Nico walks in.
He’s flanked by his people. I count eight, possibly ten in the dark behind him. He’s armed and looks like a man who just got woken up for this.
He sees me.
Then stops.
I see his face do exactly what mine just did.
“D’Amico,” he growls. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I—” He works the next sentence out as he’s saying it. “Victor called me. Said he had information. Said you’d be?—”
“Victor told me to meet him here.”
“Him?”
I look at him. “He didn’t say a single word to me about you.”
Nico stops moving.
We stare at each other.
It lands at the same second for both of us. The whole shape of the night rearranges itself in my head.
Victor Moreno Jr. isn’t coming. He was never coming. The fucker is probably an hour north of us by now, on a phone, listening for the news.
I look across the warehouse at the supposed heir to the Conti family, the man who killed Vincenzo. The man whose head I’ve been planning to remove from his neck for seventy-two hours,and I see—clearly, and against everything—that he and I have been played by the same hand.
“That son of a bitch,” Nico hisses.
I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see this coming. But I can’t imagine Victor planned for this encounter to be this… quiet.
The night’s still young. As long as we don’t lose our heads?—
Shit. I can see the redness rising in Nico’s face.
“He played us both,” I offer.Don’t lose your cool, you goddamn moron.
Before I can say anything else, there’s the sound of running footsteps behind me. One of my men coming out of his position.
No. No. No.
I can see it happening in slow motion, but my mouth doesn’t move fast enough.
“Boss—” He calls out from a dark corner, clearly unaware of the fragility of this moment. The second he steps into view, Nico lifts a gun in his direction.
He doesn’t fire. He doesn’t have to. One of the young idiots beside him loses his cool. The crack of a single shot breaks through the stale air.
Then the warehouse erupts.
32
RAFFAELE
The acoustics of the room are wrong for a gunfight. Concrete ceiling. Concrete floor. Steel rafters. Every round, every casing on the floor, every shout—all of it gets amplified and bounced back at us from four different directions. Within three seconds, I can’t hear what anyone’s saying. Within five, I’m operating off muscle memory.
