Chương 1: The Cost of Doing Business

Start Reading The wine was wrong. Same label. Same Piedmontese red she'd been ordering for five years, same vineyard, same standing arrangement with her distributor in Turin. This bottle had a higher shoulder than the vintage she knew. Whoever had sourced it had matched the label and not bothered to check the glass. Cecilia crossed the threshold and let the room settle into her. Private dining, third floor, the Leonelli estate's best table.

Heavy wood, white cloth, four candelabras, crystal she'd chosen herself five years ago when she'd decided the Family should have crystal worth stealing. Twelve chairs. Nine people visible. The math was wrong before she reached her seat. Gianni Russo should have been near the door to her right. He wasn't. She looked for him once and stopped looking, because she'd found what she needed to find, which was his absence, and looking twice would tell the room she'd noticed.

As she sat, a servant she'd never seen before leaned in with her napkin, hands very careful in the way hands get when someone is doing their best impression of someone who's always worked a room like this one. She accepted the napkin, then looked at the candle nearest her for a moment, long enough to seem like nothing, and used the moment to clock the man near the sideboard whose hands were clasped behind his back. The flame leaned the wrong way.

Toward her, against the draft coming off the door, steady in a direction it had no reason to hold. Then one of the men by the sideboard shifted his weight. The air in the room moved, and the flame went back to behaving. She'd had the ventilation adjusted last year. Drafts were a problem she'd solved. She returned to the man with his hands behind his back. Household staff clasped in front. Hands behind the back came from somewhere else. Two more near the far doors. The same posture, the same off quality.

She put another two outside based on the footstep pattern she'd heard on the corridor approach, the particular weight of men trying to sound like they weren't there. Dario was talking. He'd been talking since before she walked in, something about a shipping discrepancy on the southern route, spinning words the way he did when he needed to fill air before someone else filled it with something worse. If Dario smelled trouble before she arrived, the trouble had been in the room a while.

She set this beside the missing face and the wrong wine and let the picture develop. Ruggiero had moved his chair, angling it so the nearest door sat behind his right shoulder. His body had been doing this in rooms that mattered for twenty years, without him telling it to, and he'd stopped apologizing for it sometime in the nineties. He hadn't touched his food. His left hand was below the table, resting on his thigh in a position that put it near the piece he carried under his jacket.

Bianca stood by Cecilia's left shoulder. She was supposed to be seated. Her hand rested on the back of Cecilia's chair, and her eyes were running a slow rotation between the three men Cecilia had marked and the door behind Ruggiero and the sideboard, the same loop, steady. Matteo had his briefcase on his lap, below the tablecloth edge, in the position where he could open it fast. Their host occupied the far end of the table. Benedetto Farsi.

Fifteen years in the Leonelli Family, eleven of them trusted enough to sit at this table or tables like it. He was speaking about a property dispute, some competing claim on a warehouse in the east quarter. She listened to the rhythm without touching the content. He breathed shallow between his sentences, a tell she'd catalogued years ago and never mentioned because she'd preferred to have it. He was bracing for something with every breath, and he hadn't asked for anything yet.

Across the table, Matteo set the tips of his fingers against his wine glass stem. She'd seen that gesture once before, in Genoa, in a meeting that had also not ended the way it was meant to end. He looked at her with the expression of a man who'd done the arithmetic and arrived at an answer he'd prefer to be wrong about. She'd arrived at the same answer.

"The Marchetti claim is substantially weaker than they've been representing," she said, because someone at this table needed to be talking, and Dario had run out of things to say about shipping.

"If they're filing on the warehouse, they'll need to demonstrate a chain of title back to the original grant, and the grant has a residency clause that Marchetti's grandfather never satisfied." Benedetto listened to this. A muscle in his jaw moved once.

"That's a reasonable position."

"It's the only position. Tell them to come to arbitration, or don't tell them anything. Either way, we're not settling." Benedetto looked at her. He reached for his wine glass and stopped his hand before he touched it. His throat moved. Once. A hard swallow, the kind you could hear in a room this quiet.

"Understood. Piccola boss," he said. It was the first time he'd ever called her that. Little boss. A term of respect in theory, an insult in delivery. The candle flames wavered with the room's collective inhalation. She heard Bianca's weight shift slightly behind her chair.

"Benedetto," Cecilia said. Her voice was calm. It had been calm in rooms like this before.

"Where's Gianni?" Benedetto's fingers tightened on the edge of the table.

"He sent his apologies. There was a supplier issue he needed to handle personally."

"That's unfortunate. He was looking forward to tonight's lasagna." The wine was a lie. The supplier was a lie. Gianni Russo didn't handle supplier issues personally. He had three people whose sole function was handling supplier issues so that he didn't have to, and he'd spent years making sure she never had to think about supplier issues either. Benedetto knew this.

She watched him know that she knew it, and watched him decide it didn't matter, and that decision told her everything about how far along the planning was. Far enough that a loose thread or two wasn't worth pulling on. Far enough that he'd stopped worrying about the small inconsistencies. Gianni wasn't preoccupied. He'd been removed. There was a difference, and it told her how long Benedetto had been thinking about this. Too long.

She should have noticed the shift weeks ago, when Benedetto stopped arguing about the warehouse accounts and started agreeing too quickly. She'd read it as caution. It had been preparation. Irritating. You didn't move the head of security unless you understood that the head of security was the first piece you needed off the board. Dario, reading the room the way he always read rooms, shifted slightly in his chair and picked up his fork. He put it down again.

He said something to the man on his left about Sicilian citrus prices, voice easy, hands quiet. He looked relaxed the way a cat looks relaxed. The second course didn't come. Benedetto set his napkin on the table.

"Let's change the subject."

"Of course." She reached into her jacket and pressed her palm against the trigger handle of the compact pistol in her shoulder rig. The safety clicked off under her thumb.

"Before we go over whatever that is, I noticed that you have a different bottle this week."

"It is the same," he said, "from our standing order." She nodded, still smiling, and said nothing. Let the quiet settle. She had time. The first time a new person met her in a room like this, they assumed she was giving them an opening to clarify, to backtrack, to step out of the trap. It wasn't true. She was just waiting to see how long it took them to realize that she knew, and what they would do when they knew she knew. Benedetto licked his lips.

"If there is an issue with the supplier, it'll be resolved." She accepted that. She let it lie beside the other two things she'd laid out, and she waited. The waiting had a weight to it heavier than she remembered from other rooms. A pressure behind the eyes, low and even, as if the air had thickened and was pressing gently inward from every direction at once. The body did this. She knew the catalogue: the held breath, the slowed heart, the way attention narrowed and sharpened before violence.

She'd felt versions of it a hundred times and never once let it move her. She set it with the candle and the wine and kept her face still. Benedetto lasted twelve seconds. That was what men who were still pretending they could finish the job did. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"It has come to my attention," he said, "that you've been negotiating a side arrangement with the Morettis." She watched his hands. No movement. No tension. The words were precise, and they were almost true.

"We did meet with the Morettis," she said.

"They wanted to discuss a territory division. I declined."

"You declined verbally," Benedetto said.

"You were more open in writing." She watched him. He didn't move. He should have reached for paper, for a document, for a letter, something to make the accusation feel less like a pretext. He didn't reach for anything.

"I haven't written to the Morettis. I haven't written to anyone about this." His mouth tightened.

"I have proof."

"Then let me see it." He didn't reach for anything. No paper, no document, no letter. If he had evidence, he would have opened with it. Evidence made the accusation real. This was a man who wanted to make the accusation feel real because he couldn't make it be real.

"The document is secure," Benedetto said.

"But it's clear. You've been negotiating against the interests of the Family."

"You're sure it's from me." His eyes narrowed.

"It bears your seal." She smiled. It was the wrong expression for the room, and she used it deliberately.

"If that's the case, show it to me. I'd like to see how it was forged." The silence was different now. The men near the doors shifted slightly. The one by the sideboard uncrossed his arms and recrossed them lower. Cecilia took a slow breath and let the air sit inside her, waiting. Matteo's fingers were on his briefcase clasp. Ruggiero had his left arm along the table's edge, shoulder pressed against the back of his chair. The trigger was under her hand. She could pull it now and draw.

She could shoot Benedetto, and the other men would act, and her crew would act, and some of them would die. She didn't think this was a day to die. She'd known that from the moment she'd seen the wine.

"Matteo," she said. He looked up from his wine glass.

"Is it possible someone could counterfeit my seal?" For a split second, she hated that the room depended on another man's answer. He held her eyes for a beat. Then he shook his head, very slightly.

"No." She nodded once.

"There's your answer." Benedetto's jaw flexed. He hadn't expected that. He'd expected Matteo to hedge. Matteo had been hedging for years. This was the first time he'd been asked to deny something on record, and he hadn't done it. That told her exactly what he thought of the situation, and she could see Benedetto realizing the same thing. He didn't like the answer he was getting. He wasn't going to stop because he didn't like it.

"You're lying," he said.

"No," she said.

"I'm not."

"Prove it." She looked at him for a long moment. Then she took her hand out of her jacket and rested it on the table, palm open. The safety stayed off under the cloth, the rig still open where no one could see it. The open hand was for the room. The pistol was for her.

"You know my policy. I don't respond well to accusations without proof." Dario laughed, a short, bright sound that cut through the tension.

"You're saying she should prove she didn't do it? That's like proving you didn't dream about fucking someone's wife last night. How do you document a negative?" Benedetto turned on him, fast, and Dario's smile didn't change.

"You always were a smart mouth, Dario."

"Thank you."

"It's not a compliment."

"I know." Dario shrugged.

"But I'm still going to take it." Bianca shifted behind Cecilia, a movement so small it was almost a breath. Cecilia didn't look back at her. She kept her eyes on Benedetto, waiting. He didn't have a document. He didn't have proof. What he had was a plan, and the plan was to make her respond to the accusation in a way that justified what came next. He'd wanted her to deny it. He'd wanted her to get angry. He'd wanted her to give him the excuse he needed because he hadn't brought a real one.

She could feel the shape of it now. He was going to call this a meeting of the Family's senior council. He was going to claim she'd been acting against the Family's interests. He was going to call for a vote. And the vote was going to go against her, because Gianni wasn't in the room, and the three men who'd come with him had been positioned to influence the others. She ran the names in her head. Tomasso Vicini. Carlo Amato. Angelo Risi.

Men who'd been with the Family less than two years, men who owed Benedetto more than they owed her, men who could be bought or pressured. He was going to call the vote, and they were going to vote her out. And then he was going to have her killed. She took a slow breath, let it out.

"You don't have the votes." Benedetto's eyes flashed.

"What did you say?"

"I said you don't have the votes." She looked around the table, meeting the eyes of the men who were supposed to vote against her.

"Gianni's not here. Carlo, you're not going to vote against me. I covered your sister's medical bills last year. Tomasso, I pulled you out of that mess in Naples when the Camorra decided you'd been skimming. Angelo, I made sure your son got into that school he wanted. You think Benedetto did any of that?" The men shifted in their chairs. Benedetto's face darkened.

"You're trying to turn them against me."

"No. I'm reminding them of what they already know." She turned back to him.

"You don't have the votes. You don't have the support. You don't even have a real accusation." He stood up. The men by the doors stepped forward, hands inside their jackets.

"I don't need votes," he said.

"I have guns."

"That's a mistake. And you're going to regret it." He laughed, short and sharp.

"I don't think so. I think you're the one who's going to regret it. You've been running this Family for too long. It's time for a change."

"Change is fine," she said.

"This isn't change. It's a coup."

"And you're going to stop it?" She looked at him, and she smiled again, and this time the smile wasn't wrong for the room. This time, it was exactly what the room needed.

"Yes," she said.

"I am." Benedetto reached inside his jacket. Her hand was already moving back to the rig as the room broke. Ruggiero was already moving. He shoved his chair back with his legs and drove the table forward, hard, putting the edge of it into Benedetto's gut and folding him over. For the length of that motion—table to gut, the man folding—there was something on Benedetto. Over him, across him, hard to fix on.

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Then the table connected and he went down retching and the thing was gone, if it had been there, and the man nearest the door was clearing his holster. Crystal exploded. Wine sprayed across the tablecloth. Candelabras toppled sideways, spilling hot wax and flame across the white linen. The room turned into noise. The nearest ringer tried to draw. Ruggiero caught his wrist, twisted, and slammed the man's arm into the edge of the table hard enough that something cracked. The gun hit the floor.

Ruggiero kicked it under the sideboard and drove an elbow into the man's throat. Bianca pulled Cecilia's chair back with one hand and had a knife in the other before Cecilia's feet touched the ground. The knife flew, quick and clean, and buried itself in the neck of the second ringer by the door. He made a wet, choking sound and went down. Matteo opened his briefcase and pulled out a compact submachine gun.

He pulled the trigger and stitched a line of bullets across the sideboard, through the bottles and glass and into the wood, forcing the third man to duck for cover. Dario came over the table and closed the distance on a man near the far door who was still fumbling with his holster, caught him by the collar, and put a knife into his side twice. The man folded. Dario took his gun and shot him in the head. Gunshots echoed off the walls. More men spilled into the room from the corridor.

Cecilia crawled to the edge of an upturned table, peeked around, and saw Benedetto backing toward the far door, a gun in his hand, his face pale and twisted with rage. She aimed at him, but he was already gone, slipping out the door as more of his men crowded into the room.

"Down!" Bianca shouted, and then she was there, pulling Cecilia to the floor, her body over hers, shielding her as bullets tore into the wall where Cecilia had been. Cecilia twisted under her, lifting her own pistol, and fired two shots at the doorway. One of Benedetto's men went down.

"Go!" she said, shoving at Bianca. Bianca moved, rolling off her, knives in her hands, moving fast and low toward the next threat. Cecilia got up and crouched behind cover, peering over the table at the chaos in front of her. Ruggiero had the last of the men by the doors in a chokehold, his face turning purple, and Matteo was emptying the rest of his magazine at two more coming in from the corridor.

They ducked back, but the gunfire had slowed them down enough for Dario to throw a table knife into one man's thigh and follow it up with a shot to the head. Then, suddenly, the gunfire stopped. The attackers fell back out of the doorway, disappearing into the hall, leaving the air thick with cordite and the smell of blood and spilled wine. Silence fell over the room, heavy and broken by the ringing in Cecilia's ears. She walked to the doorway where Ruggiero stood breathing hard, blood dripping from his knuckles.

"He ran," Ruggiero growled, staring out into the empty hall.

"Coward didn't even try to finish it."

"He's a dead man," Dario said, coming over with the gun he'd taken, checking it to make sure it was still loaded.

"He knows it."

"Yes," Cecilia said, letting her breath out slowly.

"He does."

"You knew," Bianca said.

"Late," Cecilia answered.

"I knew late." She had wanted him dead in the room. Uncertainty was expensive. Running created it. She turned around, looking at the ruin of the dining room, the blood spatter on the walls, the bodies slumped across overturned furniture, the shattered glass everywhere, the candles still burning on their sides, dripping wax onto the tablecloth, flames dancing among the chaos.

"But it didn't go as he planned," she continued, moving back into the room, stepping carefully to avoid the glass.

"He's going to run now. Try to get out of the city. Out of Italy."

"And let him?" Ruggiero asked, turning from the doorway. She stopped, bent, and picked up the fallen wine bottle, looking at it for a moment before setting it upright on a table that was still on its legs. It wobbled and nearly toppled again. She steadied it with one finger. When she looked at Ruggiero again, her smile was back.

"No. No, I'm not going to let him run." She looked at the other three, standing around her amid the carnage: Matteo, wiping blood off his face with a handkerchief. Bianca, retrieving her knives, carefully wiping each blade clean before sheathing them. Dario, rolling his shoulders like a boxer who hadn't gotten a workout in weeks. They all looked to her, waiting for what she would say next.

"I've had enough of him thinking he can do my job," she continued.

"And enough of these men he brought in. Enough of not knowing if the people in this room are really my people." Her body ached from the adrenaline crash. There would be time to rest later. She straightened, smoothing down her jacket, taking a deep breath.

"He has a five-minute head start. Find him. Find everyone he brought with him. Kill them. I want this contained inside the city." Ruggiero grinned, a brutal, happy thing that split his scarred face.

"Yes, boss." She caught Matteo before he turned for the door.

"The men by the doors weren't ours and weren't free. Find out whose money put them in this room." Matteo nodded once, the way he nodded at a line item, and made a note. Bianca handed Cecilia her purse and her phone.

"I'll stay with you."

"It's going to be a busy night." Dario stepped over the body and headed out.

"I love busy nights."