Antonio’s face is going the color of a brick. His eyes are bulging. He’s trying to speak around my hand, but there’s not enough room in his throat to do it.
I lean in.
“You sent men to her apartment.”
His head jerks. A no.
“Don’t.”
His hand stops clawing at my arm and finds the front of my shirt instead. It fists there. As if the gesture, the clutching, will count for anything. As if we’re still in a negotiation.
This not a fucking negotiation.
“You touched what’s mine.”
The fist on my shirt goes weaker. The eyes are glazing.
I keep going.
I’ve killed men with my hands twice in my life before tonight. The first was when I was nineteen. It was an accident. Vincenzo cleaned it up before I’d stopped puking. The second was for the famiglia. It felt like nothing. This is neither. This is a long, sustained pressure, an arm that does not give, a man’s pulse going from a hammer to a flutter to a stop under my palm.
I let go.
He drops.
He lands sideways on the rug with his cheek against the wood floor, one arm under him, his mouth half-open. His chest doesn’t move.
The phone is still on. Nico’s yelling out of it.
I crouch, pick it up. Stare at the screen for a long, even beat—the photo Nico has set for himself in Antonio’s contacts is from years ago, before the drinking got worse, when his hair was darker. He’s laughing at something off-camera.
I end the call.
Behind me, Lorenzo whistles low through his teeth.
“Antonio Martinez. The Butcher of Brooklyn.” He looks down at the body. “Died like a pig.”
He scratches his jaw.
“Although. Hold on. Washethe Butcher, or was that someone else? You got like four guys with a meat-related name so far. I’m not great with the New York guys yet.”
I straighten up.
I look around the study. The framed certificate is on the floor. The glass is in pieces near the leg of the chair. Antonio’s body is on the rug in roughly the position of a man who has fallen asleep in front of a television. Nothing in the room screams a struggle—it suggests, instead, a man who collapsed.
That’s good. That’s usable.
“What about Nico?” Lorenzo is still by the door. “He heard most of that.”
“I’ll handle Nico.”
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow.”
I step over the body and walk down the hall.
Antonio’s bodyguards straighten when they see us. The closer one starts to ask about Mr. Martinez.
