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6
Damian parkedthe car next to the curb and headed down the darkened street. It had been five days since Farrell Black’s visit and he’ d used every available minute since running background on the men who headed up the new Syndicate.
He’d gained precious few details for the hours he’d invested in the hunt. There was only one residence listed for Nico Vitale, and it was the corporate headquarters for MediaComm in New York. Vitale had founded the company, was still a majority shareholder, but his involvement in official business had tapered off years earlier when the war with Raneiro Donati began. Flight manifests had one of his private planes traveling frequently to Rome, which made sense given Farrell’s explanation of the Syndicate’s new leadership structure. Damian placed Vitale’s net worth well over a billion dollars, although even that was an estimate given the few details available about Nico’s finances.
He’d had similar results on the other men — Farrell, Christophe, and Luca. All had a corporation as a place of residence, although Christophe Marchand had an old family estate on the island of Corsica that dated back to his family’s French title. They were all worth at least as much money as Damian, and probably a lot more given the hidden nature of their assets. Damian had a couple good men on retainer for cyber activity, but even they hadn’t been able to glean much about the new Syndicate leadership.
In the end it hadn’t been the research he’d done on the Syndicate that had made up his mind — it had been his research on Primo Fiore and Malcolm Gatti.
He’d done background on Primo before as part of his research on competitors. Several small-time organizations had cropped up in the time since Vitale abandoned New York, but the Fiore organization was the only one that came close to being a true rival for the criminal enterprise in New York and its surrounding territory. Fiore had always walked a fine line between business and activities that Damian considered too unseemly, even for a criminal, but he’d been surprised to realize it had gotten significantly worse in the six months since he’d last done background on the Fiore operation.
By all accounts the ramp-up in activity Damian considered off limits was due to the increasing influence of Gatti, something Damian had been able to confirm by putting out feelers on the street.
And word was that Primo was only a figurehead for Malcolm Gatti.
Background on Gatti had been easier; whether due to ego or carelessness, he wasn’t a man concerned about hiding his tracks. He’d done two years for aggravated sexual assault eight years earlier plus a string of shorter stints for everything from petty theft to domestic abuse — and that didn’t include the times he’d been arrested only to have the charges mysteriously dropped before he could see the inside of a courtroom.
Damian wasn’t easily shaken, but he’d felt sick reading the report. Had felt sick that he’d looked the other way while Fiore had gotten more powerful as a front man for a monster like Gatti. Damian had been too focused on his own world, his own business. Too focused on making sure his own side of the street was clean — or as clean as it could be in their business.
Now he couldn’t help feeling responsible. With Gatti calling the shots, the Fiore organization had expanded their distribution of opioids to low-income areas of the city and had taken to charging “protection” fees even to nonprofits. Worst of all were indications that they’d established an expansive prostitution ring that bordered on sex trafficking.
They were things Damian couldn’t let stand. He preferred to keep to himself, but he wasn’t oblivious to his responsibility as the city’s largest criminal shareholder.
He came to a brick building with a narrow stairway and descended to a wood door on the basement level. When he opened the door, he was hit with the smell of simmering tomatoes and garlic, the faint scent of rising yeast and red wine.
“Mr. Cavallo!” A portly, bald man with a wide smile tugged on his navy jacket as he hurried toward Damian. “So nice to see you!”
Damian bent to let him kiss both his cheeks. “It’s been too long.”
The man stepped back to study him, and Damian felt a smile spring to his lips. Giorgio Marconi had inherited the little underground restaurant from his father who had inherited it from his father who had immigrated to America from Sicily in the early 1900s. It was one of the few places that felt like home outside of the house in Westchester — and one of the few public spaces Damian trusted.
“You are too thin,” Giorgio said. “Even busy men need to eat.”
“That’s why I have you,” Damian said.
“Your table is set.” He shook his head like Damian had presented a troubling problem. “But now that I see you, I’ll have the kitchen add some things to your usual order.”
Damian laughed. “Thank you. Is Cole here?”
“Already waiting.”
Damian clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, then made his way through the nearly empty restaurant. It was a tiny hole in the wall, known only to those with intimate knowledge of Hell’s Kitchen. Candles flickered on traditional red and white checkered tablecloths and a gleaming bar ran almost the entire length of one side of the restaurant. The rest was paneled in deep mahogany. Damian felt himself relax as he reached a set of doors set with frosted glass at the back of the restaurant.
Cole Grant was already on his feet inside the room, a half-full glass of red wine on the table along with a full bottle.
“Got here early,” Cole said. “Hope you don’t mind that I got started.”
Damian waved away the comment and took a seat at the table. He reached for the wine and poured himself a glass, then started on the warm bread in a basket at the center of the table. Food was an afterthought for him most of the time, but now that he was here, he realized he was starving.
“How’d it go in Jersey?” Damian asked as Cole sat down across from him.
“Like clockwork. Trucks picked up the shipment. Product is on its way out now.”
Damian nodded. The sale and distribution of illegally obtained goods was a smaller portion of their business compared to the organized crime models of the past, but he’d found that having men on the street helped keep some of his rivals at bay. Contrary to what many people believed, theirs wasn’t a business of money.
It was a business of power.
It was true that power led to money, but it didn’t necessarily go the other way. Damian made more than enough money through their digital activities — corporate espionage, electronic theft, illegal data mining.
