Chapter 1
The espresso was cold before it reached his table.
Dominic Ferrante did not say anything the first time. He was the kind of man who saved his anger like currency, spending it only when the return was worth the investment. He set the cup aside, adjusted the cuffs of his Brioni jacket, and returned his attention to the café entrance.
Lorenzo was late.
His younger brother was never late. Punctuality was a question of respect in their world, and the Ferrante family had not survived four generations in this city by tolerating disrespect—not from rivals, not from politicians, and certainly not from blood.
Café Vesper on Via Martelli was his place. His corner table. The one that put his back to the wall and his eyes on both doors simultaneously. He had chosen this seat for the first time twenty-three years ago, when his father had brought him here to explain what it meant to be the one who would someday carry the name. He had sat here a thousand times since then and nothing had ever gone wrong.
The afternoon light came through the tall windows at a low angle, striping the black-and-white floor in long gold bars.
“Your coffee, Mr. Ferrante.”
He glanced up.
The waitress—Elisa, he had seen her name embroidered on the small pin above her apron pocket—was setting down a fresh cup with both hands, as if the tiny vessel might escape. Color had risen in her cheeks before she even reached the table.
“I’m so sorry about the last one. The machine was having a moment.”
Machines did not have moments. People made excuses.
“I ordered fifteen minutes ago,” Dominic said.
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
He studied her for a moment. She was perhaps thirty, with an unremarkable face that spent most of its time arranged in some configuration of apology. She had worked here for—what, five months? Six? He genuinely could not remember noticing her before today, which in his world was either the highest compliment or the most damning critique.
He pushed the cup two inches away without tasting it.
“Bring me another. And pay attention to the temperature this time.”
She retreated toward the counter, nearly catching her hip on the corner of an empty chair, and Dominic returned to his phone.
Nothing from Lorenzo.
He typed: Where are you?
The café was quiet for a Thursday. Two old men nursing espressos near the window. A woman eating alone, reading something on a tablet. Dominic’s two bodyguards sat at the bar, Sandro and Ricci, their jackets hanging just slightly wrong at the shoulders—the particular drape of men who were never unarmed.
His phone buzzed.
Traffic. Don’t leave. I have something important. Twenty minutes.
Dominic frowned at the screen. Lorenzo never texted while driving. He was obsessive about it, paranoid about phone records, about patterns, about anything that could be assembled later into evidence. The fact that he was breaking that habit sent a small cold current through Dominic’s chest.
How long exactly?
May you like
Twenty, maybe less. Order me the cannoli.
Even in whatever crisis had him texting from a moving vehicle, his brother thought about dessert. Dominic allowed himself a brief, unwilling smile.
