Page 11 of The Devils in the Details

Good man.

“Thirty million,” he said. Flat. The word sat in the air between us like something that weighed more than it should.

“Give or take. Mostly take.” I leaned back. The chair creaked. Geno’s chair. His ghost in the leather, his ghost in the air, his ghost in every ledger I’d spent the last twelve hours reading. “Kid looked pleased with himself. Like he’d found my wallet on the street and decided to return it with interest.”

Leon was quiet. I let the silence stretch. He was good at silences. Better than I was, which was saying something.

I watched him. He watched the desk.

“What do you think?” I asked. The question was direct. I didn’t do indirect. Waste of breath, waste of time, and time was the one thing this family couldn’t afford to lose anymore.

Leon considered it. He always considered. Even questions he already had answers for, he considered, which was why he was standing in this room and not buried somewhere on the mountain.

“Useful,” he said. The word came out careful, like he was testing its weight. “Unpredictable. Talks too much.”

“He’s a liability until proven otherwise.”

Leon nodded. “Too comfortable for a man sitting in a room full of people who could make him disappear before lunch.”

I’d noticed that too. The comfort. The way Zephyr had smiled at me like I was an interesting puzzle and not the man who’d buried three guards before breakfast.

“Agreed on all counts,” I said.

Leon waited. He knew there was more.

There was always more.

“Dock crew arrives tomorrow.” I reached for my coffee. Cold. I drank it anyway. “They need assignments before they walk through the gate. I want them integrated fast. No separate rotations, no special treatment. They’re Romano men now. They just don’t know it yet.”

Leon made a note. His handwriting was small and tight, the kind that didn’t waste space.

“Three staff names.” I pushed a folded slip of paper across the desk. “Watch them. Not obviously. The head groundskeeper, one of the kitchen women and the driver who takes Theo into the city twice a week.”

He took the paper. Didn’t look at it. Slid it into his pocket.

“Two positions need filling. Head of security for the estate and someone to handle the wine import business.” I paused. “Neither one goes to anyone who’s spent the last decade eating out of Alexios’s hand.”

Leon’s expression didn’t change, but I saw the calculation happening behind his eyes. Rewriting the organization chart in real time, slotting names into boxes, crossing out the ones that didn’t belong. That’s why I kept him. That quiet, ruthless efficiency.

“There’s more,” I said.

He looked up.

“Security firm. A legitimate private company on paper. Licensed carriers, documented training records, clean payroll. Tax write-off. Government loves organized crime that pays taxes more than organized crime that doesn’t.”

The silence that followed was different.

His head tilted slightly. The pen in his hand went still. Then he nodded. Once. “It’s a good idea.”

Of course it’s a good idea. The kid thought of it in the five minutes he sat in that chair, which is either impressive or embarrassing depending on how long I’ve been running this family without thinking of it myself.

“Look into licensing requirements. Find out which of our people can qualify. Find out which ones have records that make that conversation complicated.” I set my coffee down. “I want names by Friday.”

Leon wrote it down. No commentary. No drama. No questions about whether this was a pivot or a whim or the beginning of something larger. He just wrote it down in that tight, controlled hand and slid the notebook back into his jacket pocket.

This is why I kept him. This exact thing. The absence of noise.

I stood. My back protested—three hours in Geno’s chair had done nothing for the knots between my shoulder blades. The study felt smaller than it had when I walked in. The walls felt closer. The ghost of Geno’s cologne was still there, clinging to the curtains, the desk, the air itself.