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CHAPTER1
Jon
Fucking hell. This wasn’t good.
I’d only been in the vault for a few minutes, but I knew enough to know that the contents had been trifled with. There were things missing and a lot of them.
I passed my hand over my face and sighed. It had only been six months since Cyrus Holt had placed me in charge of the Montagna family. He’d warned me that there would probably be quite a bit of heat and tension from the underboss Ronaldo and those loyal to him, and he’d been right. Sure, I’d been able to acquire several lucrative deals since then and things were calmer than they used to be, but they were nowhere near settled. If I could prove myself as a better head of the family than Mike or Anthony, that would ease the stormy waters for good.
And this… this would definitely throw things into a tailspin.
This was shit rotten luck.
For a long time, I’d served the Montagna family as their consigliere. Typically, that meant that I wasn’t part of the family’s hierarchy, but I was their key advisor. I was impartial, assisting the boss and the family when they needed advice. The family had voted me into position back during Mike’s reign and I’d served him for years, at least until he was killed, and his son Anthony took over. Anthony’s time had been even shorter, mostly because he was young, foolish, and had been too focused on getting revenge on a girl who’d rejected him in high school. He’d pissed off the wrong people in the process and he’d paid for it with his life.
I’d always been known for being competent, trustworthy, and rational when it came to family matters. I did what needed to be done for the good of the Montagnas, even if it meant putting a bullet in between the eyes of our enemies. I’d done that several times in the past and since I’d taken over.
Things were just beginning to level out for me. In the time since I’d taken the position of kingpin of the Montagna mafia family, I’d acquired several lucrative weapons contracts with tenuous alliances that I’d been trying to secure for years, some of them in Russia, some in Ukraine, and others in Belarus. My foot soldiers had set up several business fronts in the city, including our own counterfeit printing press safely below the ground floor of one of the biggest banks in the state. I’d paid people off, blackmailed several political players, and strengthened the position of the family at least tenfold since Anthony’s demise.
It was all going perfectly fine until this very moment.
Fuck.
The Montagna family had set up a safehouse to the north of the city several years back. The home had fallen into foreclosure and Mike had purchased it on a whim, remodeling and building an enormous vault to keep the family’s assets safe and it had been robbed under my watch.
It was a subtle job and I had to admit, quite elegantly done. The metal shelves were wiped clean of prints. Whoever had done it had moved in and taken only a small piece of the stash, almost as if he wanted to get in and out without being noticed at all.
I had noticed though. I hadn’t gotten this far in this world without having impeccable attention to detail.
There were several very expensive pieces of jewelry missing, as well as a million or two in hundred-dollar bills that were no longer accounted for. I did a quick inventory, swearing out loud when I discovered that the burglar had swindled all of the uncut diamonds and raw gemstones in our stash, amounting to somewhere around fifty million dollars in value.
Once the news of such an incredible loss passed on to the rest of the family, they would begin to question my position as boss. I would lose their respect and with that, I would no longer hold the power I once did.
Fuck me sideways.
I grabbed a sheet of paper and made a detailed inventory of what was missing before I moved back into the office and sat down at my desk. With a heavy sigh, I started my reconnaissance all on my own. My underboss Ronaldo had gone to bed, exhausted from the events of the day. We’d been caught in a shoot-out in an abandoned factory building when an ill-organized gang decided to try to claim a piece of territory that wasn’t theirs to take. They’d been dealt with, but the aftermath had been especially bloody. He’d drunk a whole liter of grocery store coffee on the ride here. Honestly, I didn’t know how he was sleeping right now with that much caffeine in his system, but more power to him.
I preferred sipping on a finger of bourbon at almost four-thirty in the morning. The fire burning down my throat kept me awake. I looked forlornly at the soft couch on the opposite wall. Sleep would have to wait.
I had a thief to catch.
I clicked open my surveillance software, searching the past footage for a hint of any trespassers. For a while, it all was quiet. Much of the captured video was triggered by a bird flying in front of a camera or the fluttering wings of a butterfly, but then I zeroed in on an unfamiliar movement in the shadows. I toggled on the heat sensor, and a small human form came into view.
I narrowed my eyes, studying the capture. It was too small to be a man, so it had to be a woman or maybe a teenager. The longer I watched though, the more certain I became that the robber was female. She moved along with the expertise of someone who knew the area, which immediately made me suspicious because there weren’t any other houses for quite a distance. She stilled almost as though she knew she was being watched and I zoomed in on her.
She kept her head down as she crept toward the camera, and I shook my head with disbelief as she dug into the mud with her hands and smeared it all over the lens.
She was good, really good.
I traced her movements along the perimeter, noting her direction before I lost her. I logged the time of the footage, and I realized that she and I had probably been in the house at the same time. She’d probably been upstairs in the vault the moment that I’d walked through the front door, which was more than a little nauseating.
She was skilled enough to avoid most of my cameras and even though I combed the footage for hours, I couldn’t find her point of entry or exit, which spoke to her adept ability. There was no way she’d decided to rob me on a whim. She’d been prepared for this.
Only once did I catch enough of the side of her face to make out her dark brown hair and light eyes. I paused the video and pushed it through several algorithms to improve the image as much as I could. I had enough to run it through facial recognition software, but only just barely. It would really be pushing the abilities of my system.
To be honest, I’d be surprised if it actually came back with a match.
I went back to the inventory list and sent out several alerts to pawn shops or secondhand stores that carried enough cash to cover the value of what she had stolen. I put out calls to several of my friends to be on the lookout for the pieces of jewelry that had been taken, knowing that many of them were one-of-a-kind pieces. That meant they’d be traceable if they happened to surface again.
I’d find her. Then I would make an example of her. She’d rue the day she decided to steal from the Montagna family. I’d make sure of it.
I swallowed down the rest of my bourbon, savoring the fierce burn as it cascaded down my throat. My entire body warmed, and I closed my eyes for a second before pushing up out of my chair and collapsing on the couch.
I’d pick up the search after I slept.
