Numbers Don't Lie
Marco Bellanti had always believed that numbers were cleaner than people. They didn't lie, didn't betray, didn't bleed. His father had been a bookkeeper for corner bodegas and butcher shops, and Marco inherited his hands: steady, quick with an adding machine, patient enough to chase down every cent.
But when he was fifteen, his father died with two bullets in his chest, face-down in a puddle of dirty snow. Nobody ever told Marco who pulled the trigger, but everyone knew why. A ledger had gone missing, debts weren't paid, and in their world, mistakes cost more than money.
Now Marco was thirty-two, and he'd become the man everyone went to when they wanted numbers that vanished. Politicians. Contractors. And most of all, Don Giacomo Esposito — head of one of New York's oldest Mafia families.
Marco wasn't a soldier. He didn't carry a gun. He kept to the shadows behind the cash and the books, the quiet man who knew where every dollar slept at night. But even shadows can be seen when the light changes.
And tonight, the light was changing.