Married to the Enemy Don

I press a clean towel against the cut on my cheek. The cotton stains pink with my blood. The ice underneath numbs the sting, but it does nothing to cool the fire in my chest. I sit in my private office on the second floor of the Russo brownstone in Brooklyn. Downstairs, I can hear Uncle Alessandro. His heavy footsteps shake the ceiling boards above the kitchen. He is shouting into his phone, ordering his capos to gather their men, demanding blood for the ambush at the cemetery. He wants a messy, loud retaliation. He thinks like a wounded animal. He wants to tear down the city because his pride is bleeding.

But I think like a mathematician. I look at the variables.

The rifles were wrong. The lack of tattoos on the dead men was wrong. The helicopter with the sniper lens was a military-grade operation. Luca Moretti is ruthless, but he handles his business with traditional mafia execution. He does not use untraceable mercenaries with high-end tech to take out a lone girl at a grave. If he wanted me dead, he would have done it himself, or sent a trusted soldier with a raven on his chest to leave a clear message.

I open my laptop. The dark screen reflects the thin red line on my face. My breath fogs the glass for a second before I clear the cache and open a hidden, encrypted directory. Months ago, I managed to clone a network address from a Moretti logistics terminal during a brief neutral sit-down at a restaurant downtown. It gave me a back door into their internal security hub. I only use it when the stakes are high enough to risk detection. If they catch the trace, they will trace it back to my terminal, and the conflict will arrive at my front door.

Tonight is that night. I need to see his face. I need to see the look in his eyes when he realizes he missed.

I tap a key. The feed buffers for three long seconds before a grainy, monochrome video fills my monitor. The camera sits high in the corner of a subterranean room. It is a basement under a legitimate meat-packing facility in the Bronx. Concrete walls. Damp floors. A single bulb hangs from a frayed cord, swaying back and forth in the draft.

In the center of the frame, a man is tied to a metal chair. His face is a mask of swelling and dark blood. His shirt is torn open, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.

And standing over him is the devil himself.

Luca Moretti. Even through a low-resolution screen, his physical mass fills the room. He stands at six feet, three inches of solid, dangerous muscle. He has his tailored black suit jacket draped over a nearby crate. The sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, revealing thick forearms crossed with faint silver scars from knife fights and old debts. His black hair is damp with sweat, clinging to his forehead. His sharp jawline is set tight, dark stubble shadowing his skin.

He does not look angry. That is the terrifying part of his reputation. His dark brown eyes are calm, almost vacant, as if he is performing a routine maintenance check on a piece of broken machinery rather than tearing a human being apart. He handles pain the way a banker handles spreadsheets—with cold, detached efficiency.

He steps forward. His leather boots click against the damp concrete floor. He hits the man in the chair. It is a short, compact left hook that lands with a sickening thud. The audio receiver on the tap picks up the wet crack of a jaw breaking. The man's head snaps to the side, spitting dark red saliva onto the floor.

"I am tired of asking, Frankie," Luca says. His voice is a low, gravelly baritone that sends a cold shiver straight down my spine. It carries no heat, no rage. Just a flat certainty that makes my skin prickle. "You handled the manifest for the Brooklyn pier. You altered the timestamps. Who bought the missing crates?"

The man on the chair sobs. He shakes his head, his tears mixing with the blood on his swollen eyelids. "I don't know, Don Luca! I swear to God, I don't know! It was an anonymous drop. The money came through a digital wallet. I never saw a face. They just gave me the account number and told me to clear the cameras for ten minutes."

Luca walks over to a wooden table. He picks up a heavy iron tool. He turns it in his hand, inspecting the blunt edge under the dim light. "A face is just a detail, Frankie. I want a name. If you do not give me a name, I will take your fingers. One by one. Then we will move to your toes. You will bleed out on this concrete, and your family will never find what is left of you."

"Please!" Frankie screams, his voice cracking with pure terror. He rocks the chair back and forth, the metal legs scraping against the floor. "Please, Luca! I have a wife. I have kids! They don't have anything to do with this!"

"You should have thought about them before you stole from my family," Luca replies. He steps back into the light of the swinging bulb. He grips Frankie’s hand, forcing the fingers flat against the metal armrest of the chair. He raises the tool.