Tonight, I hold the woman I love.
My eyes shut. Sleep comes easy.
31
LORENZO
The warehouse smells like oil and rust. This place is familiar. Corrugated steel walls, gone soft with corrosion. Concrete floor stained dark from years of work that doesn’t leave receipts. A single bare bulb overhead throwing a cone of yellow light that doesn’t reach the corners. The Mississippi is near enough to taste on the air, mineral and heavy, seeping through the gaps where the walls meet the foundation.
I step inside. The river air follows me in. And even here, even now, I can still feel her. Where her body pressed against mine this morning.
Dante is already here. Sleeves rolled to his elbows, the tattoo over his heart visible beneath his open collar. He stands with his back to the door, facing the center of the room where two chairs have been bolted to the floor.
Flavio Benedetti sits in one. Stefano in the other.
Nico’s team picked Flavio up ten hours after the raid, trying to buy passage out of the city at a dock south of Algiers. He ran out of friends faster than he ran out of road. Flavio’s suit is torn at the shoulder where he caught a round during the raid. Dark with blood from a wound that won’t stop seeping. His hands arebound behind him with zip ties. His feet secured to the chair legs. He’s smaller than I expected. Just a body in a chair now. Sweating despite the cold. Running out of time and fully aware of it.
Stefano is worse. Swollen face, one eye sealed shut, breathing in shallow hitches through broken ribs. The man who ran the trafficking floor. Who kept girls in concrete rooms and processed them like inventory. He hasn’t spoken since we brought him in. He sits with the stillness of a man who’s already run the calculations.
Nico stands to my left. Arms crossed, the easy grin gone. What’s underneath looks watchful. Focused. Marco is against the far wall. Shoulders back, chin level, posture locked. The man standing here tonight isn’t the same restless kid who used to beg for assignments beyond perimeter duty.
Four of us. All of us. For the end of the Benedettis.
Romano was handled a few months ago. Dante said nothing about it then either. He didn’t need to.
I take my position against the wall to Dante’s right. Within arm’s reach. Far enough to make a clear statement. Isabella is at the compound, sleeping. Lucia’s rosary on the nightstand where she placed it.
I have someone to return to. That changes how I stand in a place like this.
The silence stretches. Ten seconds. Twenty. Flavio’s breath is the only sound, ragged and wet. Water drips somewhere behind me, slow, patient.
Flavio breaks first. Of course he does.
“Santoro.” His voice is thinner than it was in his own compound, the authority stripped clean out of it. “We can discuss this. I have information that benefits you. Names. Operations running through Baton Rouge, Houston. Supplychains your family could absorb overnight. I’m worth more to you alive.”
Dante doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just watches him the way a man watches a clock wind down.
Flavio swallows. Adjusts. Tries again. “The Abramov connection. Russian trafficking routes through the Gulf. I can give you contacts, bank accounts, shipping schedules. Everything.”
Nothing.
Flavio’s tongue darts across his lower lip. His fingers flex behind him, knuckles gone white against the zip ties. That instinct is firing now, frantic, hunting for the play that keeps him alive.
There is no play.
“Money,” he says. “1.2 billion in offshore accounts. Cayman, Cyprus. Untraceable. All of it, yours. Just let me?—”
“You poisoned Papa.” Dante’s voice is low. Level. A half-step above a whisper, so that Flavio has to strain forward against his bonds to hear it.
Flavio goes rigid.
“You let him die at his own dinner table.” Dante takes one step forward. “Surrounded by his children. While they watched.” Another step. “You almost killed me.”
“Your father held this city back for decades.” Flavio’s voice pitches upward. Cracking. “His rule. No trafficking. Money none of us could touch because Salvatore Santoro decided he was better than the rest of us.” His breath comes ragged. “I did what any businessman would do. I removed the obstacle.”
Dante stops. Close enough to touch.
“I can be useful to you,” Flavio begs. The desperation is naked now, his composure crumbling like the bandage darkening at his shoulder. “The other families. I know their vulnerabilities. I can?—”
