Page 13 of The Kingpin’s Bride

I arranged the meeting through three separate cutouts and a burner that would be at the bottom of the river before sunrise. The message was clean. A Bratva intermediary with product and a proposal that could move serious weight through the docks the Vernizzi controlled. I used an old alias I had built years earlier, complete with a paper trail good enough to survive a surface check. Russian name. Russian history. Just enough arrogance to feel authentic.

They took the bait.

The location was an empty warehouse on the water that had once belonged to a shell company I dissolved six months earlier. No cameras. No nearby traffic. One way in. I arrived three hours early, killed the power to the block, and waited in the dark with a suppressed pistol and a second magazine.

They showed up together, the way arrogant men who believed in safety in numbers often did.

The eldest came first, heavy in a good coat, complaining about the cold. The middle brother followed, looking for an angle. The youngest came last, sharper than the other two, eyes moving across the shadows. None of them brought more than two men total.

I let them step fully inside.

Then I stepped out of the dark and shot the two bodyguards first. Center mass. Quiet. They dropped before either of them finished turning.

The warehouse went very still.

The three Vernizzi brothers stared at me. Recognition did not come. They were looking for a Russian.

“You’re not Bratva,” the youngest said.

“No.”

I shot the eldest through the throat. He went down making wet, useless sounds, hands clamped over the hole like he could hold the blood in. The middle one tried to run. I put two rounds in his back and one in the base of his skull when he hit the concrete. He stopped moving.

The youngest had a gun half drawn. I put a bullet through his hand. The weapon clattered away. He stumbled back against a rusted support beam, face white, eyes wide with the first real understanding of the night.

I walked closer, unhurried.

“You don’t have heirs,” I said. My voice sounded calm even to me. “Your father is old. Your line ends with the three of you. That makes this simple.”

He tried to speak. I shot him in the knee. He screamed and collapsed. The sound echoed off the high metal ceiling and faded.

I crouched in front of him while he clutched the ruined joint and stared up at me with pure animal fear.

“I’m going to take your seat,” I told him. “I’m going to fill it with a wife and children the rest of the families will have to respect. And none of you will be alive to object.”

He opened his mouth. Maybe to beg. Maybe to curse. I did not wait to find out. I stood, placed the barrel against his forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The warehouse fell quiet again except for the soft drip of blood and the distant sound of water against the docks.

I collected the spent casings. I checked each body for pulses that no longer existed. Then I walked out the same way I had come in, locked the door behind me, and drove toward the river to dispose of the gun and the clothes.

By the time the sun rose the Vernizzi sons were a problem that no longer existed.

I went home, showered until the water ran cold, and sat down in front of the wall of Morena’s photographs with a glass of whiskey and a steady heartbeat.

The seat was almost fucking open.

All I needed now was the girl who would make it permanent.

Chapter Three

Morena

The apartment was always too quiet when I came home.

I stood in the dark kitchen with the collar around my throat because taking it off felt like more effort than leaving it on. The lace outfit Dario made me wear was shoved into a plastic bag by the door. I would wash it in the sink tomorrow the way I always did. The same black lace. The same thin straps that dug into my shoulders. The same empty look in the mirror before every shift.

Twenty-one days. I had been eighteen for three weeks and already felt a hundred.