Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 45635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 228(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
I tightened my grip and forced his head back so he had to look at me. “You don’t know anything about what I was handed or what I take,” I said. “But I know exactly what you did. You hit my routes. You took product that wasn’t yours, burned through money that didn’t belong to you, and made noise where there shouldn’t have been any. You didn’t build anything. You fucked shit up.”
“It’s my name too,” he snapped. “I’m Rossi blood. I deserve a seat at that table.”
“You don’t deserve anything,” I said flatly. “You don’t have the control to hold it.”
“Fuck you,” he spat. “You think you’re better than me? You’re just another trained dog doing what you were told. That’s all you are.”
I let him talk, because men like him always said more when they thought they were about to die.
Alessio let out a rough laugh, the sound breaking at the edges like he didn’t have full control of it anymore. Blood streaked his mouth when he spoke, but he didn’t seem to care, his eyes locked on mine like he still thought there was a way out of this.
“You think this ends here?” he said, his voice uneven but pushing through it anyway. “You think I’m the only one making moves like this? There’s plenty of others just like me doing the same thing in the shadows. The Rossi name carries more than guns and cash. You know that.”
I didn’t respond, and he took that as room to keep talking.
“There are routes already in place,” he went on, faster now. “People moving through ports, across borders, city to city. It’s already happening. I tapped into it. Built on what’s already there.”
His chest rose hard as he sucked in a breath, trying to steady himself when I kept him in a viselike lock.
“We could run it right,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “You and me. You’ve got control and connections, I’ve got plans. Big plans and plenty of low-level help who don’t care about dying to make shit happen. We take it coast to coast, lock it down, make it ours before anyone else gets close.”
I stayed silent, watching him. He wasn’t wrong about one thing. The routes existed. The Rossi name sat behind it in ways most people never saw, buried through layers of men and operations that kept it far enough removed to deny. It had grown too big to cut out in one move.
Taking something like that down would take time, planning, and the kind of reach that didn’t leave anything behind. That didn’t mean I would ever touch it.
“You know what you are,” he pushed, something desperate creeping into his expression. “I can see it in your eyes. They made you the same way they threw me away. We’re the same kind of men. The ones they use when they need something.”
His mouth twisted into something that almost looked like a smile.
“Two sons they didn’t want standing on their own,” he said. “We build something bigger than them. Take what they tried to keep out of reach.”
The mention of building something bigger made my blood run colder. He thought he could stand next to me. He thought he could reach for what I was connected to. Did he not know the Rossi name was tied to shit that should have been buried? Things involving trafficking and flesh. Is that what he wanted control over? I smiled, something violent uncoiling in my chest.
There was nothing lower than selling humans. And the Rossi dynasty had their hands in that for a long time. But over the years, they’d removed themselves far enough with shell companies and middle men that no one would ever be able to solidly link them to it.
My grip tightened on him just enough that he felt it.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, my voice even.
He stilled for a second, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right.
“I take what belongs to me,” I continued. “I run what I build. I don’t take what’s not mine.”
His expression shifted, confusion cutting through the panic. “It’s money,” he said, sharper now.
“That’s all it is. It moves the same as anything else. You’re already in this world. Don’t act like you’re above it.”
It was then I knew for a fact he was talking about the trafficking. “That isn’t business,” I said. “That’s rot. I don’t let it near what’s mine.”
Especially not near her. Lucia was the only clean thing I had left. The only thing worth protecting from the filth I lived in.
Something in his face broke then, whatever confidence he had left cracking under it. “You’re lying to yourself,” he snapped, anger pushing through now that the bargain wasn’t working. “You think you’re different? You think killing men makes you better than me?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m the one still standing.”