Chapter 4 Face To Face

• I wasn't supposed to be here. Dons didn't walk into tenements that reeked of mildew and broken dreams. We sent soldiers for collections. We watched from marble towers while others waded through filth.
• But tonight, necessity wore my mother's face.
• The Rossi apartment clung to me like wet fabric. Bleach, cigarette ash, the metallic tang of fear-sweat. My men moved through the cramped space with predatory grace, tailored suits stark against peeling wallpaper and water-stained ceiling. Rico flanked my right, hand inside his jacket. Ready.
• I stepped across the splintered threshold, expecting the usual scene. A man on his knees, babbling apologies. Marco Rossi begging for mercy he didn't deserve, offering his hands, his life, anything to delay the inevitable.
• Instead, I found defiance in a five-foot frame.
• She stood between me and the couch where Marco Rossi hunched like a broken marionette. The daughter. Had to be. Same dark eyes as the thief, same stubborn line to her jaw.
• But where Marco cowered, she blazed.
• Her chin lifted as our gazes locked. Most men couldn't hold my stare for three seconds without their knees buckling. She didn't even flinch. In fact, she leaned forward slightly, as if daring me to come closer, to test whatever resolve she'd forged in this place of peeling paint and empty promises.
• "Don Torrino." Her voice carried no tremor, no surrender. Low, steady, with an edge that wasn't quite defiance but certainly wasn't fear. "If you've come for my father, you'll have to go through me."
• Behind her, Marco whimpered something in broken Italian. Pathetic syllables that died when she cut the air with her hand, silencing him without breaking our stare. She commanded him with a gesture. Her own father. The dynamic spoke volumes about who truly held power in this crumbling apartment.
• The air shifted. Bleach and desperation gave way to something electric, dangerous. Something that made my pulse quicken in ways I hadn't felt in years. My blood hummed beneath my skin, a sensation I'd almost forgotten existed outside of violence.
• I should have laughed. A slip of a woman thinking she could stand against me? It should have been insulting. My soldiers would dine on this story for weeks if I let her continue this theater.
• Instead, I was fascinated.
• She was small, delicate even, but her presence filled the cramped room like smoke from a lit fuse. Dangerous because flame attracted attention. Dangerous because fire spread. Dangerous because once you stared too long into fire, you forgot about everything else burning around you.
• I moved closer, boots silent on threadbare carpet. The space contracted with each step, but she held her ground. Her pulse hammered at the base of her throat. Rapid, but not panicked. I could see the flutter of it beneath pale skin, could almost count the beats. Life, vibrant and defiant, refusing to be extinguished.
• Her hands remained steady at her sides. No wringing fingers, no nervous gestures. She'd planted her feet in a way that suggested she'd practiced standing firm, maybe her whole life in this place where the weak got swallowed whole.
• "Your father took something from me." My voice came out lower than intended, intimate in the suffocating closeness. "Do you understand what that means?"
• Her gaze didn't waver, didn't search the room for evidence. She knew exactly what I was talking about. Had probably known the moment she heard my name at her door.
• "It means you came yourself." No hesitation, no plea for mercy. "Which makes it important. Important enough to kill for."
• Something twisted in my chest. Not quite amusement, sharper than intrigue. When had anyone last surprised me? When had anyone looked at me and seen not the monster, but the man driven to monstrous acts? She'd read the situation with startling clarity, understood the subtext most people missed while they were busy pissing themselves.
• I studied her face. The slope of her cheekbones, the determined set of her mouth, the way intelligence flickered behind those dark eyes. Beautiful, yes, but beauty was common as dirt in my world. I'd had models, actresses, politicians' daughters. Beauty bored me after the first five minutes.
• This was something else.
• This was courage without stupidity. Strength without bravado. She wasn't posturing for an audience or playing the martyr. She was calculating, thinking three moves ahead while most people in her position could barely think past the gun at my hip.
• I could see it in the slight narrowing of her eyes, the way she tracked my movements without obvious fear. She was measuring me, just as I was measuring her. Taking my dimensions, noting the exits, probably cataloging every weapon my men carried.
• Smart. Dangerously so.
• Rico shifted behind me, leather holster creaking. The sound cut through the tension like a blade. "Boss?"
• I didn't answer. Couldn't. My attention was wholly consumed by this woman who stood in my path like she had the right, like she commanded space that should have been mine by default. Like she understood that power wasn't always about size or weapons or the men at your back.
• Sometimes power was just refusing to move.
• Behind her, Marco Rossi made another pitiful sound, but it barely registered. The whole room had narrowed to just her. Just this moment where someone had done the impossible.
• For the first time in years, someone had made me pause.
• For the first time in my life, someone had made me want to pause.
• I could have given the order. Rico would have her on the ground in seconds. We'd drag Marco out, do what needed doing, and leave this place to its rot and misery. The machine would keep turning, business as usual, another debt collected in blood.
• But I didn't give the order.
• Instead, I found myself taking another step closer, close enough now that I could smell her shampoo beneath the apartment's stench. Something floral, incongruously sweet. Close enough to see the fine lines of exhaustion at the corners of her eyes, evidence of too many nights fighting battles like this one.
• "What's your name?" The question escaped before I could stop it, before I could remember that I didn't care about names. Names made people human, and humans were harder to hurt.
• Her eyes widened slightly. Surprise, finally. She hadn't expected that question any more than I'd expected to ask it.
• And in that flicker of surprise, I saw something that made my chest tighten: hope, quickly smothered but there nonetheless. She thought maybe, just maybe, she could negotiate with me. That if I saw her as a person rather than an obstacle, she might buy her father another day.
• She had no idea how dangerous that hope was. No idea that by making me see her, she'd just made everything infinitely more compli