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I was suddenly struck by an odd feeling. But I was surrounded by enemies—and unarmed. I needed to focus. Willa was safe. She had Finn and five of my best foot soldiers watching over her.
“Fucking Luca Bianco,” Keegan seethed. He glared in the direction of a dark corner booth in the back of the restaurant.
His disgust for the recently promoted Mafia underboss stemmed from their run-ins when Luca had been a capo in his uncle’s regime and Keegan had been a foot soldier in my father’s.
“We’re not here for the Italians,” I reminded him. “Let’s get in and get out and call it a fucking day—aye?”
Liam knocked his shoulder into Keegan’s. “Listen to your fucking boss, pretty boy.”
Keegan shrugged him off but remained silent.
The same man who’d taken my phone paved a path that took the four of us past a stoic Luca Bianco, who was dining alone, and through a set of oak double doors. Rocco Bianco—don of the Bianco crime family—sat facing us at the head of a rectangular table. It had been a few years since I’d been in the same room as Bianco. He was of my father’s generation, but good genes and a love for boxing gave him the appearance of a man fifteen years younger.
“Benvenuto, gentlemen.” Bianco stood and held his hands out wide in front of him. “On behalf of la mia famiglia, please accept our condolences on the loss of your father, brother-in-law, and boss.”
Tension stretched across my shoulders at the mention of my father. I inclined my head toward Bianco in a fleeting display of acknowledgment.
Bianco didn’t comment on Raphael’s absence, and he wouldn’t. We’d come up with a plausible explanation and had ensured that the message had been spread wide: as his dying declaration, Lachlan Flynn had named his second son as the heir to the Flynn Syndicate.
The lie felt befitting.
After a round of terse nods and grunts of greeting, we took our places across the table from the Russians. Keegan remained on my left while Niall and Liam claimed the seats on my right. Kostya Molotov sat between two expressionless men I knew to be his chief counselor and accountant.
“We’ve agreed to host your parley,” Bianco pointed out as he strolled toward the exit. “But should anyone forget the rules of the armistice, my nephew will remind you. Luca always loves a good bloodbath.”
Keegan rolled his neck until it cracked.
I’d ask him for context later. Rarely was he this triggered.
Bianco left the room, and the next ninety minutes were spent listening to Molotov outline his son’s injuries in explicit detail. He then made a list of demands that he determined would right the wrongs done to the Bratva at Raphael’s behest. After listening to his tirade in apathetic silence, I accepted his terms with little negotiation. It seemed the discord between our organizations had been put to rest.
We all agreed to move on.
Then Molotov aired his final grievance. “There is one last issue—the wife of your brother. I am told it was she who killed Yury—not you, Diavol.”
Willa slit his throat, possibly saving my life and hers.
My instant fury was a riptide capable of swallowing the room whole. I rose from my seat with pained measure, pressed my knuckles into the table, and leaned forward until I could smell the vodka on Molotov’s breath. I stared into his empty fucking eyes with the force of a thousand bullets.
“She. Is. My wife.”
Chairs scraped against the floor on either side of me. Niall’s hand curled around my forearm. “Son ...”
If Kostya Molotov blinked the wrong way, Luca Bianco just might get his bloodbath after all.
“You will get your money,” I forced out through clenched teeth. “The Gaming Commission will approve your gambling licenses. Thirty percent of our cut from The Pru is yours. But if you ever fucking breathe my wife’s name, I will not rest until every bloody Bratva member in this city is dead by my hands. Am I crystal-fucking-clear?”
Molotov inhaled a rough breath, then nodded. “Da.”
The double doors pushed open. Three Russian heads swiveled at the same time, but my hard gaze remained fixated on the prick with a death wish. He’d awoken the hibernating monster inside me.
“Gentlemen,” Rocco Bianco’s Italian accent rang out, “you’ll have to pardon the interruption. Federal Agent Bianco here—”
“Rossi,” a familiar voice corrected.
“Ah—that’s right—you go by your mother’s maiden name now ...”
I pushed away from the table and straightened.
