Page 110 of Dante

“Someone set up the meeting in Long Island City,” I say, not bothering with any greeting.

“Someone who knew exactly when my wife would be there. Someone who knew Lorenzo wouldn’t be with her. Someone with inside information.”

Silvio takes a slow sip from my cup, his thin lips barely touching the porcelain. I watch the muscles in his throat work as he swallows.

“You have enemies,” he says evenly, setting the cup down with a soft clink against the saucer. “You’ve always had enemies. That’s the cost of the position.”

“The position,” I repeat, tasting the bitterness in the words. “You mean my position as don.”

His gaze sharpens like a blade being drawn, but he smiles faintly. “The one you inherited. The one you’re reshaping.”

I lean back in my chair, feeling the leather creak beneath me.

“The warehouse was leased through a shell company tied to a Brighton Beach syndicate. Russians. That isn’t random.”

Silvio’s voice drops. “No. It isn’t.”

I watch his face carefully, searching for any tell, any micro-expression that might betray him.

“You think I arranged an ambush on your wife?” Silvio asks. The corner of his mouth twitches upward, as if the accusation is somehow entertaining.

I lean forward. “I think,” I say, measuring each word like bullets being loaded into a chamber, “that only someone inside this family knew she would be there without Lorenzo. Vulnerable.”

Silvio sets the cup down.

“You’re too distracted by your new wife, Dante. It’s making you soft. And you’re shifting your focus from our core business to restaurants. And the other ‘we must go legitimate’ bullshit you mentioned at the museum exhibition opening.”

“This is the way of the future, like it or not.”

“Not everyone agrees, Dante. And that’s how your wife found herself in that situation. Men are already testing you.”

I rise and step around the desk. “If I find out someone inside this family endangered my wife,” I tell him, “I won’t negotiate.”

Silvio rises at last. “Then you’d better be certain before you strike,” he replies. “Because once you start cutting, you cannot sew the family back together.”

He buttons his coat. “Peace, Dante.”

I watch him leave.

Peace is what made men say when they’re preparing for war.

I review Thomas’s file on my screen. He came to me young. Clean. Ambitious. Turns out, too ambitious for his own good.

My fingers stab at my phone. Lorenzo answers immediately.

“You agree Thomas has been compromised?”

“No proof. But yes.”

“Handle it,” I say.

“And Silvio?” Lorenzo asks.

“Not yet. But soon.”

CHAPTER 43

DANTE