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The room smelled mostly like fear.

The meeting had been going for forty-three minutes. I’d timed it. Forty-three minutes was how long it took to dismantle ten years of business and convince a man to hand over half his empire without firing a single bullet.

Violence was expensive. Paperwork was always cleaner. Though admittedly, less satisfying.

“You’re asking for too much,” Alessandro Baresi said, his voice hoarse.

His eyes kept dropping to the contracts laid out between us. Three signatures were already inked. Three. Signatures. Three men who’d already chosen my side.

That was the thing about power. By the time you saw it moving, it had already taken over the room.

I leaned back in my chair. The leather groaned under my weight.

“I’m asking for exactly what your debt demands.”

Alessandro swallowed.

Across the table, Matteo Ricci, my consigliere, adjusted his cufflinks and slid another folder forward.

There were photos. Shipping manifests. Secret offshore accounts. Undeniable proof; enough dirt to bury Alessandro three times over, somewhere not even the birds would ever find his bones.

Alessandro looked at the photos and went pale.

“You set me up.”

I almost smiled.

Set him up? Me? No. I would never!

I watched him build his own grave. Then I simply measured it.

“You skimmed from our routes,” I said. “Money that belongs to the Five Families. You know that’s not going to go down well when they find out.”

His jaw tightened.

“You moved product through my territory without permission.”

“It was business,” he argued.

“Stealing,” I corrected.

His nostrils flared.

I couldn’t understand why men like Alessandro were always so confused about the rules.

He leaned forward.

“If you take the docks, there will be consequences.”

I finally smiled then, though it was a small, wicked thing. Cold.

“Alessandro.” I looked down at his trembling hands. Then back at his face. “If there were consequences, you would’ve brought them with you.”

His silence sat heavy and ugly between us. Because we both knew the truth. He’d walked into this meeting alone. Without backup. There was no hidden army, and nothing of consequence he could leverage.

He was just a desperate man trying to negotiate his way out of the hole he’d dug himself into.

Outside the warehouse windows, rain lashed against the glass. The docks beyond stretched into darkness, cranes towering like skeletons over black water.