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1
MEET CUTE
CORRADO
The mist accumulated on the bathroom mirror blocks my reflection. I wipe the fog off and lean over the counter, checking out my unshaven jaw. I haven’t appeared this rugged since my twenties, but it looks like it’ll have to do tonight. Just to be sure, I check the drawers for the shaving kit.
Since nobody’s lived in this Manhattan apartment since my sister left it over a year ago, and I wasn’t supposed to arrive till next month, no toiletries remain. I would have packed for the trip, but the moment I found out Franko Monelli invited five of the Order’s most powerful families to his niece’s birthday party tonight, I left Sicily for New York.
On the counter, the app with the logo of a gray serpent lying on a pot of gold lights up my phone screen. When the serpent turns red, indicating a call from my older brother, I touch the little square application on the screen so it can read my fingerprint.
A blue serpent joins the red one.
Before I greet him, he says, “There you are.”
“Here I am.” I scratch my five-o’clock shadow. “Did you already send a search party for me?”
“Almost. Paulina called me ten times, since you haven’t answered your phone.”
“I was on the plane on my way into New York.”
“It’s not July yet, so why are you there?”
“I heard that Franko Monelli called in a meeting with the Benvenutis, the Julianos, the Bakers, the Walshes, and the Balashovs.” I put on my pants, going commando since I have no clean underclothes.
“We know the Monellis are looking to wash their money by investing in stocks.”
They asked us for this service, which we refused because the Monellis are getting weeded out of the Order for the kind of reckless behavior that would have been more appropriate in the days before surveillance existed. Bailing them out of trouble costs money, and since the Order pulls from the same well of resources, Monellis are using up more than they’re worth. “You think they figured out we’re going to serve them the severance package?” I ask.
The Bakers deal with politicians, which is where the information we use to manipulate stocks comes from, and the Walshes control Wall Street, where the trades are made. The other three are crime families with cash flow as large as the Monellis’. Two Italian families and one Russian. The difference between them and Franko is that they’re not parasites.
“There’s no other reason he’d breach the rule of three,” Severio says. “He’s desperate.” Only the Order’s founding family, meaning my brother and sister, and I, can call a meeting of more than three Order members. This rule exists to protect everyone’s assets, our lives being the greatest of those assets.
“Where’s the meeting?” my brother asks.
“At the Three Cardinals.”
Severio snorts. “Some balls on that guy.” Our sister owns that hotel. “And what’s he using as the front?”
“His niece’s birthday party.”
“There’ll be family there, so he won’t do anything stupid. By the way, who tipped you off about the meeting?”
“The birthday girl.”
“His niece?”
“Mmhm. Her mother gave her my number. She’s been texting me pictures.”
“What kind of pictures?” Severio asks suspiciously.
I chuckle. “Exactly the kind you’re thinking of.”
He groans. “He put her up to this.”
“She doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Anything else?”
