“Then why?” I demand.
His gaze holds mine, completely serious. So unlike the Antonio I met at the gala.
“Because the reason we’ve been keeping an eye on Bellandi,” he says, carefully, “is that they’re not just some company trying to acquire Northstar. They’re a syndicate.”
He goes silent after that, as if that’s supposed to mean something to me.
I blink. “So what. We deal with a lot of syndicates.”
“Not this kind of syndicate you don’t,” he insists, and there’s an edge to it now. Like he’s trying to convey something to me that I’m just not getting.
My stomach twists. “Antonio, what are you talking about? You came all the way here to tell me this?”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s important.”
Something about the way he says it makes my skin go cold.
“You don’t mean a corporate syndicate, do you?” I ask quietly. “You mean… a criminal syndicate.”
“Yes,” he says, and he doesn’t blink.
The air in my apartment feels suddenly too thin.
“Like the mafia?” I ask, incredulous, because surely I misheard him. Surely he’s being dramatic. Surely this is another tactic.
He nods once. “Yes.”
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“What are you talking about?” I say, and my voice is higher than I want it to be. “How do you know that? Why would a criminal syndicate out of Chicago want Northstar?”
Antonio doesn’t even flinch at the questions. He looks like he’s been waiting for them.
“The same reason any other company would want it,” he says. “Easy expansion into new territory.”
My mind flashes back, unwillingly, to Chicago.
Emilio Bellandi’s smile—too sharp, too sure. A shark’s smile dressed up in a suit. The way he talked about “alignment” and “resources” and “scaling” as if it was just growth and not unadulterated appetite.
The doubts I expressed to my own colleagues after meeting him, without fully understanding them.
It’s not about hospitality management. It’s about access.
I stand up so fast, I get a head rush. I start pacing before I even know where I’m going—two steps to the window, back toward the kitchen, then back again while my brain screams.
Access. Client lists. Discreet control of who gets in and who stays out.
It had sounded like corporate ambition at the time, like strategy. Like strategy. I clocked it at the time without realizingwhat I was seeing.
Bellandi doesn’t want to expand its business. Bellandi wants to expand its criminal empire into the Northeast.
Using Northstar to do it.
My stomach rolls hard, but I force myself to keep breathing.
Antonio stays on the couch, watching me intently as I come to terms with what he said.
But how does Antonio and his family’s business play into it all? How do they even know all this?