2. Dominic
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Dominic
“Three shipments, Dominic. Three in six weeks.”
Stefan dropped the manifests on my desk like they were evidence at a trial. His face was grim, the lines around his eyes deeper than they’d been a year ago. He’d been running the numbers all night, same as me.
“The Portofino cargo alone was worth half a million.” He jabbed a finger at the top page. “Vanished between the harbor and the warehouse. No forced containers. No bodies. No witnesses. Like it never existed.”
I stared at the pages spread across my desk. Columns of numbers that should have added up and didn’t. Routes that should have been secure and weren’t. A pattern that should have been obvious and had somehow slipped past every man I paid to catch exactly this kind of thing.
“The Montecarlo shipment was the same,” Stefan continued, pacing now, his shoes heavy on the hardwood. “Clean hit. Perfect timing. In and out before anyone knew something was wrong. And last week, the Adriatic run. Same thing.”
“Someone’s talking.” My voice came out flat.
“Someone’s been talking for months.” Stefan stopped pacing and faced me.
“This isn’t amateur hour. Whoever’s feeding information knows our routes, our schedules, our crews.
They know which shipments are worth hitting and which ones to leave alone.
They know exactly how to hurt us without leaving a trail we can follow. ”
The insult of it burned in my chest. Not fear. I didn’t do fear. I had carved that out of myself years ago, the night I laid my father’s failures at the feet of the other families and watched them hand me everything he’d built.
But this. This was something else.
Someone was stealing from me. Someone was making me look weak. And I didn’t know who, and I didn’t know how, and that ignorance was a blade pressed against my throat.
“The other families are watching,” Stefan said, quieter now. “You know they are. Word travels. Numbers get whispered. And right now, the numbers say Dominic Costa is bleeding.”
“Let them watch.”
He sat down across from me, his body heavy in the chair. “I had drinks with Moretti’s consigliere last night. And three times he found a way to mention how well their shipments have been running lately. How secure their routes are. How reliable their crews.”
“Moretti’s a vulture. He’s always circling.”
“He’s circling closer.” Stefan leaned forward. “They all are. You’ve held this harbor for ten years because everyone understood the cost of crossing you. But cost only matters if they believe you can collect. And right now, someone is making them wonder.”
I stood up and walked to the window. The harbor stretched out below, gray water under a pale morning sky, the docks where Costa ships had been moving cargo for three generations.
My grandfather had built this. My father had nearly destroyed it with his greed and his stupidity and his endless parade of bad decisions. And I had taken it from him, piece by piece, until there was nothing left for him to ruin.
I had held this harbor for ten years.
Now someone was rewriting the math. And I couldn’t see their hand.
“Grassi,” I said.
Stefan exhaled behind me. “That’s where my money is.”
Andrew Grassi. The name tasted like poison.
He had taken his family’s seat the same year I took mine. We were the same age, raised in the same waters. For ten years we had circled each other across ballrooms and boardrooms, smiling our polished smiles, shaking hands at charity galas while we each looked for the crack in the other’s armor.
I had always known he was dangerous. That was the price of being what we were. Every man at our level was dangerous.
But I had thought he was patient. Content to wait, to watch, to test the fences without ever really pushing.
I had been wrong.
“He’s not just stealing,” Stefan said. “He’s sending a message. Three shipments, no retaliation. That tells every family on this coast that you either can’t find him or can’t touch him. Either way, it makes you look-”
“Careful.”
“Weak.” Stefan didn’t flinch. “It makes you look weak, Dominic. And weak is the one thing you can’t afford to look. Not now.”
I turned back to face him. “Then we find the leak. We find out how he’s getting the information, and we cut it off at the source.”
“I’ve been trying. Every crew chief, every dock supervisor, every man who touches the manifests. I’ve been through all of them twice. They’re clean, or they’re good enough at hiding it that I can’t see the dirt.”
“Someone’s not clean. Someone’s feeding him.”
The frustration coiled tight in my chest. I was used to knowing. That was how I had taken the seat at twenty-five. That was how I had held it for a decade. I saw what other men missed.
But this. This was a blind spot. And blind spots got men like me killed.
“Walk me through it again.”
Stefan sighed and reached for the pages.
We were still bent over the desk, tracing routes and timelines, when the door opened without a knock.
I looked up, and there she was.
Liana walked in holding two manifests I hadn’t known were missing from my desk. She was wearing one of my shirts, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and a pair of shorts that showed off her legs.
Her hair was twisted up in a messy knot, and her feet were bare, and she looked like she had rolled out of bed and come straight here without stopping for coffee.
She also looked like she hadn’t slept. There were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday, and a tightness around her mouth that I recognized. That was her angry face.
Fuck.
She didn’t mention it. Didn’t say a word about the empty bed or the broken promise or the anniversary dinner that had ended with me walking out the door. She just crossed the room and dropped into the chair Stefan had vacated, tucking one leg under her like she owned the place.
Because she did. She owned every room she walked into, and she always had.
“You’re reading it wrong,” she said, laying the manifests on the desk between us.
Stefan raised an eyebrow at me. I ignored him.
“Good morning to you too,” I said.
“It’s past noon.” Her eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion. “You’ve been in here all night and all morning and you still haven’t figured it out, so I figured I’d save you some time.”
“Figured out what?”
She tapped her finger on the manifest, on a line I had looked at a dozen times without seeing what she was about to show me. “The pattern. You think the shipments are random, but they’re not. Look at the routing.”
I leaned closer, looking at the pages over her shoulder. Her hair smelled like my shampoo. She had showered in my bathroom, using my things, and she had come here to help me even though I had left her alone on our anniversary.
I did not deserve this woman.
“Every shipment that’s gone missing has touched this point.” She traced the route with her fingernail. “It’s not random. Someone knows exactly where the gaps are and exactly how to exploit them.”
“We know that much,” Stefan said. “We just can’t figure out who.”
“That’s because you’re looking at the wrong question.” Liana looked up at me, and there was something fierce in her eyes. “You’re asking who’s stealing from you. You should be asking what they’re setting up.”
A cold feeling settled in my gut. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the authorization codes.” She pulled the second manifest closer and pointed at the signature line. “Every shipment that’s gone missing was routed through your codes, Dominic. Your authorization. Your name on the paperwork.”
“He’s not just stealing from you,” Liana said. “He’s moving the cargo under your flag. So when something goes wrong - and something will go wrong, because that’s the point - it doesn’t land on Grassi. It lands on you.”
“Son of a bitch,” Stefan breathed.
“He’s building a paper trail.” Liana’s voice was calm.
“Months of it, probably. Every shipment that goes missing, every cargo that vanishes, it all traces back to Costa routes and Costa codes and Costa authorization. And when he’s ready, when he’s got enough evidence stacked up, he takes it to the other families. ”
“And tells them I’ve been running dirty operations behind their backs.” I finished the thought, seeing it now.
“He tells them you’ve been stealing from them. Skimming off the top. Running side operations under their noses.” Liana sat back in her chair. “And he’s got the paperwork to prove it.”
“The other families would have to respond.” Stefan’s voice was hollow. “They couldn’t let something like that stand. Not without losing face.”
“They’d have to move against you.” Liana met my eyes. “All of them. Together. And Grassi would be right there, ready to pick up the pieces.”
The silence stretched out between us.
I looked at my wife, at this woman who had walked into my house ten years ago as a debt her father couldn’t pay. She had been twenty-one and terrified and too proud to show it, standing in front of me with her chin up and her eyes blazing.
She had been the most interesting thing that ever walked through my door. And she had turned out to be the sharpest mind in any room she entered, seeing patterns that everyone else missed, unpicking in a single morning the trap that had been closing around me for months.
“How long have you had this?” I asked.
“Since this morning.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You’d have had it too, if you were ever home for breakfast.”
She said it light. Casual. The corner of her mouth tilted up like she was making a joke, giving me an out, letting me laugh it off.
I didn’t laugh.
“Liana-” I started.
My phone buzzed on the desk. I looked at it automatically, a reflex, and I saw Grassi’s name on the screen.
Lovely wife you have. Be a shame if something happened to her.
Every thought in my head went white.
Touch the Don’s wife, and you die. That was the rule. That was the thing everyone understood, the line no one crossed, the one piece of my life that was not negotiable.
And Grassi had just put her name in his mouth.
“Dominic.” Liana’s voice came from far away. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I looked up at her. At the woman who had solved my problems and saved my empire and was still sitting there in my shirt with shadows under her eyes because I had left her alone on our anniversary.
The guilt didn’t matter now. The broken promise didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the threat on my screen and the woman in front of me and the cold, certain knowledge of what I was going to do to Andrew Grassi when I got my hands on him.
“Stefan,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like my voice. “Get the men together. We’re done waiting.”
“Dominic-”
“He threatened her.” I held up the phone, and I watched Stefan’s face change as he read the words. “He put her name in his mouth. So now we’re done waiting, and we’re done playing, and we’re going to show him what happens when someone forgets the rules.”
Liana was on her feet now, her hand on my arm. “What did he say? Dominic, talk to me. What did he say?”
I looked at her, and I wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her everything was going to be fine.
But I couldn’t.
“Stay here,” I told her. “Don’t go anywhere without security.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good.” I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her forehead. “Be scared. Be careful. And let me handle this.”
I grabbed my jacket and my phone and headed for the door, Stefan already falling into step behind me.
The last thing I saw before the door closed was Liana standing in my study with her arms wrapped around herself, watching me leave.