I stare at him for a moment. He stares right back, not blinking and not flinching, just that open curiosity sitting behind a mountain of menace.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” I say flatly.
“I’m not joking,” Misha replies with another careless shrug. “If a man like Grant’s off-grid, hiding from the league, maybe he’s useful. Skillset. Contacts. Clean image. Could wear a suit, shake hands, funnel money.”
I step forward once, just enough that he has to push himself off the wall and straighten. My voice drops low.
“If I ever see his hands near Julian again, I’ll take every one of his fingers and make a fucking rosary out of them.”
Misha’s grin widens, but it quiets at the edges, the mockery fading into something more thoughtful. He studies me for a second, then nods once.
“Got it. Kill list.”
“Top of it.”
“Need backup?”
“Not yet. I want to find him first.”
He tilts his head slightly. “Where?”
“Where he thinks no one’s looking.” I glance back at the laptop. “His offshore transfers pinged Montreal. He’s not with the family, not with the league. He’s hiding like a rat.”
Misha cracks his knuckles like he enjoys the sound of that. “Want me to sniff the street?”
“Yes. Low-end clubs, anywhere the Vultures used to party after games. Find out who’s seen him, who’s protecting him, and whether he’s still fucking breathing.”
“Copy that,” Misha says, and the door is barely closed behind him before I hear his boots stomping down the catwalk, already dialing someone in Russian.
I turn back to the screen where Julian is still skating—still angry, still mine—and I stay there watching long after the play itself stops mattering.
I wait until he’s off the ice, until I see Kai pull him aside and check him over, until Finn and Luca peel away in opposite directions like badly behaved wolves finally called back to heel, their chaos scattering across the rink. Only when I’m sure Julian is upright, breathing, and not about to collapse do I reach for my phone and dial the number I hate the most.
Leonardo answers on the second ring, like he always does.
“We need to talk,” I say.
There’s a pause on the line, followed by the quiet clink of glass.
“Dinner’s ready,” he replies casually, like I’m not calling about blood.
I grab my keys.
The drive to Leonardo’s estate is short—too short, really—long enough for a cigarette but not nearly long enough for me to talk myself down from the kind of mood that ends with someone bleeding on expensive floors.
La Fiamma Nera owns a lot of things—rings, guns, shipping lines, silence—but the estate is something else entirely. Old money. Old violence. Roman statues stare down from corners and marble floors still seem to carry the ghost of the men who bled into them decades ago. I park in the back the way I always do, and when I step out of the car there are no guards waiting at the gate, no Damiano, no Viktor or Ezio or anyone else hovering nearby.
Just Leonardo.
Alone.
He meets me at the door with his arms open like a father welcoming home a prodigal son. That’s how he’s always been, pretending there’s blood between us just because I was born under the same black flag.You’re one of mine,he once told me.
I wanted to break his jaw for it.
Tonight, though, I let him kiss both my cheeks.
We sit in the back room—oak-paneled, low-lit, walls lined with books no one actually reads and wine bottles older than the war that built this family. Leonardo pours two glasses with the calm patience of a man who believes time bends around him, but I don’t touch mine.
