The kitchen goes very still.
Serafina reads my face. Her eyes sharpen immediately — the surgeon clocking a change in vitals.
"City Hall," I repeat.
"Richard Hale," Niko says. "He's been running this from within the city government for decades — and he's had Falco at the NYPD bury every thread that came close. Between the two of them, they owned this city's underworld without ever getting their hands dirty." A pause. "We've got them both."
I look at Serafina.
She looks back at me.
"Send me everything," I say. "Tonight."
15
SERAFINA
Niko sets up in the study at 2 a.m., looking like a man who hasn't slept in two days and considers that a personal best.
Laptop. Two external drives. A printed ledger covered in color-coded highlights. An energy drink he treats like a sacrament.
He pulls out a chair for me without being asked. Luca takes the one across the desk — jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms I refuse to look at too long. The muscle in his jaw ticks the way it does when he's processing bad news.
Except he isn't processing. He already knows.
I clock it the second Niko starts talking — the way Luca's eyes track the screens without surprise, the way he doesn't lean forward when the names come up. He's not discovering anything in this room.
He's watching me discover it.
There's a difference. It sits in my chest like a stone.
I pull the ledger toward me. "Walk me through it."
Niko glances at Luca. Luca gives him nothing. Niko looks back at me.
"From the top," he says. "Forty years ago."
It takes two hours.
Niko is meticulous — the kind that comes from knowing whoever he's briefing will ask the questions he hasn't answered yet, so he answers them first. He fills in what I didn't fully absorb the first time. The scale. The architecture. The sheer patience of men who built a war the way you build a corporation.
Quarterly. Methodical. With an eye on returns.
A Moretti soldier killed in a way that mimicked a Virelli signature. A Virelli lieutenant taken out in a pattern that pointed back to the Morettis. Back and forth for four decades, each manufactured betrayal feeding the next round of real retaliation.
A war built from kindling. Someone else struck the match.
"Hale," I say. "Walk me through his exposure."
"Everything." Niko pulls up a second screen. "He used a nonprofit structure — urban redevelopment, public safety initiatives — to route the payments. That gave him leverage over police commissioners, DAs, two federal judges. The families kept fighting." He pauses. "The investigations kept stalling."
"Because of Falco," Luca says. Still even. Already knowing.
Niko nods. "Falco buried every thread that came close. A witness, a warrant, a wiretap — he was positioned to redirect all of it. He didn't just protect Hale. He was the reason forty yearsof this never surfaced until Tessaro found it." He looks at me. "A man like that doesn't retire. He just stops wearing the badge."
"They owned this city's underworld without ever getting their hands dirty."
"Between the two of them? Yes." Niko exhales. "Now we've got them both."
