Page 9 of Deadly Confessions
We did. He skimmed from the arrangement. Twenty percent over eight months, quietly, a number he thought was too small to notice. But I notice everything.
Enzo looks to me when it's done. I'm already at the window.
"Take him somewhere he won't smell," I say.
The room clears.
I stand at the glass and watch the street below. Four in the afternoon. Naples is alive the way it always is at this hour: vendors, tourists, a woman arguing with a delivery driver over a parking spot she believes she owns. The sun comes in at an angle that makes everything look older than it is. The stone, the people, the whole layered wreck of this city.
My reflection is faint in the glass. I don't look at it long.
Enzo comes back in. He closes the door behind him, which means there's more.
"The Ferrante situation," he says.
"Tell me."
He sets a folder on the table. I don't open it. I wait for him to speak because that's faster, and because I want to watch his face while he does.
"They hit the Posillipo handoff Thursday night." He keeps his voice level, the way I've trained him to. "They knew the time. They knew the route. Took the whole shipment and walked away clean. Cavallo took a hit to the shoulder. He'll keep the arm. Russo wasn't as lucky."
I turn from the window. "Russo is dead."
It isn't a question. Enzo nods anyway.
Russo had a daughter in Pozzuoli. She's four years old. These are facts I file without expression, because this room requires it, because the men watching me are waiting to see if the Ferrante hit lands or if it slides off. I let it slide off. Grief is for later, for the walk home at three in the morning when the city is finally quiet enough to let you feel.
"How many of our people knew the route?"
"Six."
"Six is a small number."
"Yes."
"Then we find which one of the six talked." I pick up the folder. The photos are inside: the Posillipo dock, the empty crates, the place where Russo died circled in red pen by whoever prepared this briefing. "Or we narrow it. Was the route shared the same way every time, or did Thursday's route come through a different channel?"
Enzo's jaw tightens. He doesn't know yet. He should know. I set the folder back down.
"Find out," I say. "I want names and I want the communication chain. Don't outsource it. Do it yourself."
"Of course."
"And Enzo."
He stops at the door.
"If the Ferrantes have a source inside this family, they've had it for longer than Thursday. Look back six months. Look at what they knew and when they knew it. Pattern, not incident."
He nods. He leaves.
Falcone and the other two follow him out without being told. Good. I've trained them to read rooms.
I pour two fingers of amaro I won't finish. I drink one of them standing at the table, looking at nothing, thinking about the shape of the problem.
The Ferrante family has been hungry for three years. New money, new leadership, the particular recklessness of a clan that hasn't lost anyone important yet. They've been making moves on the port for two years: small, careful moves, the kind you can dismiss as opportunism until the pattern becomes undeniable. I dismissed them too long. My father would have hit back harder and faster, would have made a demonstration early enough to settle the question. My father is dead.
I'm the one running this now.
