"One word from my wife, and your Family would have enough soldiers and contracts behind it to set you up for the rest of your life!"
Salvatore Bianchi said it like it was settled fact.
As if a handout from the Rossis was a blessing the whole city should be on its knees begging for.
I watched his face, twisted with rage, and for a moment something blurred in me.
Twenty years ago.
When he forced my father out of his place, had he worn this same look, this same lofty contempt?
Had he believed back then, too, that one word from him could decide another man's fate?
The thought made me smile.
"Sorry."
"A pact with the Rossis is beneath me."
I pressed the intercom on my desk.
"Send my men up."
In under a minute, two enforcers stepped through the door, quiet as held breath.
That was when Salvatore's face finally changed.
He'd probably never imagined that, with the standing he carried now, anyone would dare throw him out in front of witnesses.
"You'd dare lay a hand on me?!"
"Do you know who I am?"
But no one in that room gave his shouting a second of weight.
The two soldiers took him by the arms, one on each side, and hauled him up.
Just then, the office door slammed open again.
A girl in her early twenties came charging in, all fire and fury.
She wore designer silk and heels worth more than a soldier's year, her face full of anger.
The second she crossed the threshold, she jabbed a finger at me and started cursing.
"Who do you think you are?"
"You'd put your hands on my father?"
"You think I'm bluffing when I tell you one word from my mother shuts this whole operation down by tomorrow?"
I lifted my head.
My gaze settled on her face.
And the next second, I froze.
The girl was very pretty.
There was a strong resemblance to Salvatore around the eyes and brows.
But for some reason, looking at how young and alive she was, another image rose in my mind.
A rainy night, twenty years ago.
The lights outside the sickroom, a sickly, glaring white where the help should have come and never did.
My father kneeling in the corridor, holding my sister, only a month old.
Her cries growing weaker and weaker.
And me, watching them taken from us with nothing I could do.
If my sister had lived.
She'd be about this age now.
Something tightened in my throat.
"She's your daughter?"
When the words came out, even I could hear the faint tremor I couldn't quite hide.
Salvatore lifted his chin at once. He smoothed his lapel, his rings catching the light.
His whole expression was a boast.
"Of course."
"Gianna Rossi. The only daughter Vittoria and I have."
The only daughter.
Those four words drove into my heart like a thorn.
I found myself smiling.
A cold smile.
A bitter one.
So the three of them had lived all these years that happy.
While my father and my sister stayed frozen forever in that rainy night.
"Good for you."
I rose slowly to my feet.
My eyes stayed on Gianna's face.
"Go back and tell your mother."
"I'd like to see exactly how she plans to deal with me."
Father and daughter still had more to say, but the soldiers had already dragged them out.
The office went quiet again.
I sat back down.
I picked up the glass on my desk, the water long gone cold, and drank it all in one go.
The icy liquid slid down my throat.
But it couldn't hold down what was churning in my chest.
I knew it well enough.
Everything that had happened today was only the beginning.
The account still to come.
I would settle it with them, one item at a time.
After a long silence, I buzzed the intercom.
"Come in for a moment."
My consigliere pushed the door open soon after.
"Don Greco."
"I need you to look into someone."
I handed over the file on my desk.
"Gianna Rossi."
"Everything since childhood. Her history, where she was schooled, who she runs with, where she's placed now. Get me all of it."
"The more detail, the better."
"Understood."
In under two hours, a complete dossier sat on my desk.
Gianna Rossi.
Twenty-one.
A senior in the journalism program at a top university.
Currently placed at the city television station.
The station that ran the city's airwaves?
My finger paused for a moment at those words.
After a long silence, I still picked up my phone and dialed the familiar number.
She answered almost instantly.
"Dominic?"
A woman's gentle voice came through the receiver.
"Why are you calling me so early today? Didn't you say you were buried in the Family's books, sorting who stays and who goes?"
Hearing Isabella Conti's voice, I suddenly hesitated.
She was my woman.
And the one who controlled the city's channels and the staging of every public sit-down, unaligned and respected by all sides.
For years, I'd deliberately kept the past buried.
Because I didn't want her to know those filthy, ugly things that had happened.
But now.
She was the only one who could help me.
"Is there a girl placed at your station named Gianna Rossi?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"There is."
"Word on the street says she's Rossi blood. Plenty of muscle standing behind her."
"Why the sudden interest in her?"
I was silent for a few seconds.
In the end I spoke.
"I don't want to see her around."
"Can you have her cast out?"
The line went quiet.
Isabella knew me too well.
She knew I never moved against anyone without a reason.
"Dominic."
Her voice turned more serious.
"What's really going on?"
I looked out the window at the sky going dark over the territory.
A long while passed before I said it softly.
"It's nothing."
"I just don't like that Rossi family."
The other end was silent for a few seconds.
She didn't push.
She didn't doubt me either.
She just answered, clean and simple.
"Okay."
"Leave it to me."
In that moment, a warmth rose in my chest.
All these years.
No matter what happened, she always stood on my side without holding anything back.
"Don't leave when you're done tonight."
I said it low.
"I'll come for you."
Evening.
I drove to the foot of the television station building, two of my soldiers trailing in the car behind.
The car had barely stopped when I heard a shrill argument not far off.
I looked up.
At the station entrance, two of the house men were holding Gianna back.
She was red in the face with anger, her voice nearly carrying across half the street. She tossed her hair and tipped her chin a fraction higher.
"On what grounds are you throwing me out?"
"So I cursed a few people out, big deal!"
"Let me tell you. My mother is Vittoria Rossi!"
"Cross me, and you cross the whole Rossi Family!"
She kept up the cursing, struggling to push her way back inside.
Beside her stood a man somewhere around thirty.
His face was all helplessness, cold sweat nearly beading on his forehead, and still he kept trying to talk her down.
