Chapter 1

Luca

The warehouse reeked of diesel and stagnant water, a smell that had lingered in these walls for years, impossible to scrub out of the concrete no matter how hard my men tried, but tonight, that stench brought me an odd sense of comfort.

My men stood against the wall behind me, maintaining their usual silence, because they'd been with me long enough to know I preferred things quiet when I worked—the kind of quiet where you could hear your own pulse hammering in your ears.

Sal Marino sat in the steel chair we kept specifically for occasions like this, wrists zip-tied to the armrests, ankles bound to the chair legs, his shirt soaked through with sweat despite the warehouse temperature hovering around fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

He'd been with me since he was twenty-three, had helped me bury two problems out in the Pine Barrens, never let a single name slip from his lips. Two months ago I'd handed him a Christmas envelope four inches thick, because loyalty, when no one was watching, was what it earned from me. Then he started skimming from the Carlton Street operation.

"Sal," I asked him, "how long has this been going on?"

His mouth worked for a while before any sound came out, and when it did, it was thin. "Four months, boss. Maybe... maybe five."

"Maybe five months." I bent down to meet his eyes, watching the artery in his neck jump beneath the skin. "For five consecutive months, you walked into my counting room, reached into my drawer, took what belonged to me—while I paid you to watch it. Am I understanding this correctly?"

He nodded honestly. His pupils had dilated with fear.

"How much."

"Sixty-eight thousand. Boss, I'm sorry, I'll pay it back, I swear on my—"

"Don't." I raised one finger, and he swallowed the rest of his sentence. "Don't swear on anything you love, Sal, because tonight I'm going to find it and make you watch."

That's when the nausea hit. It came on fierce, nearly buckled my knees and sent me sprawling across his chair. Acid surged up from somewhere below my ribs, slamming into the back of my throat, and for one humiliating second I thought I was going to empty my stomach all over his shoes in front of half a dozen of my men in this warehouse.

But thank Christ, I held it down.

I straightened up, breathing through my nose, waiting for the room to stop tilting.

Fortunately, the discomfort didn't last long. I drew my Beretta from the holster beneath my jacket, chambered a round, then pressed the muzzle against that slick, pale patch of skin in the center of Sal's forehead. I watched his eyes go vacant, watched his lips move soundlessly as he began to pray, began to plead, began to tell me about his desperation and his fear.

Then the front of his pants darkened.

The smell of urine hit a second later, my stomach churning even harder, and for a moment, I lost all patience with the entire situation.

I pulled the trigger twice. Forehead. Heart. Turned Sal Marino into Satan's problem.

Blood fanned out from the chair, forming two distinct patterns on the concrete—red on gray, and beneath the red something else, something pale and soft that I looked at for barely a second before my throat swelled shut.

I waved toward the wall, signaling my men to clean up the scene.

Marco DiPietro approached with an already-lit cigar, but I shook my head, and he retreated without a word, because tobacco wasn't going to solve anything wrong with me—in fact, any smell at all was the problem.

I told my driver to take me home and to call Dr. Bellini on the way.

Vito Bellini was our family physician, had delivered me thirty-two years ago on the second floor of the Long Island estate, had dug the first bullet I ever took out of my left shoulder when I was twenty. He was the only doctor my grandfather ever trusted, and the only one I trusted, which meant if something was actually wrong with me, he'd tell me without sugar-coating it.

The Lincoln hadn't even fully stopped at the front steps of my Long Island estate before I shoved the door open and vomited everything in my stomach onto the roadside. Everything that had been clinging to my insides suddenly let go, and I quick-stepped away from the car, emptying my guts onto the ground in one violent purge.

Marco saw but said nothing. After I straightened up, he handed me a bottle of water. I rinsed my mouth, spat it out, then finally stood upright.

By the time Bellini arrived, I was already upstairs in the study. He set his bag on the desk and began examining me with the same unhurried manner he'd maintained in this family for forty years. He listened to my heart and lungs, looked down my throat, asked what I'd been eating and drinking lately. I told him about the dry heaving that started a week ago—gagging while brushing my teeth in the morning, gagging at the smell of smoke, and today in the car on the way home, I'd actually vomited from the smell inside the vehicle.

He nodded throughout, took no notes, and when I finished, he asked the maid for an empty paper cup and held it out to me.

"Blood test? With a paper cup?"

"I'm asking you to urinate in this, my dear Luca."

"Urinate in it? Vito, are you joking with me?"

"This test works best with morning urine, but given your current situation, what you can provide now should still be detectable."

Vito's tone was unusually serious, so I didn't argue further. I walked into the small washroom attached to the study, and when I returned, I handed him the cup. He didn't take it, gesturing instead for me to set it on the coffee table.

I turned to the liquor cabinet, poured myself two fingers of Macallan, wanting to preserve whatever dignity a man could maintain before receiving devastating news.

Vito pulled a thin paper strip from a foil wrapper and dipped it into the urine like baiting a fishing line, then laid the test strip across the top of the cup and looked down at his watch.

I sat across from him, trying not to think about that cup of yellow ammonia evaporating into the room. I raised my glass to suppress the nausea, but just as I brought it to my lips, Vito suddenly called my name.

"Luca, the results are in."

He pointed at the test strip like someone revealing their hand at a poker table, and when he spoke, his voice was the gentlest thing in the room.

Two lines—one a deep, almost purple red, the other much fainter but still clearly visible.

This test strip had diagnosed me, confirmed me positive for some condition.

I prayed silently that whatever this damned disease was, it wasn't terminal. I was only thirty-two, not prepared to spend the next sixty years fighting an illness.

"Doctor, what disease do I have..."

"You're pregnant, my dear Luca." Vito actually laughed.

The crystal glass cracked in my hand before my brain had fully processed the sentence. I froze for a second, then hurled the shattered glass at the fireplace.

"Have you lost your mind, Vito? I have a dick. I've had one since the day you pulled me out of my mother—you ever heard of a man with a dick getting pregnant?!"

"I delivered you, Luca." His voice didn't waver. "Of course I know your sex."

"Then how can you stand there and tell me I'm pregnant with a straight face."

"I'm telling you what this test strip is telling me." He picked it up with two fingers, turning it to show me those two vivid lines, dark and definitive, like a verdict. "It's rare. But not impossible. There's a condition we call sympathetic pregnancy. It occurs in male partners when their significant other is pregnant. The body mirrors the hormonal load. Medicine is always this fascinating, isn't it?"

I laughed in denial. "I'm a Ferretti, Vito. I've known about pulling out and condoms since I was fourteen. I know how to protect my own sperm. You think I would—"

"Three weeks ago," Vito said gently, "Luca, three weeks ago on a morning, you called me before nine o'clock, asking me to arrange the fastest possible full STD panel."

He paused for a long moment, the smile on his face growing more pronounced.

"Did you protect your sperm that night too?"