name sounds like a warning. His eyes are flat, unreadable.
The waiting room tightens. The helicopter outside thumps like a second heart. Nurses push past in scrubs—ordered, hurried—and a technician skims by with a portable monitor.
My father turns to me, sweat beading in the hollow above his lip. "Stephano, tread carefully here. Very carefully. Some steps can’t be taken back."
I look at him—at the man he’s been—and I see all the things I was, and all the things I will not be.
I could kill him. I could hand him over to Oksana; she would do it, no questions asked.
I could let the ledger be erased with a body and call it balance.
Instead, I breathe. Force all emotions to drain from my expression.
The room smells of antiseptic and fear and the faint oil of a hundred other men’s sins.
Keeping my fury from my voice, I ask flatly, "Why were you making payments to the Venezuelans for three years? "
The words hit him like a grenade. His eyes narrow, and for just a flicker of a second, he falters, then catches himself. His finger moves in front of my face, "You're playing with things you know nothing about. Dangerous things that could destroy our family."
I grab his finger, "I'm not the one who has broken this family; that's on you. I'm the one who is willing to pick up the pieces and put them back together. The right way."
We stare at each other. From my peripheral vision, I see some of our men pouring into the room.
Men I've worked with. Drunk with. Killed with. The indecision on their faces is almost painful to look at. They don’t know whether to obey him or me.
For their sakes, I tell Gustave, "I think you’d better leave. "
"I see." He nods, straightening his jacket with that elegant disdain he’s perfected over decades. He glares at Oksana one more time—petty, venomous—then walks out.
I should feel triumphant.
I don’t.
I feel tired.
I feel older.
Like something in me has cracked instead of been crowned. I think of Nico on the bed two doors down, alive but fragile as a promise, and owed more than the price we paid. I think of the choices I made last night, the lines I crossed, and the ones I’m going to have to cross again.
And suddenly, the title of capo doesn’t feel like power. It feels like a blade balanced on my palm—sharp, hungry, wanting blood. My blood. My father’s. Someone’s. A weight I once thought I could carry because it sounded like destiny now feels heavy enough to bend bone.
A nurse leans into the doorway. "He should be waking up soon," she says quietly.
I nod. Something in me unclenches, just a fraction. The monitor in my head slows one notch. I close my eyes and feel Oksana’s thumb glide over my knuckles, grounding me, anchoring me in a world that’s suddenly too sharp.
Around us, the hospital hums awake, rotors, carts, murmurs of exhausted staff.
The soft, stubborn music of people who refuse to stop working to keep one more life from going dark.
And in that sound, in her touch, in the aftermath of turfing my father out of the room like the past no longer owns me, I feel it: The man I was yesterday couldn’t have done this.
The man I am now has no choice. A king doesn’t get to hesitate. A king doesn’t get to hope.
A king does whatever it takes.
And God help whoever stands in my way.