Page 14 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

The steam fills the small room, fogging the mirror. I tip my head back under the spray and close my eyes. The hot water runs over my face and down my neck and for thirty seconds I let myself pretend that everything is fine. I grab the shampoo and work up a thick lather like this is just any ordinary night after a long day at work.

Thirty seconds. That's all I get to live in my little fantasy.

The crash comes from the front of my apartment, so loud and so violent that the bathroom walls vibrate. Wood splinters. Metal shrieks against the frame.

I kill the water. My hand shoots for the knife on the counter. Suds drip from my hair onto the tile as I listen.

There’s only endless silence and then heavy thuds roll through the apartment.

Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. They move through my apartment. One set. Then two. I press my ear against the bathroom door. No, there’s definitely five sets of boots.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” I couldn’t at least have a minute to rinse the shampoo out? One of my guardian angels must really have it out for me.

My fingers close around the handle of the chef's knife and I grip it so tight my knuckles ache.

Maddening tears burn at the back of my eyes. “This is not how I saw myself dying.”

I at least thought I would be wearing underwear.

Four

Rowan

Club Genesis keeps its worst secrets three floors underground.

Stale air and industrial soap sit heavy in the sub-basement, layered with the flat, metallic tang of a man whose hope died the second we slapped the cell door on him.

Men like the one in front of me don't see courtrooms. They see rooms like this one. Genesis operates as the underworld's holding facility, neutral ground with concrete walls, fluorescent lights, and a fee structure that keeps Harlon's operation running without allegiance to any one crew. Whoever pays the tab makes the rules. We don’t need lawyers, parole boards, or bleeding hearts begging for mercy. Justice down here is simple. You stay until someone decides you've served your purpose or outlived it.

And that is what I am here to determine.

I take the metal chair across from Enzo Marchetti. I catalog the two exits at my back, clock the cross-draw holster on the Genesis guard posted by the door, and fold my hands on the table.

Enzo looks exactly the way a man should look after four months in a windowless cell with no future. The aging man’s cheekbones jut beneath skin gone the color of old newspaper under fluorescent tubes that hum at a frequency designed to burrow into the base of the skull. The muscle tone he carried as a trafficking boss has eaten itself, leaving tendons and hollow spaces where bulk used to be. His wrists rest on the metal table between us, the bones pressing through thinning skin, and his eyes track my face with the measured stillness of a man calculating whether this visit ends differently than the last.

It won't. I'm not here to hurt him. Luca's order put him in this cell. Kon delivered him. His daughter Ilona's mercy kept him breathing when every man in our circle would have put a round in his skull and called it overdue maintenance. The mercy is more than he deserves, considering what he traded in. The wannabe mafia boss trafficked human beings and he thought he could move around like cargo. Women and children with price tags attached to their lives.

You know what I mean. I didn’t need to fully spell that shit out. It makes my stomach churn and I will not tolerate another person being abused. Period.

But there are some who deserve a bullet between their eyes. Or worse. To live with the consequences of their actions. Enzo here is proof dying isn’t the worst that can happen to a person.

The cell he is in is generous. If it were up to me…well. Let me say it this way. A box in the ground would be too much of a luxury for him.

I push all that aside and focus on why I'm here. The fucker knows things and I need some of his intel.

"The Eastern European routes." I keep my voice low and let the Saint Petersburg docks settle into the consonants of my words. The accent is useful down here. It reminds men like Enzo that I didn't learn violence in a boardroom and I don’t mete out justice with a pen like Massimo. "Someone is pressuring Syndicate-connected shipping operations. Our routes are being disrupted. Contacts going dark. Pressure applied at points that require inside knowledge of the system."

I pause. Let the silence fill the space between us. I've never been a man who wastes good quiet with unnecessary talking. Silence in rooms like this is a tool, sharpened by the concrete walls and the fluorescent buzz, and most men break against it before they break against a fist. Men who chose the underworld know darkness and it doesn’t scare them. Death doesn’t make them flinch. But the fear of rotting away while your empire is stripped, absorbed and taken over leaves a man like Enzo shaking and willing to do anything for the hope of getting a portion of his power and wealth back.

Enzo's tongue runs across cracked lips. "You want me to give you a name."

"I want you to give me what you have. A name is a good start."

He holds my gaze for three beats, then drops it to the table. His fingers drum once, twice, and go still. "I don't have a name, just rumblings. I’ve been down here too long to know much." His voice carries the rasp of a man who doesn't talk enough to keep his vocal cords limber.

“Nyet.” I wave a hand between us and lean a fraction of my weight forward so he can look me in my eyes. “What’s going on now took time to organize. More than the time you've been here. You spent a lot of time trying to take me and the Red Letter Syndicate off the table. What wheels did you leave turning, starik.”

I’m not asking and he knows it. He has no choice but to give me what I want. Calling him old man deepens the grooves across his forehead and along the edges of his eyes.