Leon glares at me. “It’s bad enough that my mother thinks so. But you? You think I couldn’t win a war?”
“You won’t win a damn thing if you’re dead before it starts,” I snapped right back.
Leon throws his hands in the air. “Fine, so what, we lure him here and justtalkto him?”
“No,” Ida interrupts once more. “There’s no way he’d be civil with our family. We’d have to force his hand somehow.”
“He’s not going to agree to an alliance,” I tell her.
Ida shakes her head in agreement. “We might have had hope with Giuliano’s son, but the Vitale family have had a vendetta against ours for half a century.”
A cool shiver runs down my spine. I don’t need reminding about our history. The cruelty of the Vitales has been keeping me awake at night since I was a child.
“So our only choice is to dismantle them,” Leon decides firmly.
Finally, Ida seems to agree with him. “It is possible, with preparations and an upper hand. If we lure Teo here, there’s only one thing we can hope to get out of him.”
“... more time,” I finished for her.
7
TEO
“Gym,Starbucks,Fifth Avenue for no less than three hours, Prince’s Hand Harlem until the earlier hours. Back to her apartment, then to the gym again in the morning,” Martino reported.
As was Isabella Natali’s daily routine. It hadn’t varied an inch in the last week, with the exception of a trip to the salon and a dinner reservation with the wife of the previous governor of New York.
Nothing to incriminate her beyond her ties to the mafia, and certainly nothing that had so far led them to Ida Natali.
I run my hands through my hair. “What about Leon?”
Martino grimaces. “Still out of town. We have someone stationed at JFK if he flies back in.”
That had been another monkey wrench in the works. Leon had just gotten up and left New York without warning, getting on a plane to Mississippi, of all places, but who knew if it was his destination or just a stop along the way.
I hit the escape key on my laptop a few more times than necessary.
That was the other thing. Something, orsomeone, was cutting me off at every turn. Usually, I’d have no problem unearthing Leon’s travel plans. Hacking and slashing had been my primary role as Rocco’s second.
But now…
I slam my laptop shut in frustration, refusing to believe that I’m getting rusty.
“There’s someone updating the Natali firewall on a nearly hourly basis,” I groan as I sit back in my office chair. “Every time I make any headway, I’m kicked out again.”
“Sounds like they know who they’re up against,” Dante comments mildly.
He’s sprawled on the couch in the corner of my office, chucking a baseball up in the air and catching it repeatedly.
It still feels strange to refer to this room as my office. Nestled within the very center of the Guild’s compound, the monochrome of cement and glass gave the space an almost futuristic look.
Before Rocco had become don, the only time I’d been invited inside was when we were teenagers, and I’d received punishment for petty misdemeanors I had done to share camaraderie with my friend.
When Rocco was don, my usual position was on the couch where Dante now sits. It's symbolic, perhaps, but I’ve yet to name a second, and having already pissed off Marco, Dante would be the obvious choice.
But such formalities can wait until I can get through a single day without wanting to hurl my computer at a wall.
“How do we bypass it?” Martino asks.
