The Mad Don (The Devil Kings #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Yana

“You look like you’re expecting someone to detonate,” Max says, appearing at my left shoulder with two glasses of champagne.

He holds one of the glasses out to me. “Here. It’s the good kind.”

I shake my head, and he sighs. The gallery smells like white wine.

I am standing near the east wall, close enough to the entrance to clock every face that walks through, far enough from the crowd that no one tries to hand me a canapé.

Annika’s sculptures are arranged on white pedestals under the light, each one more unsettling and beautiful than the last. Red forms that look like they’re mid-collapse, mid-becoming.

The gun sits against my ribs, tucked into the line of my blazer where it won’t print.

My hair is pinned up, the way I always wear it at these events, the pin sharp enough to open a throat if the situation calls for it.

I’ve used it before. I don’t plan to tonight, but plans have a way of meaning nothing in this world.

He lowers his arm, but he doesn’t leave. That’s Max. He never quite leaves. He stands beside me instead, following my eyeline out over the crowd, as if he might spot whatever I’m looking for.

“She’s fine, you know,” he says after a moment. His voice drops the performance, goes quieter. “Kirill’s got men around the building.”

“I know.”

“Then what are you watching for?”

I don’t answer because the answer is: everything.

I am always watching for everything. For the past two months, someone has been making Kirill’s life difficult.

First, a warehouse fire took out half a shipment.

Three of his men attacked in their homes on the same night, and then the attempt on the mansion.

Two men had jumped in and tried to break into Dimitri’s room.

Luckily, Kirill was reading him a bedtime story.

The men managed to escape after Kirill shot one of them. I don’t sleep well anymore.

“The Italians,” Max says like he’s reading my mind. He swirls his champagne. “You think it’s them again?”

He was Annika’s art dealer for so long that he almost became family, and he knew of attacks.

“Could be anyone.”

“But you think it’s them.”

I shrug. It really could be anyone.

He looks at me for a beat, then nods slowly. “Right.” He doesn’t push.

My eyes drop to his hand, and I track the motion before I can stop myself, the way his knuckles brush mine when he turns the glass. “You look pale,” he says. “When did you last sleep?”

“I sleep well.”

“Yana.”

“I sleep, Max.”

He looks at me a moment longer. Then his hand moves—gently, just his palm against the center of my back; there is barely pressure.

No one else has ever touched me gently. Not in as long as I can remember.

The people on my side of the world touch with the intent to restrain or to control.

I take his glass out of his hand, not to drink from it but to have something to do with my hands, and our fingers brush again. I look away first.

“Annika told me,” I say. “About you and the painter.”

I should ask to show concern. He and I had known each other for a long time. We could be considered friends

“Ah,” he pauses. “We broke up, actually. Daniel and I.” He says it lightly, like it’s nothing, but he’s watching me when he says it. He is giving me something. Leaving a door ajar. “A few weeks ago.”

I know what he’s doing. He is giving me a chance to step in. Max never forces things, especially when it’s not business. I learned that about him over the years. He wasn’t a passionate chaser; he saved his passion for the things and people he cared about.

“I hope you two find a chance to talk it through,” I say. “You looked good together.”

He opens his mouth, but he closes it, and whatever was in his eyes gets quietly folded away. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

He takes the glass back from me and crosses the room toward where Annika has just emerged from a conversation in the back, sliding into the space beside her. I watch him go.

I stand there holding nothing. Then someone bumps into my shoulder.

It’s a stumble, and I turn before the reflex can think about it, one hand already moving toward the pin in my hair.

“I’m so sorry!” came the voice behind me.

It’s a man; he is staring at the floor with his shoulders around his ears, trembling visibly, wearing a suit that costs more than most people’s rent and fits him like he borrowed it from a larger, more confident man.

I know the quality. But it’s oversized everywhere.

He has on thick-framed glasses. His whole body is shaking with apology before he’s even opened his mouth.

“I’m so — I’m so sorry, I — please, I didn’t mean —”

“Head up.”

He flinches but doesn’t move. His eyes stay fixed on my shoes.

In this room with these people, I cannot afford uncertainty. I cannot afford to assume.

He raises his head, and I stop.

The face is young, soft at the jaw, the kind of face that probably is approachable in the right light.

The glasses are slightly askew from the collision.

But the eyes behind them are another thing entirely.

They are still, completely, still. His body is shaking.

His hands are trembling. His shoulders are practically up against his jawline.

But his eyes are calm. He holds my gaze for a second.

Then the trembling takes over again, his eyes drop, and he fumbles inside his jacket with shaking hands.

“I have… I have an invitation, I promise.” He produces a card, embossed with the event details printed. He holds it out with both hands. “Max — Max Barker, he — he invited me. I’m, my name is Giorgio, Giorgio Ferrante; Max knows my father —”

“Yana.”

It’s Max’s voice. I glance up, and he is walking across the room toward us with Annika a step behind, his face changes to cheerful recognition.

“There he is.” Max claps a hand on the trembling man’s shoulder, and he startles so badly that his glasses neatly fall off his face.

“Finally, I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost.” He turns to me.

“Meet Giorgio. His father is Gerald Ferrante, Italy’s biggest anonymous art collector.

Giorgio here is taking over the family business, aren’t you, mate? ”

Giorgio nods with tremendous effort. His chin keeps dipping like it’s weighted. “Y-yes. Yes, I’m — I’m still learning; I’m not as good as my father yet. I —”

“You’re doing wonderfully,” Annika says warmly. She steps forward, and Giorgio’s face loosens slightly, some of the trembling easing. “Hello, Giorgio. The pieces in the corner are new since the last time. I think you’ll love them.”

“I already do,” he says to Annika, and his voice is softer and less fractured. “The — the red series especially. They’re extraordinary.”

“Here,” Max says, steering him gently by the shoulder. “You know what? There’s a seat right there with a perfect view of the Red Series. I’ll bring you over, and we’ll talk about which ones your father would want to know about. Come on, Giorgio.”

Giorgio nods gratefully and lets himself be taken toward a chair near the center of the room. He is shuffling. He is apologetic in every movement. He passes me on the way.

And just as he comes up to my shoulder, he turns his head.

“Goodbye, Miss,” he says. And his voice, just for that one moment, is smooth. “It’s a shame we couldn’t speak alone.”

Then he’s past me, shuffling again, his head down.

I turn to check the room. Max is gesturing toward a sculpture. I look back at the chair where Giorgio Ferrante is now seated, hands folded neatly in his lap, glasses straight, posture upright.

There is no slumping or trembling. His back is a straight line against the chair, and he’s studying the sculptures with focused eyes.

I don’t know what it is yet, but something about him makes me uneasy. I clench my fist, and he slowly turns. Our eyes meet, and he smiles. There is no trace of nervousness in the smile. He turns back and continues looking at the sculpture.

I watch him walk to the car after the showcase.

His staff loads the last of the wrapped pieces into the back. He walks the way nervous men move, slightly hunched, with his head bent down and his hands in his pockets. He pauses at the open passenger door and turns. Our eyes meet across the parking lot.

He does not smile or wave. He raises two fingers to his head in a small salute, and then he is in the car, and the door closes, and he is gone.

I stand at the entrance for a moment longer than I need to.

“There you are.”

I turn, and Annika is at the gallery door, her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders. She steps out and joins me on the top step.

“You disappeared,” she says. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She looks at me for a moment. She has the soft look she wears when she does not believe me, but does not want to push. Then she loops her arm through mine.

“Come back inside. It’s freezing.”

I let her lead me. Max is in the doorway, and he grins as we pass him.

“What a worry head,” he says to Annika. “You can’t take her anywhere.”

Annika laughs. I look back once at the spot where the car had been, and then I let the gallery door close behind me.

* * *

I am in the kitchen with a glass of water when one of Kirill’s men finds me. He nods toward the study. I set the glass down and go.

The house is quiet, Dimitri is in bed, and Annika is asleep upstairs. The corridors are dim, so I climb the stairs without rushing.

Kirill’s study door is open. He is at the window in a blue nightrobe, holding a glass with two fingers of something brown in it. He does not turn when I come in.

“Close the door,” he says.

I close it.

He turns then and walks to the desk and sits down on the edge of it. He gestures with the glass for me to sit. I take the chair across from him.

“Three of the new shipping routes through the southern corridor have been hit in the last six weeks. Cargo intercepted. Two of my drivers were shot. They say that it’s a territorial dispute.

A few new mouths who think the lines on the map were drawn for someone else, not them.

” He sips the drink. “I have suspected for some time that the attacks of the first few months were from them. The fires. The breach at the house. All of it.”

He sets the glass down on the desk. “Do you remember the cruise last year?”

“I remember.”

It was a vacation. He had taken Annika out for a long weekend on the water.

Dimitri had stayed behind with his friends Luca and Nathalie.

Max had come along because he had been working with Annika on a private commission, and the timing had worked out that way.

I had been on board too, in the back of every photograph and at the side of every doorway, because Kirill does not let Annika travel without me, even when he is there.

The attack came on the second night. Six men with rifles. Kirill ordered that no one be spared.

“One of them was not dead,” he says.

I look at him.

He picks the glass up again and turns it in his hand. “He was breathing. I had him kept alive in a long coma. A doctor who owed me a favor. He never woke fully, but he talked sometimes. There was a bank account he had been told to memorize.”

“I traced it. The account was at a small bank in Naples. It’s a bank that exists only because four families need a place to move money that does not show up in the regular columns.” He sets the glass down again. “The man died eight months ago.”

“The four families. One is the Di Meglio. That is Luca, which makes it not him.”

Luca was his age-long friend and ally.

I nod.

“Two are middle houses with old money, narrow ambition: the Esposito and the Vitale. Neither have the men nor the appetite to come at me on open water. Their fights are smaller. Closer to home.”

“And the fourth?”

He looks at me.

“The Mondi family.”

“Mondi,” I say.

“Giovanni Mondi. He came to the seat three years ago after the older man died. He is not blooded. The word on the street is that he is not entirely sane.”

“How sane is not sane?”

“That is what I want to know,” Kirill says. “His ambitions and his next move. Whether he is the one who has been pulling the threads in my house, or maybe he is simply the most likely answer, and I am being lazy.”

“Do you think it’s him?”

“I think it is him. But I need to be certain.”

I sit forward.

“At your service. Always. Tell me what to do.”

He stands then and walks around the desk. He pulls open the second drawer and lays out a folder on the surface between us. I have not opened it yet.

“I am giving you whatever men you need. Tell me a number, and you will have them by morning.”

“Six is enough.”

“Six it is.” He taps the folder. “There is a shipment coming in next Friday through the eastern dock. The container number is in the file. It is a significant volume of koshka.”

I look up. Koshka is what we call the new compound out of the Bratva labs in Saint Petersburg.

It’s a synthetic that the federal agencies on both sides of the ocean have decided to make their problem.

The street value of a container is in the high millions.

The legal consequences of being caught with it are greater.

“That much.”

“That much. I will be at the dock myself.”

“Pakhan.”

“It is too much money to trust to anyone else. And it is exactly the kind of move that an ambitious young Don who wants to test me would try to interrupt.” He looks at me. “You will not be at the dock.”

“Where will I be?”

“On Mondi. Watching his house and his men. I want to know if he sends people toward the dock. If he goes himself. If he so much as orders an extra car for the night.”

“And if he does?”

He puts both hands on the desk and leans down. He holds my eyes for a long moment. Then he straightens, picks up his glass, and walks back to the window.

“Get some sleep,” he says without turning. “Friday is in six days.”

I stand. I take the folder. At the door, I pause and look back at him.

“Pakhan.”

“Mm.”

“The man at the gallery tonight. The collector.”

He turns his head slightly.

“What about him?”

“Nothing,” I say after a moment. “It’s nothing.”

I close the door behind me.

In the corridor, I stop, lean against the wall, and breathe out.

The collector.

I have nothing. I have an oversized suit, a calm pair of eyes, and a goodbye that landed wrong. I have my own instinct, which Kirill respects but is not proof.

I do not sleep well that night.