Chapter 1

Alessandro

A picture of Romero and Helena Sorvino hung firmly on the wall above the commissioner’s head. It was one of only three pictures of him smiling. The tug on his lips was so damn obvious. It was always surprising to me how few people seemed to notice it.

“Mr. Klune,” I interrupted whatever he’d been saying, nodding to the picture, “what do you think of that picture?”

The commissioner, Mr. Murray Klune, was not your typical fat fool who got drunk off power and embezzling taxes like many of the representatives in this city. He was intelligent, quick-witted, and sensible, but even he glanced at the picture and didn’t react in the most original of ways.

He ogled my parents with an open mouth and then scoffed. “I mean no offense, Mr. Sorvino, but that looks like a man that doesn’t know how to smile.” He faced me again, adjusting his over-starched suit.

My lips twitched. Unlike my father, I was very generous with my smiles. They made conversations much easier. “It doesn’t, does it?”

The grand table stood between us, with a half-drunk bottle of brandy and two glasses in the center.

“Not at all. His reputation does him no favors either. I’d be surprised if there were even one photo of him smiling.” There must have been a joke somewhere there because Murray chuckled at it and reached for his glass. He was the only one with ice. “Must have been hell growing up under somebody like that.”

There were three pictures, in fact, and only one of them was a family photo.

The one we’d taken the week after my father had stepped down. The corners of his lips had twitched slightly just as the camera had gone off—that one sat over the dining room mantle.

The third one was a picture from my parents’ wedding. That was the only picture that clearly showed Romero Sorvino, and it sat in my mother’s sitting room.

And, it hadn’t been hell growing up. Not at all.

It had been much worse.

“You can’t even imagine, Mr. Klune.” My smile didn’t falter, and neither did my gaze. I let them burn into him, making him squirm in his seat and want to leave as quickly as possible.

Murray cleared his throat. “Yes…eh…well, I’m sure I can’t...”

I liked smiles. Maybe it was because my father opposed them, but they were like my personal weapons. Like the ace card up my sleeve. A smile could charm, ease, and intimidate, sometimes all at once. It was one of the many tools I used when talking “business” with associates.

Like I was now.

Dom had caused trouble again, taking what was supposed to have been simple intimidation and turning it into a homicidal spree. Now there was a crime scene with twenty dead men, killed in particularly brutal ways, and Dominic’s name was sprawled across the scene. If our family name hadn’t been sprawled beside his, that man would have been in prison ages ago—a gift from me so he could finally learn the consequences of the chaos he loved to inflict so much.

…or maybe not.

In a business like ours, a man like Dom was essential. Frankie and I were calm and level-headed because that was how deals got made, but Dom was wild with an inherent bloodlust, like a wolf that was always starved. It was balanced in its own way.

That was old news though. I’d shut that particular chapter last week, but here we were again. Together in my office on the top floor of the NYC building, talking business.

Somebody had tried to play a game right under my nose, and I was here to put things right.

“So, how is the investigation going?” I asked, putting the small talk aside and leaning more into my seat. “I believe you were about to talk about some hiccup?” Murray was destabilized now. That was his third glass since I’d asked him to look at the picture, and he still would not raise his eyes to meet mine.

“Ah, the Bologna case? No, there’s no hiccup with that.” He was all too happy to get there. It meant he could leave quicker, which was what we all wanted. I had other business to attend to today. “I mean, it’s not going too well. There aren’t really any leads.”

“Oh? That doesn’t sound good, but I’m sure the police will deliver in the end. They usually do. However, that wasn’t what I was talking about Mr. Klune. You must know about this issue with the bank and one of my properties. I was asking how that was going. The bank says there might be some legal issues with the police department, and since I had a friend there, I thought I might as well investigate it.”

He was already shaking his head. “There’s nothing, believe me. It’s all legal. A building sold without your permission and a breach of contract; you are properly within your rights. Yes…”

“I do.” I glanced at my watch, the meeting had only lasted thirty minutes, but it felt like forever. “So how much longer

will this interference last? Is the police department hoping it somehow becomes a bigger case?”

“What? No, never…I—” He drank and cleared his throat. This was clearly a ploy for more money, Murray needed funding for his ambitions, and he’d wanted to milk it out of me. To my face though, all that bravado had evaporated.

“You?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. He was about to open it again when somebody knocked at the door. Frankie. He had a very distinct way of knocking.

Dom never knocked, just kicked the door open as if it owed him something.

“Commissioner Klune,” Frankie greeted with a raised brow as he entered, heading straight to sit beside me and take my glass. “I was hoping you’d be done by now, Ales. You know the commissioner is a very busy man.”

I nodded slowly. “True, we were just about rounding up actually. Apparently, the Bologna case isn’t something to worry about.”

Frankie looked up. “Really, that’s good to hear,

Commissioner.”

Murray swallowed and tried to smile. “Yeah, uh, well, thank you, Mr. Francesco.” He gave a pathetic chuckle and licked his lips.

He was sweating up a storm now despite the blasting air conditioners.

“But” I added, interrupting Frankie again from filling the glass. “I think our friend was about to point out an issue.”

Frankie had cold eyes. A blueish grey color that could freeze you on the spot. He looked the most like our father, except he was taller and even less inclined to say too many words.

Smiles were my weapons of choice. The silence was his.

The color drained from Murray’s face.

One Sorvino was too much for anybody to handle. Two would have been overkill. Murray fished for the napkin in his suit pocket to wipe his forehead, licking his lips profusely. “We—well, you see. It’s not a big problem, really—” “No?” Frankie’s voice interrupting.

I got things done easily and quickly, but with Frankie, it was even easier, quicker. Cleaner. “It’s just that the other party—”

“The other party?”

“Well, yes, they have…uh, substantial claims that might inflame the entire thing if—”

Frankie replaced the glass on the table gently, but the echo must have been the loudest thing I’d heard since I entered the building that morning. “Commissioner Klune, I know you are a very busy man. There must be a million other things you have to do today, aren’t there?”

Murray nodded, wiping his brows again, reaching for his glass with shaky hands before thinking better of it.

I could smell the threat coming. Frankie had been shorttempered since Dom’s outburst because otherwise, I was the one that doled out thinly veiled threats to keep things interesting.

I raised a hand to interrupt him.

“There isn’t any need Frankie. This business is already concluded, right, Mr. Klune?”

I knew who the other party was. They’d bought our property and overturned one of the primary places we used to launder money. You would think they would have known better than to mess with us.

That was another thing I would have to attend to.

My smile was long gone. I’d grown tired of the meeting.

Murray didn’t look like somebody that would agree, but he looked into my eyes for the first time in more than half an hour and nodded.

Unlike Frankie, my eyes were expressive. I’d hated them for that as a kid, before I’d learned how to use them properly. But now I could, and along with my smiles, they were weapons I used very often to get my way.

The most effective threats were not always the most brutal, sometimes they were the ones that reflected clearly in my eyes. Like the ones Murray must have found when he looked.

My smile returned. Who didn’t love it when business was concluded successfully?

“Then have a lovely day, Commissioner,” I said. “And be sure to give my regards to Christine and the girls.”