Chapter 3
Elena sat up slowly, leaning back against the leather cushions. She didn't scramble to hide her bare skin. She casually drew the edges of her silk robe together, tying the sash with deliberate, unhurried precision. She looked at the painting over the mantle with a cold, blank detachment that chilled me to the marrow.
"Report, Don Bellandi," I answered, my voice dropping back into the monotone subservience of the syndicate enforcer. My hands were steady, locked on the weapon, but my palms were slick with sweat.
"The air in the gallery has cleared," the machine said. The robotic timbre seemed to vibrate against the glass of the bookshelves. "Step out. Leave my daughter where she is."
"Yes, Don Bellandi."
"You hesitated, Dante."
The words hung in the air, heavy with the stench of death.
I kept my eyes fixed on the intercom, refusing to look at Elena, refusing to give the hidden lenses in the room any confirmation of what had just transpired.
"The gas was deploying, Boss," I lied, keeping my tone flat, devoid of fear. "I secured the target out of the perimeter."
A low, grating buzz came from the speaker—the synthesizer's approximation of a pause.
"The target is my blood," the voice grated. "You are merely the tool that ensures it remains unspilled. If the tool becomes dull, or if the tool begins to imagine it has a will of its own, it is replaced."
"Understood, Don Bellandi."
"Good. Because you have work tonight."
I frowned, keeping the gun lowered at my side. "Work?"
"The Marcone crew has breached the outer perimeter at the Brooklyn docks," the machine droned. "Warehouse Fourteen. They believe the Bellandi family has grown weak because I do not show my face in the streets. They believe an empire run by a voice is an empire ready to fall."
A sharp, violent click echoed from the speaker.
"Take four men," the Don commanded. "Purge the warehouse. Leave no survivors. Bring me the tongue of their lieutenant, Luca Marcone, and nail it to the door of their family church before sunrise."
It was a suicide run, or very close to it. The Marcones were entrenched in Brooklyn; Warehouse Fourteen was deep inside their territory. Dropping a strike team of five men into their backyard was a brutal, reckless escalation.
"Consider it done," I said without hesitation. It was easier to face an army of Marcone hitmen with automatic rifles than to stand in this room, drowning in the scent of crushed lilies and the suffocating terror of my master’s voice.
"Go now," the speaker rasped. "The garage gate is unlocked. And Dante?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"Remember your place, Hound. Disobedience has a scent, and I smell it on you. If I detect it again... I will not use gas. I will detonate the charges beneath your quarters while you sleep."
*Click.*
The line went dead. The red indicator light behind the painting blinked out, plunging the library back into absolute, oppressive silence.
I stood there for three seconds, listening to the hum of the estate’s ventilation system kick on, sucking the remnants of the chemical agent out of the gallery outside. The heavy electronic deadbolts on the library door gave a sharp, metallic clunk as they disengaged.
I holstered my Kimber, sliding the leather thumb break into place. My hands were steady again, the cold, lethal professional taking the place of the desperate man who had almost begged for a woman’s touch.
I turned toward the door, refusing to look at the sofa.
"Dante."
Elena’s voice stopped me with my hand on the brass doorknob.
I paused, keeping my back to her. "Go to your room, Elena. Lock the door. Do not come out until sunrise."
"Will you come back?" she asked.
There was no fear in her voice. No sorrow. Only a terrifying, calm certainty that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
"I always come back," I said grimly. "Someone has to keep the ghosts from dragging you into the cellar."
I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The smell of the aerosol was faint now, a sharp, chemical sting like burnt almonds, masked by the heavy scent of old wax and polished stone. The corridor was empty, lined with closed doors and cold marble statues of saints whose eyes had been carved out to house microscopic lenses.
Behind me, in the shadows of the library, I heard Elena’s soft, barefoot steps approach the threshold.
She leaned against the doorframe, the silk robe hanging loose around her slender frame, watching me walk toward the grand staircase.
"Kill them quickly, Dante," she called out softly, her voice carrying through the silent corridor with an eerie clarity.
I glanced back over my shoulder.
In the dim light of the security lamps, she wasn't looking at me like a terrified prisoner of the Don's fortress. Her chin was lifted, her green eyes dark and unreadable, and on her lips was the same small, chilling smile that had curled there while her father threatened our lives over the speaker.
"Kill them quickly," she repeated, her eyes burning into mine with an intensity that felt far more dangerous than any gun Luca Marcone could aim at my heart. "And hurry back. My father has so many more tests for you."
I turned away and descended the stairs into the cold, concrete belly of the garage, the ghost of her touch still scorching my throat and the chill of her father’s synthesized voice echoing in my skull. I had a slaughter to deliver in Brooklyn before dawn, but as the steel security gates rolled open into the rain, all I could feel was the suffocating weight of the vault door upstairs—and the terrifying certainty that sooner or later, the monster behind it would make me pay for breathing her air.
I brought Luca Marcone’s tongue back in a velvet-lined cigar box before the sun cleared the East River.
The drive up the Taconic Parkway was a blur of grey fog and the copper stink of drying blood soaked into my leather cuffs. Three of the men I’d taken into Brooklyn had come back in the trunk, zipped into heavy black vinyl. The fourth was in the passenger seat, holding a wad of gauze against a shattered collarbone. I didn’t have a scratch on me. That was the curse of being Don Bellandi’s prized hound—the devil looked after his own just so he could bring them back to the furnace.
When I walked into the estate’s grand foyer at six in the morning, the house was already awake.
Four Capos stood around the base of the marble staircase, their tailored overcoats still stiff from the morning frost. They looked up when the heavy oak doors groaned shut behind me. Nobody spoke. Their eyes dropped to the dark stains on my coat, then to the cedar box in my gloved hand.
I set the box on the silver tray held by the stone-faced house steward.
"Deliver it to the third-floor dumbwaiter," I said. My voice was raw from inhaling cordite in a burning warehouse for three hours.
Before the steward could turn, the brass intercom grilles lining the upper gallery let out a sharp, deafening shriek of feedback. The four Capos winced. I didn't move a muscle.
