Chapter 4
Her legs felt heavy, but she looked directly at Miller.
“12-ply diamond-braid nylon. Black. High cadmium content. You sold a small spool approximately 1 month ago. Someone wanted it, and they wanted the sale kept off the regular books.”
Miller stared at her, apparently unable to understand why a young woman was standing in the center of Gabriel Falcone’s armed crew discussing thread.
“I sell thousands of miles of material. I don’t remember every spool.”
Carmine placed the barrel of his pistol beneath Miller’s jaw.
“Remember harder.”
“All right.”
Miller’s voice tightened.
“Back office. Blue binders. Cash sales. It’ll be there.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Show her.”
Carmine marched Miller to a desk buried beneath invoices, samples, and records.
Miller pointed toward several worn blue binders.
Sadi opened the volume covering the previous month.
She ran her finger through handwritten entries recording canvas, zippers, thread, and other industrial supplies.
Then she stopped.
“Here.”
Gabriel moved behind her.
Sadi pointed to the line.
“4 weeks ago. 1 spool of 12-ply maritime black nylon. Cash sale. $5,000.”
“$5,000 for a spool of string?”
“It’s hush money,” Sadi said. “Nobody pays $5,000 for thread unless part of the price is buying the seller’s silence.”
Gabriel turned toward Miller.
The warehouse owner was shaking.
“Who bought it?”
“A doctor.”
Miller’s voice cracked.
“Fancy guy. Suit. Said it was for a private project. He paid cash.”
“Croft,” Carmine said.
Gabriel moved closer to Miller.
“And who introduced Dr. Croft to you? A high-society surgeon doesn’t wander into a black-market dockyard asking for untraceable industrial thread. Somebody sent him here.”
Miller closed his eyes.
“Give me the name,” Gabriel said.
“If I say his name, he’ll kill my entire family.”
“If you don’t…”
Gabriel’s voice remained quiet.
“…I’ll burn this warehouse to the ground with you inside it.”
Rain hammered the metal roof.
Miller opened his eyes.
Despair had replaced resistance.
“It was Leo.”
He swallowed.
“Leo Rossi. He brought the doctor here.”
Carmine cursed under his breath and lowered the pistol.
Gabriel did not move.
His expression became stone.
Leo Rossi was not simply another rival.
He was Gabriel’s oldest captain.
The man who had trained him.
The man who had been close enough to stand at his bedside while poison slowly destroyed him.
The SUVs moved rapidly through the rain on the return journey.
Inside the lead vehicle, nobody spoke.
Gabriel stared through the window at the wet city.
Carmine gripped the steering wheel.
“Boss, give the word. I’ll take a crew to his house tonight. We pull him out of bed and put a bullet through his knees before he makes a call.”
“No.”
Gabriel’s answer was almost hollow.
“He bought the poison,” Carmine said.
For once, he used Gabriel’s name.
“Gabriel, Croft sewed it into you. Leo sat beside your bed for 2 weeks telling you to stay strong while he watched you rot.”
“I know what he did.”
Gabriel’s sudden anger silenced the vehicle.
He leaned against the cold window.
“Leo controls the docks, the unions, and half the judges in the county. If we execute him in the middle of the night without putting him in front of the other captains, the family splits.”
He closed his eyes.
“We start a civil war.”
Gabriel opened them again.
“We don’t just kill him, Carmine. We dismantle him. We make him expose himself in front of everyone.”
In the rear seat, Sadi kept her eyes lowered.
She was a civilian sitting inside a mobile war room.
Then she noticed the dark patch spreading through Gabriel’s suit jacket at the shoulder.
The trip to the warehouse had cost him.
By the time they reached the estate, Gabriel was pale and sweating.
He ignored the medical staff waiting in the foyer and went directly into the library with Carmine and Sadi.
The doors closed.
Gabriel removed the suit jacket.
His white shirt was soaked in bright red blood.
Carmine cursed.
“I’ll get the nurse.”
“Leave the nurses out of it.”
Gabriel braced his good hand against the desk.
“They work for whoever is paying them. Right now, I don’t trust anybody on the payroll. Get the first-aid kit.”
Carmine retrieved the heavy plastic medical box.
His large hands hesitated over the sterile supplies.
Carmine knew how to break bodies.
Repairing them was different.
Sadi stepped forward without asking.
She opened the kit and took out trauma shears.
“Sit down.”
Her voice no longer trembled as it had days earlier.
The warehouse had altered something in her.
She had seen the men who existed inside the darkness.
They bled like everyone else.
Gabriel looked at her.
Pain tightened his jaw.
Then he lowered himself into the leather chair.
Sadi cut through the ruined shirt and removed the soaked bandage.
The wound was bleeding freely.
But the blood was clean.
No black sludge.
No bitter-almond smell.
“You tore the new closure.”
She pressed sterile gauze firmly against the shoulder.
Gabriel hissed.
“It’s fine. Pack it tight.”
“It isn’t fine. You pushed a healing seam too hard.”
Sadi maintained pressure.
She looked down at him.
For the moment, he did not appear to be the ruler of a criminal organization.
He looked exhausted.
“Leo was your friend.”
Gabriel stared toward the floor.
“Leo taught me to shoot. He took me in when I was 15, after my father got hit. He showed me how to dress. How to speak to politicians.”
His voice became quieter.
“He told me I was the son he never had.”
“People lie.”
Gabriel looked up.
“Does it ever bother you how easily people tear each other apart?”
“I grew up watching factory owners take a week’s pay from women who couldn’t afford groceries because they broke a needle.”
Sadi secured medical tape across the dressing.
“Greed doesn’t surprise me. The people closest to the machines are always the ones caught in the gears. Leo wanted your seat. He just didn’t want his own hands dirty when he took it.”
She dropped the bloody shears into the biohazard container.
“You’re sealed. But if you keep flexing that muscle, the dressing won’t hold.”
Gabriel touched the fresh bandage.
He looked at Sadi.
She was not merely tending his injury.
Her unvarnished practicality was keeping him steady while the foundations beneath his organization shifted.
“Carmine.”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Call the captains. All 5 of them. Tell them I’ve had a breakthrough in my recovery. I’m hosting a private dinner here tomorrow night to discuss the future of the family.”
Carmine smiled without humor.
“And Leo?”
Gabriel stood.
“Leo gets a personal invitation.”
May you like
His expression hardened.
“Tell him I want him sitting right next to me.”
