Page 25 of Broken Honor

My fist slams against the table with a crack loud enough to make the ashtray jump and rattle.

“You don’t lose a hundred million in blood-soaked treasure and say I don’t know, Bugatti.”

“I didn’t lose it!” he snaps—too fast, too desperate. Then his voice drops. “I didn’t touch it. Not one crate. Not one stone.”

“You had one job,” I say slowly. “To protect the fucking stash!”

“I did,” he says, jaw clenched. “I did, Vieri. But things changed while you were inside. Things you couldn’t see from behind bars.”

“Then enlighten me,” I growl. “Start talking before I start carving answers out of your skin.”

His breath leaves him in a rush.

He glances away for a second—then back at me.

“You remember the meeting,” he says quietly. “The first time your father brought you to The Six.”

I was just eleven.

My father had taken me to the backroom of a butcher shop in the old quarter. The smell of blood and smoke clung to the walls. That was the first time I saw The Six—legends. Power in human form. Each with more blood on their hands than a war tribunal.

My father. Bugatti’s father. Mother J—the most feared woman in Southern Italy. And Desmond Volkov—a Russian-Italian hybrid with the smile of a viper and the patience of a guillotine.

The other two were younger and lovers—Vasco and Lena. Quiet but brilliant. They ran the offshore routing systems and controlled the border transfers between Serbia and Libya.

The Six didn’t deal drugs or guns.

They trafficked in something darker—war-torn commodities. Conflict diamonds and looted gold. Everything mined from chaos. Stolen from child soldiers, collapsed governments, mass graves. Packed into crates stamped with fake humanitarian seals. Moved across oceans in cargo labeled as medical aid and school supplies.

Then melted. Cut. Cleaned. Sold.

Clean money, dirty hands.

Each member had a share in the profits—an equal cut of sin.

My father had 20%. Before he died, he passed that share to me and told me to keep it secret from my brothers. The stash wasn’t part of the Tavano family fortune—it was older.

Before I went inside, I gave it to Bugatti. Trusted him to watch it like it was his own skin.

“I honored that,” Bugatti says now, voice low. “I kept it hidden. I paid the guards myself. I rotated the lock codes every month. But after you were locked up…”

His voice trails off.

“What?” I snap. “What changed?”.

“Desmond happened.”

I narrow my eyes. “Explain.”

He leans forward, voice low, steady now.

“While you were in prison, rumors started circling. Mother J heard something—small whispers at first. That Lena and Vasco didn’t die in a car crash like we were told. That it was a hit.”

“That’s old news.”

The two had died in car crash a year after my father let me know about The Six.

“No,” he says quickly. “Not a random hit. A sanctioned one. Desmond gave the order. He saw their union as a threat—forty percent between two lovers, planning to marry, raise a child. He thought they’d take over the entire stash.”

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