Page 305 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

“Sure, but I still have to make a show of it, too. Drive the point home.”

“We could help with that,” Giovanni offered, grinning, “if you would like us to.”

“How so?” John asked.

Before any of them could answer John’s question, the restaurant door blew open, and with it, bringing cold late-October wind. Siena didn’t recognize the disheveled looking man wearing a trench coat, and glaring, but the other men at the table seemed to. Their postures stiffened as the man came closer to their spot.

“Detective,” John greeted.

“I don’t know what you fucking did, but this isn’t over,” the man hissed.

“Now, Rosencauld—”

“Who did you pay, huh?” the detective spat out. “Who did you blackmail, or threaten? How did you do it?”

John only smiled up at the man from the side, and never once showed concern or irritation at the intrusion. “I didn’t need to do anything. The evidence was on our side.”

“Evidence like this?”

The man threw a tablet down on the table, and a video was already playing. On the screen, Siena saw a man she recognized—a Capo from the Calabrese family, although she had never had a real conversation with the man. The same Capo who had spoken against John outside of the hospital the day she pulled the plug on Darren’s life support.

He stumbled through his words on the video, tears filled his frightened eyes, though he sat straight and proud on a chair. Darkness rested behind him, and nothing else.

He admitted to the bombing, and to setting it up. He admitted to killing both Siena’s brothers, and to encouraging the feud between the families to worsen the peace in the city. He admitted where evidence could be found to connect him to everything he confessed. And then he killed himself with the gun sitting in his lap by swallowing a bullet.

Rosencauld pointed a shaking finger at John. “This isn’t over.”

John laughed. “Oh, it’s been over for a while, detective. Have a good day.”

The lesson was clear.

Don’t fuck with the Marcellos.

“Andino will be out soon,” John said after the man left. “Very soon.”

Siena carefully maneuvered between the men sitting around the table. It was not her first time being in this spectacularly large home—the Marcello mansion—but she bet it was probably the first time for a lot of the Calabrese made men.

The fact they couldn’t stop staring, wide-eyed and enraptured by the blatant show of wealth in status covering every inch, gave credence to their amazement. A few of the men had nodded to her in polite greeting as they were directed inside the home for the meeting, but more than a few wouldn’t even look her in the eye.

It was going to take time.

They would give respect.

That was just how Cosa Nostra, and made men worked. They did not have to like the situation they currently found themselves in, or even agree with the new boss in charge. They did, however, have to offer respect at every turn.

It was that, or their life.

For most, it was an easy choice.

“Thank you,” the last Capo at the table said when Siena set his glass of vodka down beside him.

“You’re welcome.”

She gave him a smile, but little else. She didn’t linger to chat, either, instead heading for the front of the dining room where John had asked her to sit once she was done. She hadn’t needed to be present for the meeting—probably shouldn’t have been, anyway—but he asked for her to be there.

Siena didn’t know how to refuse John.

Not really.