He’s choking, trying to bring his pistol up, but his body won’t listen. I close the distance and grab his wrist, bringing his arm down just as the gun fires into the concrete by my boot. I twist his wrist until I feel the bone break. The gun falls.
He plunges a knee into my hip. Not hard enough.
I have to make this fast.
I have my left forearm across his throat now. My right hand has found the inside of his coat and is searching through it—for the second gun, for the knife, for anything sharp. He’s got a knife. I pull it from the inside pocket and throw it behind me into the dark.
He’s gasping. There’s blood coating his teeth.
“It’s over,” I growl.
But Nico just laughs.
“Over.” His eyes are wild. He hisses it through the blood. “Nothing’s over. You think killing me ends this? You think youwin?”
“Yes.”
I let him hear it.
“I think Iwin, Nico. Thirty seconds from now I take this knee off your chest, put one in your forehead, and drive back to Newark. By sunrise I’m in your father’s chair. By Friday the families have lined up to kiss the ring. And you? You spend forever in the ground next to your father. The only difference is he gets visitors.”
I lean closer.
“I think the whole fucking thing is mine. Yes.”
Nico glares at me.
The wildness drops out of his face for a second. “There it is.” He spits. “There you fucking are. I knew it. I always knew it. The whole goddamn family thought you were the quiet one, the lawyer with the brains and the manners who was just so happy to be useful. My fatherbelievedit. My father went to his grave believing it.” He coughs up blood. “But you’re just another petty son of a bitch who wants the throne. Same as the rest of us. You just wear the suit better.”
A fire burns in my chest. I try not to let it show. It’s a losing battle.
“I wear the suit better because the suit was made for me,” I bite back. “And yes. I want the throne. I’ve wanted it since the second I walked into your father’s house, Nico. Since I knew what it was to be inside this world instead of outside it.” I shift my weight. “What did you think? That I was going to be the scrappy little street kid forever? The grateful charity case who washes the car and runs the errands and is happy to be useful?”
I lean in.
“I’mfucking ambitious, Nico. I wanted the whole fucking family to serve me. From the night I came in off the street, I wanted it. And the difference between you and me is that you wereborninto it, and you couldn’t even hold on to it, and Icame in cold and your father chose me anyway. What a fucking tragedy.”
“Fuck you.”
His hand scrabbles for nothing in particular. “I won’t go quietly. I won’t make killing me as easy as it was for you to kill my father.”
I freeze.
For a second the warehouse falls out of my head entirely. The gunfire, the dust, Lorenzo somewhere south of me—gone.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb.” His voice climbs. “I know it was you. The casino. You shot him in his chair like a dog while he played cards.”
“I didn’t kill Vincenzo.”
“Bullshit.”
“Ididn’t.” My grip tightens at his collar. “I thoughtyoudid.”
Silence.
The shooting outside our small piece of the floor goes on without us—that’s still happening, somewhere—but inside the six-foot circle of me and him on the concrete, the air goes quiet.
