Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I'm looking forward to it.
Which is… something.
My hand lifts unconsciously to the collar still locked around my throat.
Giovanni's collar.
Still there. Still claiming me. Even while I'm standing in Lorcan's kitchen, reading Lorcan's notes, anticipating Lorcan's tongue.
I could take it off.
The thought arrives like a stranger knocking on a door I didn't know existed. I could. Lorcan would probably help me if I asked.
But I won't.
Because even here—miles from Riverview, hours from Giovanni's control—I'm still his.
I press my palms against the cool countertop, trying to process this.
Giovanni likes to engineer failure, then punish me for failing a test I didn't know I was taking. The civet coffee, driving his Lambo, the demerit notebook.
He expects failure because he likes to punish. He doles that out in delicious ways, but Giovanni expects the lesson to be learned from the struggle. Not the preparation, like Jino. Not the performance, like Lorcan.
The difference between the three men is staggering.
Giovanni throws me into the ocean, watches me drown, then pulls me out at the last second so I'm grateful for the rescue from the disaster he created.
Jino hands me fins and an oxygen tank, then demands I use them properly so I can survive the underwater trip we'll take together.
Lorcan leads me aboard a party boat, turns up the music, hands me drugs and a drink, and makes me float on the current with him.
All three of these acts are dominance. All three are control. All three involve me submitting to someone else's authority.
But only one of them makes me feel like I'm drowning on purpose.
Only Giovanni.
I stare at my reflection in the window.
Giovanni's collar gleams back at me.
What is happening here?
19
Little Italy looks like a historical reenactment designed to launder money.
I crawl the Aventador down Mulberry at ten miles per hour—any faster would be disrespectful, any slower would be weakness—and catalog the storefronts like I'm reading a ledger.
Pork store on the left, display case full of soppressata and capicola.
Bakery on the right, sfogliatelle in the window arranged like soldiers.
Social club with blacked-out windows, the kind of place where men go in at noon and don't leave until the espresso runs cold and the blood runs hot.
Every business on this block pays tribute to Luca LaRiccia.
Every old man sipping espresso at those sidewalk cafes reports to him.
The tenements crowd both sides of the street, fire escapes creating permanent lattices of shadow. Pre-war construction, built when Little Italy actually meant something instead of being three blocks of tourist traps surrounded by Chinatown.
The LaRiccias held onto this territory through sheer ruthlessness—three generations of making examples out of anyone who thought relocation meant negotiation.
The Aventador's engine purrs like expensive violence.
Heads turn. Conversations pause. An old woman carrying groceries actually crosses herself.
I'm not supposed to be here.
The pedestrian entrance passes on my right—those fifteen-foot wrought iron gates depicting grapevines and wolves, the courtyard beyond, the bronze doors that require an intercom announcement and permission to enter.
I pull around the corner to Hester Street where the garage entrance waits. Steel gates, security cameras in all four corners, the kind of setup that processes fifty vehicles a day and remembers every single one.
Two guards materialize before I even stop moving.
Impeccable black suits. Earpieces. One flanks the driver's side, one the passenger, synchronized like they've done this ten thousand times.
The LaRiccia building looms above me—five stories of 1920s Art Deco limestone, BANCO NAPOLITANO still carved above the entrance.
Luca's up there somewhere.
He's been watching me since I turned onto the block.
The guard on my left taps the window with two knuckles.
I slide the window down.
The guard's mid-twenties, six-four minimum, shoulders like he bench-presses engine blocks for cardio. His suit fits him the way mine fits me—custom, expensive, designed to hide what needs hiding.
What doesn't need hiding is the sawed-off shotgun resting against his forearm.
The barrel's been cropped to a brutal little stump, the stock's gone entirely, and the whole thing rides in his grip like it grew there. Not flashy or threatening. Just present—the kind of weapon you carry when the conversation's already over before it starts.
He doesn't point it at me.
Doesn't need to.
The passenger-side guard knocks on the opposite window—two sharp raps, impatient.
I don't turn my head.
Goon Number One gets my full attention because he's the one who decides if I'm driving in or getting dragged out.
His face is blank and professional. The kind of blank that means he's run this checkpoint enough times to catalog threats by engine sound alone.
Then he laughs—genuine, surprised—and leans down to get a better look at the Aventador's interior.
"Bavga, right? Pittsburgh?" He straightens, grinning now. "Heard you were compensating for something, but Jesus."
The passenger-side goon snorts as he walks around the front of my car, joining his buddy.
I wait.
Goon Number One taps the roof with his palm. "What'd this set you back—three hundred? Four? You know they make pills now, right?"