Someone used your name tonight. Not our people. A warning to a girl.
The scotch tastes like flame and regret. I don’t remember bringing it to my mouth.
I pull up the journalist’s file on the secure screen anyway. She’s younger than I expected, in pictures. Not soft. Not hard, either. That dangerous middle where men like me cut ourselves if we aren’t careful.
Isabella DeLaurentis. Brown hair, eyes like the parts of the ocean sailors pretend aren’t deep. A mouth made for the truth and for trouble. Do-gooder bones wrapped in a city girl’s armor. She stands in photographs, as if she refuses to be small for men who teach the world to love them or fear them. I feel an old, unwelcome sensation—curiosity.
Someone used my name.
Using my name is a promise. It means safety. It means blood. It means if you speak it without my permission, I will remove yours.
I text Alessandro:
Find who whispered. Quietly. If they’re ours, I want their teeth on my desk. If they’re not, I want their boss.
And the girl? He asks.
I stare at her photo a heartbeat longer than I should.
The girl belongs to no one, I type. Then, after a breath: Keep eyes on her door. Nothing touches her until I say so.
There it is—the line I draw and will be punished for drawing.
I turn out the lights and the city comes closer. Down the hall, my daughter breathes like a metronome ticking me back from the edge. In the glass, a man looks back, wearing the life he chose —the one that took what he loved and left him with a crown he refuses to drop.
Tomorrow, I will go back to counting and carrying. Tomorrow, I will find the mouth that spoke my name where it didn’t belong.
And if Isabella DeLaurentis keeps reaching for the truth the city won’t let her have, I will put my hands around fate’s throat and force it to choose who it serves—her, or me.
Maybe both.
Chapter 2
Power has a sound.
For the mayor, it's the murmur of donors behind closed doors. For the Morettis, it's silence—the kind that makes men look over their shoulders.
For me, it's the click of my keyboard at two in the morning, each word a match struck in the dark.
The newsroom is almost empty. The hum of fluorescent lights and the distant clack of someone finishing with the copy machine are the only proof that the world's still turning. The city outside glows like a cigarette—bright at the edges, toxic at the center.
I lean over my desk, half-drunk on caffeine and adrenaline, eyes burning as I trace the web on my screen again.
Money. It always tells the story people try hardest to bury.
One shell company after another, each a ghost that leads to another ghost—construction, consulting, "community initiatives"—until the trail lands on one name that doesn't belong in city politics.
Moretti Holdings.
Every journalist in New York knows the name, and none of them touch it. Because the Morettis aren't just powerful—they are the shadow everyone pretends not to see.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, staring at the spreadsheet until the lines blur. The mayor's office has been laundering money for years, funneling public contracts into private hands, but this—this is the first time the trail crosses into organized crime.
And I've got the receipts.
The only problem is, having proof and publishing it are two very different things.
The elevator dings down the hall, pulling me out of my thoughts. Footsteps—steady, confident, familiar. I don't even look up when my brother walks in.
