Page 4

"There’s chatter coming out of the freight corridors near Monza. Girls. Eastern European, some North African. Moving through warehouses we don’t own, but close enough to our routes that it stinks."

His voice flattens.

"Trafficking, Valentino. Not labor. Flesh."

My free hand goes to my pocket, and my fingers close around the rosary before I know I've reached for it. The beads are warm from my body.

"You're certain," I say. Not a question. With Bruno it is never gossip.

"No. That's the problem. It's smoke. Nothing solid. But you know how the family feels."

I know exactly how the family feels. The Sartoris will run guns, run drugs, run half the politicians in two countries, and they will do all of it without losing a night's sleep. But flesh? Children? On that line, Riccardo drew blood years ago, and Bruno keeps the line darker than his brother ever did. It is the one place where business and the thing I have built my life around point the same direction.

"Whose warehouses?" I ask.

"Shell companies. Three of them, layered. One name keeps surfacing underneath, though." Another clink of ice. "Basile."

"Basile," I repeat. The beads roll under my thumb. "You're sure of that name."

"As sure as I am of anything that's still smoke," Bruno says.

The Basile family is one of the oldest names in Cosa Nostra. Older than ours. Older than most. Don Enzo Basile shook hands with men who are statues now. There are streets in Palermo that would not exist without his blessing.

"You think it's the old man?" Bruno asks.

I consider it.

"No," I say at last. "Enzo Basile is old-world. Brutal, yes. But he operates inside a frame. There are things he would not touch, not because he's soft, but because the men he answers to in his own head would never forgive it. The wet trade is one of them. If Basile money is moving girls through Monza, it isn't coming from the top. It's coming from underneath. Someone who has the name and none of the spine that's supposed to come with it."

Bruno is quiet for a moment. I can hear him shift, the small careful sounds of a man who learned to move all over again after two years in a chair.

"That's why I called you," he says. "Lorenzo would want to negotiate before we know what we're negotiating. Nico would want six weeks of data before he let me breathe. You'll just go look."

"I'll go look," I agree.

"You understand what this is." His voice drops, loses the dry edge. "We're not at war with the Basiles. We don't want to be."

"I know what it is."

"So you go quiet. You look. You confirm or you walk away. You don't act."

"Who knows about this?" I ask. "On our side."

"Right now? Three people. Me. Lorenzo. Dante." A pause. "And you."

Four, then. I turn the number over. Small is good. Small is how you keep something from becoming a fire.

"Keep it there," I say. "If it's real, the second it gets bigger than four men, it gets out, and then either the Basiles know we're looking or Interpol does, and I don't know which is worse for what you want."

"Agreed."

I stop at the corner. Across the street, a woman is arguing into her phone in rapid Italian, gesturing at nothing, and a couple walks past her wrapped together against the cold.

"You want me to bring anyone in?" I ask. "On the ground here?"

"Use your own judgment. You know the European side better than any of us." Bruno exhales. "Dante would come if you needed hands. He's in Chicago, but he'd be on a plane in an hour. You know that."

I do know that. Dante Castellani would cross an ocean for any of them without being asked twice. He is the closest thing the Sartoris have to a weapon that walks and talks and pours the wine while it watches the door.