Chapter 3
Cristiano
Istride through the casino floor, past blackjack tables and roulette wheels, watching dealers shuffle cards with practiced precision while chips click against felt. The sound of money changing hands. Fortunes rising and falling. All of it flowing into Montoni coffers.
My casino now. My empire.
It should feel like victory, but all I feel is that same grim satisfaction as when I stuck a knife in Alfonso Galbiati’s throat. A job completed. A problem solved.
I take the stairs to the mezzanine two at a time.
The corridor is quieter here, insulated from the noise below.
The office I’ve made myself is at the end, and I like it better than my father’s old study at home, full of bad memories.
I’ve had the office redecorated with new furniture, new carpet, everything the way I want it.
I haven’t made it to the door when a smile tugs at my mouth, unbidden.
Her.
Mina, looking exactly like she did five years ago except somehow more beautiful.
More herself. The sight of her knocked the breath from my lungs.
Her apartment was small and warm and cluttered with proof of all the love in her tender heart.
Mina’s hands trembled as she held her son, and she looked at me not with longing or hope, but with fear.
It’s been five years of distance and telling myself that I’d ruined everything and to move on. It took just speaking her name once to send me flying across the city to her.
And Leon. Nearly four years old with Mina’s dark hair and gentle features, chattering about dinosaurs like I was someone safe to talk to.
No man in the picture. Whoever Leon’s father is, someone she met just months after I left, he’s long gone now.
Good riddance. The boy is better off without a man who abandons his child.
Emerging onto the mezzanine, I glance down at the casino floor as I head to my office, and feel a flicker of amusement as I remember my sister Adora gazing up at me.
She was standing in this very casino with that Vici piece of shit’s arm around her waist, trying so hard to look composed.
Trying so hard to hide her apprehension.
I raised my glass to her, telling her I knew what she had done. A toast, just like the one our father made at her wedding before he drank the poison that killed him.
The poison she put in his glass. The color drained from her face as she wondered what I was going to do about it.
Let her and her assassin husband sweat. The fear will do wonders when I finally speak with them.
I push open my office door and cross to the desk, dropping into the leather chair and propping my feet up on the polished surface. I close my eyes and let myself think her name. Roll it around in my mind like I’m tasting something forbidden.
Mina.
I remember everything. The raindrops that were caught in her hair. The way she held her son, both arms protectively tight around his little body.
My chest aches with missing her already, but I prepared for this.
I pull out my phone and open the app, tapping the icon for the feed.
When I stood at her bookshelf, holding that photograph of her and Leon, I was doing more than admiring it.
While she was in the bathroom changing the boy out of his wet clothes, I affixed a tiny camera and microphone to the edge of the frame.
Small enough to go unnoticed. Angled perfectly to capture the living room.
Or it should have been.
When the feed appears, the screen shows nothing but the blurred back of the picture frame. The camera must have slipped when I set the photo down.
I mutter a curse.
But there’s sound. Mina’s voice, soft and clear through the tiny microphone, reading a story. Leon’s piping voice. “Read it again, Mama!”
“Again?” Mina asks, but I can hear her smiling. “We’ve read it three times already, baby.”
“Please?”
“Okay. One more time. But then it’s bedtime.”
I close my eyes and listen to her reading to her son, painting pictures of wild things and rumpus and sailing away. The frustration of the useless camera fades. Now, when she’s home, I can hear her whenever I want.
A knock interrupts my thoughts.
“Boss?” Nico’s voice, muffled through the door.
I bite back my irritation and lock my phone, cutting off the feed. “What?”
The door opens and Nico steps in, looking apologetic. “There’s someone here to see you, but—” He breaks off with a stream of Italian cursing as a man pushes past him into the office.
I drop my feet to the floor and stand, my hand automatically moving toward the weapon in my top drawer.
The man who just barged into my office is maybe in his early forties, weathered and tanned like he spends more time outdoors than in.
Hard face. No-nonsense eyes that take in the room with professional assessment.
A dark suit that’s well-made but not flashy.
He carries himself like someone who knows how to handle trouble.
“Don Cristiano.” The man’s voice is respectful but confident. No fear. No deference. “My name is Silas Cross. I apologize for the intrusion, but this couldn’t wait.”
He’s not armed, so I straighten up and study him for a long moment, letting the silence stretch. I have no idea who this man is, and I don’t appreciate being interrupted when I was spending time with Mina.
“Mr. Cross.” I sit back down, but I don’t invite him to join me. “You have sixty seconds to explain why you just pushed past my capo and walked into my office uninvited.”
If the threat bothers him, he doesn’t show it.
“The Sokolis are moving into southwest Malus,” he says bluntly. “They’re targeting Lucania bookies, betting shops, gambling dens. Small operations at first, but they’re working their way up.”
I know this already. I have eyes throughout the city, and the Sokoli encroachment hasn’t escaped my notice. What I don’t know is why this stranger thinks it’s my problem.
“That’s Lucania territory,” I say. “Not Montoni.”
“For now.” Silas’s eyes are steady on mine. “But the Sokolis aren’t going to stop. You help the Lucanias hold the line in the southwest, and those casinos of yours in south-central Malus stay safe. The Diamond Grand. The Obelisk. If you don’t, the Sokolis will keep moving north.”
Smart pitch. Appealing to self-interest rather than altruism. I can respect that, even if I’m annoyed by the delivery.
“Who are you?” I ask. “Why do you care what happens to Lucania territory?”
“Gabriel Lucania and I go back a long way,” he says. Loyalty flickers in his eyes, deep and fierce. “With him and now Rafiel put away, I’m doing the family a favor. Watching over their concerns.”
Ah. So this is personal for him. The Lucanias must have saved him or someone he loves at some point. That kind of loyalty is rare in Malus.
I lean back against my desk, crossing my arms. “Rafiel is in prison now as well? Father and son, reunited at last. How touching.”
Silas’s jaw tightens, but his voice stays level. “Gabriel and Rafiel won’t be inside forever. When they get out, they’ll remember who helped them and who didn’t.”
It’s a reasonable point. The Lucanias control significant territory, and despite their current incarceration, there’s no doubt they have influence.
There’s already been Sokoli violence at the Diamond Grand and Obelisk, my casinos in central south Malus. If it continues, patrons will stop gambling there, the venues will close, and the Sokolis will buy them cheap.
But I don’t like being told what to do by strangers who walk into my office like they own the place. And I really don’t like men who send messengers instead of speaking to me themselves. The Lucanias might be in prison, but they can still pick up a phone.
I smile, but there’s no warmth in it. “Does it annoy you, being the Lucanias’ errand boy?”
The temperature in the room drops about ten degrees.
Silas takes a step forward, and I see Nico’s hand move to his weapon in my peripheral vision.
“I heard your father was an arrogant piece of shit,” Silas says, his voice quiet and dangerous. “I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I’m across the room before I’ve made the conscious decision to move, my hand fisting in Silas’s collar, slamming him back against the wall. Nico and Paulo materialize at my sides, guns drawn.
“Say that again,” I say softly. “I want to make sure I heard you correctly before I put a bullet in your skull.”
Silas doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t try to fight back. He just meets my eyes with that same steady, infuriating calm.
“You heard me fine, Don Cristiano. When the Sokolis come north—and they will—whose side are you on?”
For a long moment, we stay frozen like that. My hand in his collar. His back against the wall. My men’s guns pointed at his head.
Then I release him and step back.
“If the Lucanias want my help,” I say, my voice cold and controlled, “they can ask me themselves. Rafiel can pick up a phone and call me like a man instead of sending…” I gesture at Silas dismissively. “Whatever you are.”
I turn my back to him and walk to my desk.
“Do you know the way out, Mr. Cross? Or would you like me to have my men show you?”
Silence. Then footsteps. The door opens.
“You’re making a mistake,” Silas says from the doorway.
“That’s my business, not yours.”
The door closes.
I stand there for a moment, hands braced on my desk, breathing through the anger.
Your father was an arrogant piece of shit.
My hands curl into fists. I am nothing like my father.
But I stay there longer than I should, staring at the closed door, and I find myself thinking about the way Silas Cross walked into this room.
No weapon. No backup. Fully aware that I could have had him killed before he finished his first sentence, and he pitched his case anyway, calm and direct, like a man who’d decided the meeting was worth dying for if it came to that.
I’ve dealt with a lot of men since returning to Malus. Politicians who sweat through their shirts. My cousin Andreas who laughs too loud at things that aren’t funny. Capos performing confidence for an audience of one.
Silas Cross wasn’t performing anything.