Chapter 10 #2
The burner is warm against my ear. On the other end, Stephano is quiet for a long beat.
Then I hear it: the soft, steady percussion of fingers on a keyboard.
It’s mundane—typing—but in that rhythm there’s a thing I’ve learned to recognize: work being done, threads being pulled.
I let the sound fill the space between us and count the beats.
There’s a click, a scrape, another set of keys. “We’re in,” Stephano says, flat, as if announcing something simple and inevitable. Then, quieter, “Pull it.”
For a second, I don’t move. It’s never that clean. There’s always the part of you that thinks: wait. Watch. Make sure. But the voice on the line leaves me no room to argue. “Now,” Stephano says. No flourish. No explanation. Just the word like a blade.
My hand slides to the seam where I tucked the metal USB drive in and pulls it back out. I yank it free in one practiced motion and fold it into the inner pocket of my jacket, fingers closing as if sealing a wound. The motion is small, obscene, and perfect. "Got it."
“Good,” Stephano says after a pause, and in that single syllable, there’s approval and a warning. “Leave. We’ll call if we need something else.”
He hangs up without another word. The line snaps dead like a switch.
I slide the burner into my pocket next to the USB drive and walk out of the building like I was never there.
For the first time since the alley, since Sophia, the hunger in my throat tastes like something that could feed me. But hunger is thin. So I keep moving, because being careful is how you stay alive long enough to take what you want.
A few minutes later, I step into the wet street and taste the future, bitter and inevitable, and I grin.
Two months before the wedding…
For now, I’m still working under Carlos's name and for Stephano in secret, but both are just a facade—a cover.
Carlos thinks I’m useful. He has no idea I’m studying his infrastructure, his blind spots.
He’s the blueprint. I'm the upgrade. Stephano thinks I’m a raw asset—dangerous, useful, malleable.
He thinks feeding me favors, keeping my ledger short, and my pockets warmer than Carlos will make me loyal enough to do his dirty work.
He believes he can tether me with servers, cash, and opportunity, make me beholden, and then point me where he needs a hand.
Let him think that. He doesn’t know I’m taking notes on his maps too.
With the money I had stashed—and the silent payout Carlos wired me for saving the girls—Mario and I bought an old, run-down computer shop in Brooklyn.
The front is nothing but dusty shelves, broken keyboards, and a neon sign that only flickers to life when it wants to.
But the backroom?
That’s where the empire begins.
It’s climate-controlled and windowless, fortified with lead-lined walls and two redundant, off-grid power sources.
There’s a row of racks holding towers, super servers built from the bones of military-grade blacksite tech I got through a contact in Belarus.
Some of it fell off a truck. Some of it I pulled from the darknet. And some… just walked into my life.
I don’t just hack.
I erase.
Rebuild.
Rewrite.
This isn’t just a setup.
It’s a throne.
But even kings need a court.
One month before the wedding…
Carlos hands me a job. Another poor schmuck who forgot to pay his dues. A guy who just opened a corner store in a rundown part of Queens. Word is he’s maxed out five credit cards just trying to keep the lights on.
It’s extortion. Mafia-style. Wrapped in ritual, dressed up like tradition. But it’s still extortion. And for what? A few hundred bucks a month? Fear?
Carlos doesn’t care. A rule is a rule.
Leo Barone slides into the passenger seat beside me, tapping ash out the window before we’ve even pulled out. His mouth is already moving.
"You believe this guy?" he grumbles. "Kid’s barely twenty-five. Wife just had a baby. I saw the baby, freaking adorable. You’d think we’d let him breathe for a second."
I grunt in agreement, turning onto the Belt Parkway. "Carlos doesn’t see babies. Just future leverage."
Leo snorts. "Yeah, well, the old man’s stuck in the eighties. Extort the mom-and-pop shop, beat up the junkie, throw a match through a window if someone’s late. Maybe if we cracked a fucking laptop once in a while, we wouldn’t be bleeding money to the feds and the Venezuelans."
I glance at him. That’s not something most guys say out loud.
"You ever think about getting out?" I ask.
Leo leans back, dragging his knuckles along his stubble. "All the time. But Carlos owns my file. My prints. My daughter’s name."
That gets my attention.
"You got a kid?"
"Four years old. Stella. Sweetest damn thing in the world." His voice shifts into less bravado and more ache. "You ever notice guys like us don’t usually get to stay dads? We just get used against them."
I don’t say anything for a beat. Then I pull the car to the curb, cutting the engine but leaving the keys in.
He looks at me warily. "What, we walking from here?"
"No," I say. "But I’ve got a different job in mind."
He tilts his head. "Yeah?"
"You’re good with code, right?"
Leo blinks. "What?"
"Cracks. Spoofing. Biometric hacks. You know how to vanish a man, make it look like he never existed."
He nods slowly. "I dabble."
I look him straight in the eye.
"What if you worked for me?" I say. "Not Carlos. Not the Family. Just me."
Leo stiffens. "What’s the angle?"
"No more breaking knees for rent money," I say. "We build something better. Something cleaner. Digital. Untraceable. You want out? You earn it. I’ll bury your name so deep no one finds it unless I want them to."
He studies me for a long moment.
"You’re serious."
"Deadly," I say. "I’m done playing dinosaur games. Carlos is going extinct. He just doesn’t know it yet."
Leo flicks his cigarette, still watching me. "What’s this thing called?"
I smile, just a little. "Omertà Infernale.”
Leo raises an eyebrow.
"We deal in leverage, same as them—only we use keyboards, not switchblades."
He whistles under his breath. Then nods once. "I’m in."
Just like that, the wheel turns.
Not with blood.
But with code.
And one more man who sees the future the same way I do.
Three days after the wedding…
The whirring sound of the tattoo gun irritates my headache. I got drunk for three days. Not buzzed. Not into oblivion. Obliterated. Bourbon, tequila, whatever the hell was in the bottle. I didn’t care. Anything that made the ache quieter. Anything that blurred her face when I closed my eyes.
My Sophia got married.
To another man.
A man who held her hand. Who stood at the altar and promised her forever with a smile I wanted to break in half. I watched her and Roberto board the plane. Stood just far enough from the tarmac to keep out of sight, but close enough to see her smile. She looked happy.
That smile destroyed me more than the wedding because it didn’t look forced. It didn’t look like fear. It looked real.
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Doesn’t matter. The result’s the same.
She’s gone. She married a mafia prince, born into a seat at the table I had to crawl across glass to even approach. He’d better cherish what was given to him. Because if he doesn’t… I will destroy him.
The needle bites into my skin, dragging hot ink over the left side of my ribs.
It’s a design I sketched out last night, half-drunk and half-mad: A black chess queen, fractured but unbroken.
Her crown is slightly crooked. Thorns climb around her like a cage and armor all at once.
Roses so sharp, they bleed where they bloom.
She’ll never know it’s for her. But it is. Every line. Every cut.
It’s not her name I ink into my skin, it’s what she means.
Power. Grace. Wounds no man ever sees.
And now, it’s mine.
The buzzing finally stops. The artist wipes the blood and ink from my side with a sterile cloth. I look down, and it stares back at me like a vow. Never again. Never again will I allow a woman to get this close to me.
I leave cash on the tray and step back into the cold morning light. My head’s still pounding, but something inside me is finally clear. Now, I get back to work.
I’ve already started carving out my own path, one that will turn me into a king.
The kind of king who doesn’t answer to anyone. The kind of king whose name opens doors. The kind of king who walks into a room, and when he looks at a girl like Sophia Orsi, her parents don’t scowl or threaten.
They thank him.
They’ll beg for their daughters to catch my eye. To be chosen.
Because power bends rules, and I’m done living by anyone else’s.
I won’t be the boy cast aside anymore. I’m going to build something they can’t touch. And when it’s done—when I’ve climbed high enough—she’ll see me. Not as the ghost who saved her in the dark. But as the man who owns the city.