1
Cassio
The smell of a man who knows he’s about to die is a pathetic mixture of cheap sweat and emptied bowels. It’s a stench that lingers at the back of my throat, far more powerful than the salt and decaying kelp wafting off the Port of San Marco tonight.
"Please," the man chokes out, spitting a mouthful of blood and broken teeth onto the wet concrete of the warehouse floor. "I didn’t know it was your turf. I swear to Christ, I didn't fucking know."
I stare down at him, the silence of the cavernous building is broken only by the drumming of rain against the corrugated tin roof and the ragged, wet sound of his breathing. My midnight blue, three-piece, ruined bespoke Tom Ford suit is damp withthe freezing coastal drizzle, and the steel of the customized 1911 in my right hand feels like an extension of my own arm.
"You didn't know," I repeated in a low, flat, deadpan that echoes in the cold air. I tilt my head, looking at the dozen crates of smuggled automatic weapons stacked behind him. "You thought this warehouse, sitting directly on the south end of the San Marco docks, on territory the Vellutini family has bled over for three fucking generations was just a free-for-all? A public charity for you and your Irish rat friends?"
"I was just following orders!" he screams, his eyes darting frantically to the shadows where my men are dragging the corpses of his six buddies into a neat, bloody pile.
"Whose orders, Liam?" I ask softly, stepping closer. The heel of my Italian leather Oxford clicks against the concrete.
He swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "O'Connor. He said... he said the Italians were distracted. That you were too busy ripping each other's throats out to notice a few crates slipping through."
I feel a muscle twitch in my jaw.Distracted.That is the word the city is using for us now?
I crouch down so I’m eye-level with the pathetic piece of shit. He flinches, cowering from me. They always do. I’m twenty-eight years old, the youngest Don in the history of the Cosa Nostra on this coast, and to half the old-school bastards in the Commission, I’m just a volatile kid playing dress-up in his deadfather’s clothes. They think I’m too young, too reckless. They mistake my lack of patience for a lack of discipline.
But I am not my father. My father was a diplomat who believed in handshakes and shared cigars. I believe in scorched earth.
"O'Connor is going to find pieces of you in his mailbox for the next month," I tell Liam in a conversational tone. "But I appreciate your honesty."
"Wait, you said—you said if I told you—"
I raise the 1911 and put a bullet directly through his right kneecap.
The gunshot is deafening in the enclosed space, followed instantly by a guttural, tearing shriek that bounces off the steel rafters. Liam collapses entirely, thrashing on the bloody concrete, clutching his ruined leg as dark crimson pools beneath him.
"I never said a fucking thing," I remind him coldly. I stand up, rolling my shoulders to ease the tension. I look over at my underboss, Matteo, who is leaning against a rusted forklift, casually smoking a cigarette as if he’s waiting for a bus.
"Burn the bodies," I order, my voice easily cutting through Liam's agonizing wails. "Take the weapons. And cut this one’s hands off before you put him out of his misery. Send them to the Irish."
Matteo flicks his cigarette into a puddle of water. "Loud and clear, Boss. You want me to call in the cleaners for the blood?"
"No. Leave the blood. Let whoever sneaks in here next see exactly what happens when they cross my borders."
I turn my back on the screaming man and walk out the rusted side door, stepping into the freezing downpour of the city night.
My driver, Dante, is waiting by the idling black Maybach. He immediately opens the rear door, holding a heavy black umbrella over my head. I slide into the plush, heated leather interior, the luxury of the cabin a jarring contrast to the slaughterhouse I just walked out of. Dante shuts the door, encasing me in silence, and slips into the driver's seat.
"The velvet room, Boss?" Dante asks, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
"Yeah. Drive."
I lean back, pouring myself three fingers of Macallan from the crystal decanter housed in the center console. I down half of it in one swallow, letting the burn of the whiskey chase away the lingering adrenaline.
I stare out the tinted window at the blurred neon lights of the city as we speed away from the docks. My stare at my reflection in the glass, dark hair plastered to my forehead, eyes black and hollow. The violence doesn't thrill me anymore. It’s just maintenance.Housekeeping.
O'Connor’s rat was right about one thing, and it’s the thing that’s currently gnawing a hole in my stomach.We are distracted.The Italians are bleeding themselves dry, and it’s all because of that arrogant, antiquated prick, Don Orlando Genovese.
For the last two years, the Vellutini and the Genovese families have been locked in a suffocating warm war. It isn't an all-out bloodbath in the streets, the Capo dei Capi, Don Salvatore, would never allow that kind of heat from the feds, but it’s a relentless, exhausting game of chess. Orlando hits one of my shipments, I burn down one of his illegal casinos. He bribes a judge in my pocket, I break the legs of his top earner.
It’s petty. It’s pathetic. And it’s going to get us all fucking killed.
Orlando is sixty-five years old, a relic of an era that no longer exists. He looks at me and sees a reckless boy who didn't earn his throne. He clashes with every modern method I introduce to the syndicate. I want to move our assets into cybersecurity, high-end real estate, and untouchable offshore crypto. Orlando still wants to break kneecaps over a few grands in a neighborhood protection racket. He’s a dinosaur, too blinded by his own pride to see the meteor hurling toward us.