Salvatore
CHAPTER TEN
I'm used to the violence. The threats. The blood that comes with the crown.
What I'm not used to is a woman who's gotten under my skin without permission—without even trying.
A woman who makes me want something more dangerous than power.
She makes me want to be the man she sees when she looks at me in that library, surrounded by books and innocence and light—things I have no right to touch.
She makes me want to be worthy of her.
And that terrifies me more than any bullet ever has.
Because men like me don't get to keep women like her.
We ruin them.
* * *
The call from Raffaele comes at seven in the morning.
“I can’t make it.” His voice was tight, controlled in the way that meant something had gone sideways. “The Volcov situation downtown, they’re pushing into Little Italy, testing our boundaries. I’ve got six men holding position, but if I leave now, we lose the block.”
I stand at the window of my study, watching the first pale light bleed across the estate grounds. “How many of them?”
“Ten. Maybe twelve. They brought muscle from out of state. New faces my men don’t recognize.”
“Then make sure those new faces never leave Little Italy.” I set the cup down on the windowsill.
“I’ve already got Franco and his crew flanking them from the east. They won’t see it coming.”
“Good. Make it public. I want the message loud and clear. Little Italy belongs to the Vitales. Anyone who thinks otherwise ends up in the harbor.”
“What about civilians? There’s a deli on the corner.”
I think about that for a second. It’s one thing to eliminate soldiers who know what they’re getting into and do it anyway.
Soldiers who, if given the chance, would take out another soldier for the sake of greed.
But civilians minding their own damn business with potential loss of woman or children is not something I take lightly.
“Evacuate them first, then… burn the block if you have to.” I don’t raise my voice.
I never do. My father always taught us that only a weak man needed to seek to be heard.
A man with power needs do no such thing.
The quieter the command, the more weight it carries.
“The Volkov family needs to understand that testing our boundaries has consequences. Permanent ones.”
A pause. Then: “Understood.”
“What about Russo? You shouldn’t be walking into that meeting without me there.”
“Zio Arturo will be with me.” I watch a groundskeeper cross the distant lawn, oblivious to the violence being orchestrated around him. “And I’ve already positioned twenty men around that warehouse. Tommaso thinks he’s meeting with two people. He’s meeting with an army.”
“Sal, this feels wrong. Asking for a meeting on a random Wednesday? Half the payment in cash? It’s a setup.”
“I’m counting on it.” I smile. “Stay on top of that operation. Arturo and I will take care of the rat.”
“Call me when it’s done. I want to hear how he screamed.”
The line goes dead.
I pocket my phone and turn back to my desk, where Tommaso Russo’s file lies open. Photographs. Financial records. A list of properties, associates, and family members. Everything I need to dismantle his entire fucking existence.
His wife. His children. His aging mother is in that nursing home on the Upper East Side.
Everyone has pressure points. The trick is knowing which ones to squeeze first.
The drive to the warehouse takes thirty minutes.
Arturo sits beside me in the back of the armored SUV, his weathered hands resting on his knees, perfectly still.
My uncle took care of enforcement alongside my dad for years, taught me to shoot when I was young, and helped me bury the men who betrayed my father.
He’d spilled enough blood to fill an ocean, and yet he still held that steady calm that came from absolute certainty in who he was.
A killer.
But even at his young age, no one thrives off this shit like Raffaele. That’s why I made my uncle pass enforcement to him. Raffaele’s been dark since he was a kid, doing crazy shit like finishing off half-dead animals which would otherwise be roadkill to “take them out of their misery.”
He couldn’t make it, but as Don, I have no fucking problem getting my hands dirty.
We pull up at the warehouse, which smells like rust and old blood, fitting for what this conversation is about to become.
Tommaso Russo is already waiting, flanked by two men whose cheap suits do nothing to hide the weapons bulging beneath their jackets. He stands in the center of the concrete floor, a black duffel bag at his feet, his face arranged into something meant to look confident.
It’s laughable.
I could read his fear from across the room. The way his weight shifts every few seconds, the way his eyes kept darting toward the eastern entrance, the subtle flex of his fingers like he was counting down to something.
Interesting.
He thought he had a plan. He thought he could outmaneuver me.
Men have died for less arrogant assumptions.
“Salvatore.” He spread his hands in a gesture of false welcome. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
I don’t respond. Just walk toward him slowly, my footsteps echoing off the corrugated metal walls, Arturo half a pace behind me. The silence stretches until sweat beaded along Tommaso’s hairline and slides down his temple.
“The money’s all here.” He gestures to the duffel, his voice cracking slightly. “Half a million, like we discussed.”
“How much money did you say this is?”
He blinks. “I told you. Half a million.”
“But how much do you owe me?”
The question hangs in the stale air between us. Tommaso shifts his weight again, eyes darting toward the door like he’s calculating how fast he could run. He couldn’t. Not fast enough.
“Look, Sal, maybe meeting today was a mistake. You’re right, I’ll get you the rest.”
The rest.
I don’t care too much for his choice of words.
I take a slow breath, letting the silence stretch until I could almost hear his heartbeat stuttering beneath his ribs. A drop of sweat rolls down his temple and disappears into his collar.
"Zio." I turn to Arturo. "What is my strategy for running my city?"
My uncle smiles, the kind of smile that had preceded more deaths than I could count. “Patience.”
“Patience,” I repeat, turning back to Tommaso. “And how long have I given you to settle this debt?”
His jaw tightened. “A few months.”
“A few months he says. Eight months… that’s how long it’s been. Eight months of patience.” I step closer, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat like a trapped animal desperate to escape. “What else, Zio?”
“Strategy.”
“Strategy.” Another step. The concrete beneath my feet is stained with old blood, old violence, the ghosts of men who’d stood exactly where Tommaso is standing now. None of them walked out alive. “And what was our deal? What was the strategy we agreed upon?”
Tommaso’s tongue darted across his lips. He doesn’t answer.
“Tommaso.” My voice drops to something quiet. Dangerous. “I asked you a question.”
“Full repayment by the first of the month.” His voice has gone thin, reedy, like a child caught in a lie. “Interest forgiven as a sign of good faith.”
“Good faith.” The words taste like betrayal. “And the third principle, Zio?”
“Control,” Arturo answers.
“Control.” I let the word hang in the fetid air like a death sentence. “You mentioned the rest, Tommaso. Let me explain what happens with the rest.”
I begin circling him slowly, the way my father taught me when I was eighteen, standing over the body of my first kill. Never let them see you stand still. Movement is power. Movement is death waiting to strike.
“The rest of my capos start wondering if they can short me too. The rest of my allies question whether the Vitale name still means anything. The rest of my enemies, and believe me, I have many, they start circling like vultures, waiting for my kingdom to show weakness.”
I stop directly in front of him, close enough to smell the fear rolling off his skin, sour sweat, and piss. He’d wet himself. I could see the dark stain spreading down his trouser leg.
Pathetic.
“But the real problem isn’t the money, Tommaso.
” I grab his jaw, forcing his face up to meet mine, my fingers digging into flesh.
“It’s control. Control of my fucking city.
And you…” I release him with a shove that sends him stumbling backward, arms pinwheeling.
“You just became an example for what was it you said? Oh yeah… “the rest”.
I straightened my jacket, watching him scramble to regain his footing. The duffel bag of money sits forgotten on the floor between us.
“You know what I did to the last man who tried to short me?” I asked, my voice conversational.
Almost friendly. “That fucking Greco, you remember him. Ran the gambling operations on the east side.” I smile.
“I took his hands first. Then his tongue. Let him live another six months like that couldn’t hold cards, couldn’t beg for mercy, couldn’t even tell his wife why he screamed in his sleep every night.
” I step closer. “When I finally killed him, it was a mercy.” A page from Raffaele’s book.
Maybe I’ll leave this piece of shit for him after all,” I chuckle.
Tommaso’s face has gone gray.
“That’s what patience looks like, Tommaso.” I tilt my head, studying him. “How long do you think you’ll last?”
I search his face for something, any indication he understood what was coming. All I see is a desperate, cornered animal.
And cornered animals do desperate things.
I look at Zio Arturo and walk away. The command, though unspoken, is clear.
Handle this. Make it slow.
But when I turn around, four of Tommaso’s men burst from behind the stacked crates, weapons drawn. My hand finds my Beretta before my brain even registers the threat from muscle memory and instinct, a thousand hours of training compressed into a single, fluid motion.
Foolish bastard.