The marble floor of the Romano estate was slick with more than just rainwater, and the air in the grand hall tasted of expensive cigars and the metallic tang of failure.
Vincenzo Romano sat behind a desk carved from dark Italian walnut, his silhouette framed by the flickering shadows of a dying fireplace. He didn't look like a warlord; he looked like a statesman, his silver hair perfectly coiffed and his silk tie knotted with surgical precision. But the way he was currently cleaning a small, ivory-handled paring knife spoke of a much darker nature.
Before him stood three men. They were seasoned soldiers, men who had survived street wars and federal stings, but right now, they were trembling. Their tactical gear was torn, and one of them was clutching a shoulder that had been crudely bandaged.
Vincenzo didn't speak for a long time. The only sound was the scrape, scrape, scrape of the blade against a whetstone.
"The Moretti patriarch is dead," Vincenzo finally murmured, his voice as smooth as velvet and just as heavy. "A clean hit. A decapitation of the bloodline. For that, I should be pouring you a vintage Barolo."
He looked up, his eyes two chips of frozen flint.
"But I don't see the girl. Where is Elara?"
The man in the center, a captain named Marco, swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed painfully. "Don Vincenzo… the perimeter was secure. We had the basement surrounded. We had the girl pinned in the safe room. It was supposed to be a simple extraction."
Vincenzo's hand stopped moving. The silence that followed was suffocating. "Supposed to be. And yet, my desk is empty of her signature. Those properties, the shipping yards, the offshore holdings—they require a Moretti thumbprint. They require her. So, I ask you again, with all the patience I have left: Where is she?"
"He came out of the walls, Boss," the wounded man blurted out, his voice cracking with a hint of hysteria. "It wasn't a squad. It was him. The Butcher."
Vincenzo's eyes narrowed. The knife in his hand caught the firelight. "Dante Moretti?"
"He was like a ghost," Marco added, stepping forward to try and mitigate the damage. "We had six men in the hallway. Six of our best. He didn't even use a rifle. He moved through them with a blade and a suppressed .45. By the time we realized he was in the house, he was already pulling the girl out through the service tunnels."
Vincenzo stood up slowly. He was a small man, but in that moment, he seemed to tower over the room. He walked around the desk, the heels of his handmade shoes clicking rhythmically against the floor.
"A single man," Vincenzo whispered, leaning in until he was inches from Marco's face. "You are telling me that thirty armed Romano soldiers, equipped with night vision and thermal imaging, were outdone by one enforcer?"
"He wasn't alone!" the third man shouted, desperate to save his own skin. "He had assistants—shadows in the trees. Snipers, maybe. They took out our drivers before we could even pivot the cars. It was a coordinated extraction, Boss. Dante Moretti didn't just stumble into that house; he's been planning for this. He's been guarding that girl like she's the Crown Jewels."
Vincenzo let out a low, guttural growl that sounded like a starving animal. He slammed his hand onto the desk, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
"Because she is the Crown Jewels, you idiots!" Vincenzo screamed, his composure finally snapping. "Without her signature, those deeds are scraps of paper! Without her alive and under my thumb, the Commission will never ratify the takeover. I killed her father to clear the path, not to hand the keys to a glorified hitman!"
He began to pace, his breathing ragged. "Dante Moretti is a stray dog. A loyal hound who lived on the scraps her father threw him. He has no claim. He has no standing. He is a tool, and tools can be broken."
He turned back to the men, his face contorted with a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"You let him walk away with the only leverage I have. You let a man who spends his days cleaning blood off his boots outsmart the finest tactical unit in Chicago. Do you know what they'll call me at the next Commission meeting? They'll call me a failure. They'll say I can't even kidnap a schoolgirl from a single bodyguard."
Vincenzo picked up a crystal decanter and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the far wall, splattering amber liquid like a fresh wound.
"Find her!" he roared, his voice shaking the chandeliers. "I don't care if you have to burn every safehouse from here to the Canadian border. I don't care if you have to tear down the Moretti estate brick by brick. You find Elara Moretti. You bring her to me alive, unscarred, and ready to sign what I put in front of her."
He stepped closer to Marco, the ivory knife returning to his hand, the tip pressing lightly against the man's throat.
"If she is not in this room by tomorrow evening," Vincenzo whispered, his voice deathly calm once more, "I will start with your fingers. Then I will move to your eyes. And by the time I am finished, you will be praying for the Butcher to come and end your misery because I will be a thousand times more creative than he ever was."
Marco nodded frantically, the blade nicking his skin. "We'll find her, Boss. We have eyes on the hospitals, the airports… he can't hide her forever."
"He isn't hiding her," Vincenzo spat, shoving the man away. "A man like Dante doesn't hide. He's hunkered down, waiting for us to make a mistake. He thinks he can play hero. He thinks he can protect the girl from the wind."
Vincenzo looked out the window at the storm-wracked city.
"Go!" he barked. "Bring me the girl. And if Dante Moretti gets in your way again… don't try to outfight him. Just burn whatever building he's standing in until there's nothing left but ash."
As the men scrambled out of the hall, Vincenzo gripped the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles turned white.