Chapter 25
Matteo didn’t notice the bum straighten just slightly after he swaggered back across the street.
Raffael Moretti—aka “Raffy Lupo”, aka Special Agent with the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force—let the groan linger on his lips until Matteo disappeared into the club.
He used the crumbling, brick building to hold him up, his body aching from the kick.
The bastard hadn’t pulled it. Matteo had meant it.
The son of a bitch liked breaking things, people, anything weaker than him.
Raffael filed it away with every other brutality he’d witnessed since embedding himself under the cover of “Raffy Lupo,” the musclebound idiot happy to run errands for meager scraps of respect.
He wiped Matteo’s spit from his cheek with the back of his hand, jaw flexing hard.
It took everything in him not to straighten up fully, drag Matteo back across the street, and show him what real power felt like.
Raffael could have had him unconscious in seconds.
Could have put him in the hospital with broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
But that wasn’t the mission.
Not yet.
Instead, he slouched deeper into the filthy blanket, letting the stink of piss and old rot cling to him.
He needed Matteo to keep believing he was nothing but a bum, a dim-witted stray grateful for scraps.
The kind of man Enrico Bianchi collected like stray dogs.
The kind he could sneak close enough to get information that would bury the whole damned family.
Because make no mistake—Raffael wasn’t just after Enrico. He was going to burn the entire Bianchi organization to the ground. Every capo. Every soldier. Every parasite that bled the city dry.
That was his oath. That was the reason he’d taken the undercover assignment that had eaten years of his life.
He’d play the idiot. He’d take the kicks. He’d grunt, shrug, and act like he barely knew which way was up. Matteo thought homeless people wouldn’t fight back? Fine. Raffael would let him believe it. He’d let every one of them believe it.
And when the time was right?
He’d be the one standing while their empire collapsed into ash.
Raffael adjusted his blanket, curling back into the shadows. A predator waiting in plain sight.