Chapter two
375 Words
“Don Vittorio?” A soft knock at the door. Gennaro, his consigliere, a man whose face was a roadmap of quiet counsel and buried secrets. He entered without waiting for an answer, as was his privilege. “Marco is here.”
Vittorio closed the folder. “Send him in.”
Marco, his only son, entered with the restless energy of a caged leopard. At thirty-five, he had his mother’s dark, impatient eyes and his father’s defiant jaw, but none of the stillness that was the true mark of power. He wore a tailored suit, but it seemed to sit uncomfortably on him, as if he’d rather be in tactical gear.
“Father. You wanted to see me.”
“Sit.”
Marco sat, perched on the edge of the chair opposite the desk. He glanced at the closed folder but said nothing. The silence stretched, filled with the ghosts of old arguments.
“The Sokolov shipment,” Vittorio began, his voice a dry rustle of leaves. “It arrives next week. I want you to handle the meet. Alone.”
Chapter two:
Marco’s eyes lit up, then immediately narrowed with suspicion. “Alone? Since when do we trust the Russian alone? You’ve always said trust is a currency we spend sparingly.”
“And you must learn to spend it. Sokolov is a businessman. Greedy, but predictable. He respects strength. Show him yours. Not with a battalion of soldiers, but with your presence. Your word.”
It was a test. A dangerous one. Sergei Sokolov was a Bratva captain, a man whose cruelty was as cold and sharp as a Siberian winter. The shipment was a new synthetic opioid, a partnership of convenience between the old world and the new. Marco had been pushing for more responsibility, for a sign that the mantle would pass to him. Vittorio was giving it. And part of him, a part he barely acknowledged, wondered if the Russian would do what his illness had not yet managed.
“I can handle him,” Marco said, a flicker of the old bravado returning.
“Handling is not the same as understanding,” Vittorio said. “You understand the trigger, Marco. You need to understand the pause before it.”
- Writer
