Chapter 17

• It had rained earlier, which meant the room warmers in Carlo’s private boardroom would be functioning at an unusual pace, especially since he was having guests around. The air was choked with the acrid smell of stale cigar smoke and the palpable tension of men who dealt in death and dined with the devil himself.
• Around the large round table was a collection of the city’s most formidable drug barons, all sited, their faces etched with varying degrees of shrewdness and suspicion.
• Outside, the midday sun after the heavy rain fall beat down on the sprawling villa, but within these walls of the shrewd boardroom, a perpetual gloom reigned, broken only by the harsh glare of a single, unshaded chandelier.