Chapter 8
DANTE
The man’s pleading stops the second I walk into the room.
Smart. He knows begging won’t save him now.
The warehouse in Red Hook is one of several properties I own throughout Brooklyn.
Most people think it’s abandoned—boarded windows, rusted metal siding, location just isolated enough that screams are not heard.
But inside it’s been converted into something useful.
Soundproofed walls. Reinforced steel doors.
Drainage systems built into the concrete floor that make cleanup efficient.
My father taught me that real power isn’t just about killing people. It’s about knowing when to kill them, how to kill them, and making sure everyone else learns the right lesson from it.
Tonight’s lesson is about loyalty.
The man tied to the metal chair is named Danny Russo. He’s been running numbers for me in Queens for eighteen months. He’s good at math, reliable with collections, and kept his mouth shut when he needed to. Everything you want in someone handling your money.
Until three days ago when Viktor’s people caught him skimming.
Not much. Five hundred here, a thousand there. Amounts small enough he probably thought I wouldn’t notice. But I notice everything. That’s how you survive in this business.
“Danny.” I stop a few feet in front of him. Close enough that he has to look up at me. Close enough that he can see exactly what’s coming.
He’s thirty. Wife and two kids in Astoria. Mortgage on a house he can’t really afford. The kind of guy who gets into this life thinking he’s smart enough to play both sides.
He’s not.
“Bo…Boss.” His voice shakes despite his best effort to keep it steady. “I can explain. I was going to pay it back. I just needed—”
“Stop.”
He stops.
I pull out my phone and check the time. Two in the morning. I’ve been dealing with problems since six yesterday evening and this is the last one on my list before I can finally get some sleep.
“Do you know why you’re here, Danny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me.”
He swallows hard. “I took money that wasn’t mine.”
“Not just money. My money. Money that you were trusted to handle and that you decided to steal. How much is the total?”
“Seventeen thousand, four hundred.” The number comes out quickly. He’s been doing the math, probably hoping that knowing the exact amount might somehow help him.
It won’t.
“Seventeen thousand, four hundred dollars.” I let that sit between us for a moment. “You have a wife. Christina. Two daughters. Emma’s eight, Sofia’s five. They go to St. Sebastian’s.”
The color drains from his face. “Please. Please don’t hurt them. This was my doing alone. They don’t know anything.”
“I know they don’t.” I slide my phone back into my pocket. “You think I’m the kind of man who hurts children? Who goes after families?”
“No. No, Boss, I just—”
“You just panicked because you’re finally understanding how badly you fucked up.
” I take another step closer. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Danny.
I’m going to kill you tonight. Quick, painless, more mercy than you deserve.
Your body won’t be found. Your wife will file a missing person’s report, and the police will investigate and eventually she’ll accept that you abandoned your family.
She’ll move on. Your daughters will grow up thinking their father was a coward who walked away. ”
“Please.” Tears are streaming down his face now. “Please, I’ll pay it back. I’ll work for free. I’ll do anything. Please.”
“Or.” I pull the gun from my shoulder holster.
“You can die knowing your family is taken care of. Your wife will receive an envelope with fifty thousand dollars cash and a letter explaining you died in a car accident out of state. Anonymous life insurance payout. She’ll grieve, but she’ll have enough money to keep the house and pay for the girls’ school.
They’ll grow up thinking you were a good father who provided for them even in death. ”
Hope flickers in his eyes. Desperate, pathetic hope.
“Which one depends entirely on what you say in the next ten seconds.”
“I’m sorry.” The words pour out of him. “I’m so fucking sorry. I made a mistake. A huge mistake. Please take care of them. Please. They didn’t do anything wrong.”
I raise the gun and aim at his head.
“Thank you.” He closes his eyes. “Thank you for—”
The shot echoes through the warehouse even with the soundproofing.
Danny’s head snaps back and his body goes limp in the chair. Blood and brain matter spray across the concrete behind him. His eyes are still closed. He never saw it coming.
I lower the gun and turn to Viktor, who’s been standing by the door the whole time.
“Clean this up. Make sure the body disappears properly. And get that envelope to his wife by the end of the week.”
“You’re really going to pay her?” Viktor sounds surprised. He shouldn’t be. He’s worked for me long enough to know how I operate.
“I said I would. Danny made the right choice at the end. His family gets taken care of because he died accepting responsibility instead of making excuses.” I holster my gun. “Let this be a lesson to everyone else. Steal from me and you die. But die with dignity and your family doesn’t suffer.”
“Understood, boss.”
I walk out of the warehouse into the cold night air. My hands are steady. My breathing is calm. Killing Danny Russo doesn’t bother me any more than signing paperwork or making phone calls. It’s just another part of running this organization.
My driver is waiting by the black Mercedes S-Class parked fifty feet away. He opens the door without a word and I slide into the leather backseat.
“Office,” I tell him.
The drive from Red Hook back to Manhattan takes thirty minutes at this time of night. I use the time to scroll through messages on my phone. Updates from various operations. Financial reports. Status checks from people running different parts of my territory.
Six years ago I was just an enforcer working for my father. Now I run the largest independent operation in New York. Territory spanning three boroughs. Legitimate businesses mixed with illegal ones. Politicians on payroll. Cops who look the other way. Judges who rule in my favor.
I built this from nothing after I walked away from my father’s organization. He didn’t like it, but he respected it. In our world, you either earn your place or you die trying. I earned mine through blood and violence and being smarter than everyone who came before me.
The Mercedes pulls up in front of a fifty-story building in Midtown. The entire twentieth floor belongs to me. Import/export company on paper. Money laundering and logistics hub in reality.
I take the private elevator straight to twenty. The doors open onto a reception area that’s all marble and glass and expensive art. Empty at this hour except for the two guards stationed by the entrance.
They nod as I pass.
My office is at the end of the hall. Corner unit with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. The view alone probably costs more per year than most people make. I pay for it because power isn’t just about what you can do. It’s about what you can afford to show.
My desk is mahogany. Custom-built, imported from Italy. The chairs are leather, the carpet is Persian, the bar in the corner is stocked with liquor that costs more per bottle than Danny Russo was stealing per month.
I pour myself two fingers of Scotch and stand at the window, looking out at New York.
This city belongs to me in ways most people will never understand. Not all of it. Not yet. But enough that I matter. Enough that people know my name and fear it.
My phone buzzes. Marco.
“Yeah.”
“Boss, we got a problem with the shipment coming through Newark. Port authority is asking questions they shouldn’t be asking.”
“How much did we pay them last month?”
“Fifty thousand to the supervisor, another twenty spread among his crew.”
“Double it. And make it clear that questions are expensive. The more they ask, the more it costs us, and the more it costs us, the less friendly we become.”
“Got it. What if they don’t take the hint?”
“Then we find out who they love and make them understand that curiosity has consequences.”
“Understood.”
I hang up and take a sip of Scotch. It burns going down. An expensive burn, but a burn nonetheless.
The clock on my desk reads 2:47 a.m. I should go home. I should try to get at least a few hours of sleep before tomorrow starts. But sleep hasn’t been coming easy lately and I know tonight won’t be any different.
So I sit behind my desk and pull up the security reports I was supposed to review earlier. Patrol schedules. Inventory counts. Financial projections. The boring administrative work that keeps an empire running.
My private emergency line rings at 3:15.
I stare at it for three full rings before I pick up. Only five people have this number. My father. Viktor. Marco. My lawyer.
“Dante Moretti.”
There’s breathing on the other end. Scared. Desperate. Female.
Then a voice I haven’t heard in six years but would recognize anywhere.
“I need help. Please. Someone’s trying to kill me and I don’t know who else to call.”
Everything stops.
The city outside my window. The Scotch in my glass. My fucking heartbeat.
Scarlett.
Six years. Six years of searching. Six years of private investigators and bribes and calling in every favor I had trying to find this woman. Six years of wondering if she was dead or alive or just gone so completely I’d never see her again.
And now she’s on my phone.
“Scarlett.”
I hear her sharp intake of breath. She wasn’t expecting me to know her name. Wasn’t expecting me to recognize her voice instantly after all this time.
But how could I not? I’ve replayed that night in my head ten thousand times. Her voice, her face, the way she looked at me before she knew what I was.
“I have information,” she says, stronger now. Steadier. “About that night.”
Information.
My mind immediately goes to the ledger. To whatever happened in that mansion that I might have missed.
“I’ll trade you,” she continues. “Information for protection. For me and my son.”
Son.
The word hits me harder than Danny Russo’s bullet hit him twenty minutes ago.
She has a kid. And based on the timeline—six years since that night—the math lines up perfectly.
“How old?”
“What?”
“Your son. How old is he?”
There’s a pause. “Five.”
Five years old. Born nine months after that night. The math is impossible to ignore.
“Where are you?”
“Portland.”
“I’ll send a plane tomorrow morning. Be on it.”
“How do I know—”
“Be on it or don’t. Your choice. But if someone’s really trying to kill you, you’re already dead if you stay where you are.”
Silence. “Okay. Tomorrow. I’ll be on it.”
“Someone will contact you with details. Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Just be ready.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us hangs up. We just stay connected across three thousand miles and six years of silence.
“Goodnight,” she finally whispers.
The line goes dead.
I sit there with the phone in my hand, staring at nothing.
She’s coming back. After six years of searching, after giving up hope months ago, after accepting that I’d never find her—she called me.
And she has information I might need, and a son who’s five years old.
I dial Viktor.
He answers immediately. “Boss?”
“I need a plane to Portland first thing tomorrow. Private charter. Have it pick up a woman and a child and bring them directly to the estate.”
“Understood. What else?”
“Prepare the guest wing. Stock it with everything a woman and a young kid would need. Food, clothes, toys, whatever. And Viktor—”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Nobody touches them. They’re under my personal protection. Make that very clear to everyone.”
“Crystal clear, boss.”
I hang up and drain the rest of my Scotch.
Tomorrow she arrives. Tomorrow I see her face again. Tomorrow I meet the child who’s probably mine.
Tomorrow I find out what she knows about that night.
And tomorrow everything changes.
I stand and walk back to the window, looking out at the city I’ve conquered through blood and violence and being more ruthless than anyone else.
But none of it matters right now.
All that matters is that she’s finally coming back.
This time, I’m not letting her go.