My desk is mahogany. Custom-built, imported from Italy. The chairs are leather, the carpet is Persian, the bar in the corner is stocked with liquor that costs more per bottle than Danny Russo was stealing per month.
I pour myself two fingers of Scotch and stand at the window, looking out at New York.
This city belongs to me in ways most people will never understand. Not all of it. Not yet. But enough that I matter. Enough that people know my name and fear it.
My phone buzzes. Marco.
“Yeah.”
“Boss, we got a problem with the shipment coming through Newark. Port authority is asking questions they shouldn’t be asking.”
“How much did we pay them last month?”
“Fifty thousand to the supervisor, another twenty spread among his crew.”
“Double it. And make it clear that questions are expensive. The more they ask, the more it costs us, and the more it costs us, the less friendly we become.”
“Got it. What if they don’t take the hint?”
“Then we find out who they love and make them understand that curiosity has consequences.”
“Understood.”
I hang up and take a sip of Scotch. It burns going down. An expensive burn, but a burn nonetheless.
The clock on my desk reads 2:47 a.m. I should go home. I should try to get at least a few hours of sleep before tomorrow starts. But sleep hasn’t been coming easy lately and I know tonight won’t be any different.
So I sit behind my desk and pull up the security reports I was supposed to review earlier. Patrol schedules. Inventory counts. Financial projections. The boring administrative work that keeps an empire running.
My private emergency line rings at 3:15.
I stare at it for three full rings before I pick up. Only five people have this number. My father. Viktor. Marco. My lawyer.
“Dante Moretti.”
There’s breathing on the other end. Scared. Desperate. Female.
Then a voice I haven’t heard in six years but would recognize anywhere.
“I need help. Please. Someone’s trying to kill me and I don’t know who else to call.”
Everything stops.
The city outside my window. The Scotch in my glass. My fucking heartbeat.
Scarlett.
Six years. Six years of searching. Six years of private investigators and bribes and calling in every favor I had trying to find this woman. Six years of wondering if she was dead or alive or just gone so completely I’d never see her again.
And now she’s on my phone.
“Scarlett.”
I hear her sharp intake of breath. She wasn’t expecting me to know her name. Wasn’t expecting me to recognize her voice instantly after all this time.
But how could I not? I’ve replayed that night in my head ten thousand times. Her voice, her face, the way she looked at me before she knew what I was.
“I have information,” she says, stronger now. Steadier. “About that night.”
