Cassio sees it. He sees the sheer terror in my eyes morph into staggering relief, and a complicated emotion flares in his gaze.
"The Bratva hit a warehouse on the south end," he tells me quietly, his thumb stroking the back of my hand. "They tried to take the shipping manifest for next week's cargo. We caught them inside."
"You killed them," I whisper, stating the obvious. The blood on his shirt didn't come from a polite conversation.
"Every last one of them," he confirms, his tone is utterly devoid of remorse.
He releases my hand and steps closer. He is careful not to press the bloody side of his chest against me, but he reaches up with his clean hand and cups my cheek. His palm is warm.
"I told you it wasn't a game," Cassio murmurs, his dark eyes searching mine. "The war is here. And you are staying exactly where I put you."
He drops his hand and walks past me, heading straight for the penthouse.
I stand in the hallway for a long moment, listening to the heavy, receding thud of his boots.
13
Cassio
I stand in the doorway of the master bathroom, a towel slung low around my waist, water dripping from my dark hair down my chest. I stare across the massive, sunlit expanse of my penthouse bedroom.
Noemi is still asleep in my bed.
She is tangled in the dark charcoal sheets, her dark hair is a wild, beautiful mess across the pillows. The oversized black dress shirt she wore yesterday has ridden up, exposing the long, pale curve of her thigh. She looks exhausted, this must be due to the emotional whiplash I’ve put her through over the last forty-eight hours.
I walk quietly over to the bed, and I reach out, my knuckles lightly grazing the warm, soft skin of her exposed thigh before I gently pull the heavy sheet down to cover her.
She sighs in her sleep, turning onto her side, completely oblivious to the fact that she has entirely rewired the violent, volatile machinery of my brain.
I leave her to sleep. She needs it, and I need to go to war.
I dress quickly in the sprawling walk-in closet, a charcoal three-piece suit, a crisp black shirt, no tie. I strap my shoulder holster into place, the customized 1911 against my ribs, and grab a spare magazine.
When I walk downstairs into the main foyer, I see the men checking weapons, radios crackling, and Matteo standing by the front doors, a tablet in his hands, his face set in grim, unyielding lines.
"Update," I bark, buttoning my suit jacket as I cross the marble floor.
"The cleanup crew finished at the warehouse an hour ago," Matteo replies, falling into step beside me as we head out the front doors into the brisk, gray morning. "Three Bratva dead. One Irish rat we caught trying to flank the loading bays. We lost two men, Boss. Pauli and Silvio."
My jaw clenches. Two men whose widows I now have to pay off.
"And the shipment?" I ask, sliding into the back of the idling Maybach.
"Secure. The guns are being moved to the secondary safehouse in the meatpacking district," Matteo says, climbing into the front passenger seat. Dante puts the car in drive, and we roll smoothly toward the heavy iron gates. "But Orlando Genovese is blowing up my phone. He heard about the hit. He’s demanding a sit-down immediately."
"Of course he is," I sneer, pouring myself a finger of bourbon from the console to chase away the lingering chill of the morning. "Where?"
"Neutral ground. The old shipping foreman’s office overlooking Pier 3. He’s already there with a dozen of his men."
"Let the old man wait," I murmur, downing the whiskey.
The drive to the docks is tense. The city outside my tinted windows looks normal, civilians rushing to work, oblivious to the fact that the streets they walk on are currently a goddamn chessboard covered in blood.
The Port of San Marco is a sprawling, industrial monstrosity of rusted cranes, massive cargo containers, and dark, churning water. It is the lifeblood of our syndicate, and right now, it is the most dangerous piece of real estate on the eastern seaboard.
Dante parks the Maybach behind a line of black SUVs. I step out into the freezing, salty wind blowing off the water. Orlando’smen are everywhere, their hands resting lazily on their weapons, but they straighten up the second they see me. They know what happened last night. They know the Vellutini family shed blood while the Genovese slept.
I bypass the guards without a single word, Matteo and four of my top soldiers flank me as I climb the rusted metal stairs to the foreman’s office.