Chapter 2 - THE MEN IN THE ALLEY
Three black vehicles stopped at the mouth of the alley.
Every door opened at once.
Bear planted himself between the little girl and the street, his muddy body trembling as six men stepped into the falling snow.
They were not mine.
I knew every crew that operated in my city. I knew their cars, their weapons, the way their soldiers moved, even the brands of cigarettes they smoked while waiting outside restaurants.
These men belonged to no one I recognized.
That made them more dangerous.
The first man out of the center SUV wore a charcoal overcoat over body armor. He did not bother hiding the pistol in his right hand.
“Mr. Moretti,” he called.
The little girl tightened her fist around my coat.
So she knew my name now.
Or perhaps she had known it all along.
Behind me, Luca stepped from the shadows.
My consigliere had been standing twenty feet away, giving me privacy when I approached the child. Now his gun was already drawn.
“Seven shooters,” he said quietly.
“I count six.”
“Driver in the rear SUV has a rifle.”
That was why Luca had survived beside me for seventeen years.
I kept my body between the strangers and the girl.
“You came into my neighborhood with guns,” I said. “That usually means you don’t intend to leave.”
The man in the charcoal coat smiled.
“We only want the child.”
Bear growled.
The girl whispered, “No.”
The sound was barely audible.
It still changed everything.
I had built my empire on simple rules.
A debt was paid.
A betrayal was punished.
A threat was answered.
And when someone stood behind me seeking protection, no one took them unless I was dead.
I removed my gloves.
The man noticed.
Men always noticed when I took off my gloves.
He raised his weapon slightly.
“Don’t make this complicated.”
“You brought seven armed men into my alley for an eight-year-old girl.”
My voice stayed calm.
“You made it complicated before you arrived.”
He glanced at the child.
“Her father stole something.”
The girl pressed herself against the brick wall.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Then you don’t know me very well.”
The stranger’s smile disappeared.
One of his men shifted near the passenger SUV.
Luca fired first.
The shot cracked through the alley.
The man fell backward, his pistol skidding across icy pavement.
Everything exploded.
I grabbed the girl and pulled her behind the dumpster as bullets struck brick above us.
Bear lunged.
“Bear!”
The dog ignored her.
He charged a gunman twice his size and clamped onto the man’s forearm.
The gun discharged into the snow.
I came around the dumpster and fired twice.
One man dropped.
Luca hit another.
The remaining shooters scattered behind the SUVs.
“Get her out!” Luca shouted.
I scooped the girl into my arms.
She weighed almost nothing.
That angered me more than the bullets.
A child her age should have been heavier. Warmer. Safer.
She wrapped one arm around my neck while still holding the locket in the other.
“Bear!”
The dog had released the injured gunman and was limping back toward us.
I whistled.
He followed.
We moved through the service door behind the restaurant and into a storage corridor.
My men were already running toward us from the dining room.
“Lock the building,” I ordered. “Nobody leaves.”
Luca came through seconds later.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
“Yours?”
“No.”
Good.
Outside, engines roared.
The surviving vehicles disappeared before our reinforcements reached the street.
One attacker had been left alive.
I preferred that.
Dead men rarely answered questions.
The girl began shaking in my arms.
Not crying.
Shaking.
Adrenaline.
Cold.
Exhaustion.
Perhaps all three.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She hesitated.
Then whispered, “Sofia.”
The name hit me harder than the gunfire.
Elena once told me that if she ever had a daughter, she wanted to call her Sofia after her grandmother.
I stared at the child.
“Sofia what?”
She looked toward Luca and my men.
Then back at me.
“Sofia Bell.”
Bell.
Nothing.
A false name, probably.
“Your father’s name?”
Her lips trembled.
She looked at the locket.
Then she said it.
“Gabriel Santoro.”
For the first time in years, I forgot how to breathe.
Luca went completely still.
Behind him, two of my soldiers exchanged a glance.
Everyone in my organization knew that name.
Gabriel Santoro had been my closest friend before he became my greatest enemy.
We had grown up together.
Stolen food together.
Taken our first beating together.
Built half this organization together.
Then six years ago, Gabriel supposedly sold information to federal investigators and disappeared with eight million dollars.
I found him three weeks later.
Or what I believed was him.
A burned body.
His wedding ring.
His dental records.
His DNA.
I buried him myself.
Sofia watched my face.
“You knew him.”
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“He said you would be angry.”
“He was right.”
“He said you might hate him.”
“He was right about that too.”
She swallowed.
“But he said you’d protect me anyway.”
My jaw tightened.
Gabriel knew me too well.
“What happened tonight?”
Sofia glanced toward the kitchen doors.
“Daddy told me never to tell anyone until I found you.”
“You found me.”
She considered that.
Then she nodded.
“We were staying in a house outside the city. Daddy said we had to keep moving because people were looking for us.”
“How long?”
“My whole life.”
Another blow.
“Your mother?”
Her expression changed.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Daddy said she died when I was a baby.”
The silver locket lay against her sweater.
Elena’s locket.
My photograph.
Her father lives.
None of it made sense.
Unless Elena had lied.
Unless Gabriel had lied.
Unless both of them had been running from something bigger than me.
“Tonight,” Sofia continued, “Daddy came upstairs and told me to put on my boots. He was bleeding.”
“Where?”
“His side.”
“What happened?”
“He said bad people found us.”
Her voice became smaller.
“We went through the basement. There was a tunnel behind the furnace. Daddy made Bear come with me.”
She rubbed the dog’s ear.
“He gave me the necklace and a phone.”
“A phone?”
She nodded.
“Where is it?”
She reached under the torn sweater again and pulled out a cheap black mobile phone wrapped in plastic.
I handed it to Luca.
“Bag it.”
Sofia shook her head.
“No.”
Luca paused.
“Daddy said only you can open it.”
I looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because the password is something only you know.”
The alley suddenly felt colder even though we were no longer outside.
I took the phone.
The lock screen displayed one sentence.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, NICO, I FAILED.
Luca whispered a curse.
Sofia watched me carefully.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“That means something bad.”
Children were better at reading adults than adults realized.
I crouched in front of her.
“Your father taught you that?”
“He said when grown-ups say not to worry, it usually means you should.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
That sounded exactly like Gabriel.
My thumb touched the password field.
Something only I knew.
Gabriel and I had shared thousands of secrets.
Names.
Addresses.
Money.
Bodies.
But there was one memory no one else knew.
When we were fourteen, we stole a bottle of whiskey from a corner store and climbed onto the roof of Saint Anthony’s Church. We promised that no matter what happened, we would never betray each other.
Gabriel had scratched a date into the stone.
November 9.
I entered it.
The phone unlocked.
There were no contacts.
No messages.
Only one video file.
Recorded forty-three minutes earlier.
My stomach tightened.
I pressed play.
Gabriel Santoro appeared on the screen.
Alive.
Older.
Thinner.
Blood soaked the side of his gray shirt.
For several seconds, he simply stared into the camera.
Then he spoke.
“Nico.”
Sofia gasped.
“Daddy.”
I lowered the volume but did not stop the video.
Gabriel looked exhausted.
“Nico, if Sofia reached you, then Elena was right about one thing. Beneath all that blood, there’s still part of the boy I knew.”
My hands went cold.
“You’re going to want to kill me after you hear this.”
Luca stepped closer.
Gabriel coughed and pressed a towel against his wound.
“Six years ago, I did not betray you.”
I stopped breathing.
“The information that destroyed the Romano alliance did not come from me. Someone inside your family framed me.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
Gabriel continued.
“I disappeared because Elena discovered something that could get us all killed.”
Sofia stared at the screen, tears finally appearing.
“Daddy…”
Gabriel looked over his shoulder as though he had heard something outside the room.
Then he leaned close to the camera.
“The man who has been sitting at your table all these years is the man who ordered Elena’s death.”
My entire body went still.
“And Nico…”
Gabriel paused.
His next words tore through every lie I had lived with for twelve years.
“Elena didn’t leave you.”
He swallowed.
“She was pregnant when she disappeared.”
I looked at Sofia.
The child’s eyes were the same dark brown as mine.
Gabriel finished with one final sentence.
“Sofia is your daughter.”
The video ended.
No one spoke.
Bear pressed himself against the child.
Sofia looked from the dark screen to my face.
Then the service door opened.
May you like
My brother Matteo walked in.
And smiled.
