Page 155 of Savage Roses

salvatore

D-Day arrives.The gathering between the Five Families. The first one in five years and the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

You’d think I’d be excited. Finally, my opportunity to humiliate and destroy Lucius once and for all. Do what I’ve been working toward for more than half my life—and I am.

But it’s also surreal.

At any moment, I might blink and realize I’m still in the cell. I never escaped. That was all a figment of my imagination and foggy brain. In a twisted way, some part of me almost wishes that were the case. If only to avoid confronting the very real possibility I’m leading everybody to their deaths tonight.

Stitches, Fabio, and the handful of others.

Delphine.

Everything boils down to tonight. We’re either living or dying. Every last one of us.

If we fail, we don’t survive. Wewillbe killed.

As confident and as thirsty for revenge as I’ve always been, my last failure rocked me. Broke me down in a way I’ve never been broken down, almost to the point I’m different. Irreparably, permanently different.

These things are things I haven’t voiced out loud. Not even to Delphine. Though she senses it—she always senses it. I see it in her small, almost bittersweet smile whenever I look over and catch her staring in my direction. Her lips quirk slightly, her brown eyes warm with love, yet also a sense of sadness.

She knows it too.

We could die tonight.

I give her an out—all of them an out—but none of them take it. We’re in this ’til the bitter end. If we go down, we go down together; wedietogether.

So long as Lucius dies too. Using Omar’s explosives expertise, I’ve devised a backup plan to the backup plan that guarantees no matter what Lucius is dying today. Even if I do alongside him.

The Five Families gathering is always held at the same place. Inside the main conference room of the Northam Bank building, one of the largest skyscrapers in the city. It’s considered a neutral enough location that offers the desired amount of discretion.

Despite the fact that Lucius is top of the food chain, the other Families aren’t spineless. They’ve held strong on certain aspects of what’s a fragile alliance between everybody. A neutral location for the meeting is one of those.

To the public, nothing’s disclosed. The bank execs accept their under-the-table payoff in agreement they’ll keep the transaction as hush-hush as requested. They get money and we get use of their building for the night. They know better than to choose otherwise; they’d wind up decapitated with their heads on display at the bank teller windows come morning if they didn’t agree.

Call it an amicable deal… but a coercive one. That’s one commonality among the Families—do not cross them or be prepared to be fucked up in some form.

The building’s emptied by five o’ clock. Employees are herded off and management evacuates not long after. It’s another hour before the Families arrive. One by one, in a discreet limo or luxury vehicle, they pull up to the back entrance of the building. Their private security escorts them inside.

We’re already on the scene. At least Arturo and Lev are, posing as security guards.

Both are more recent additions to my crew, from my days after I separated from under Lucius’s thumb. Neither of them is well known within the Mancino organization. Which makes them the perfect guys to stand in as security.

We’ve paid off the real security guards. Kept one of them and dismissed the other two. The guy we’ve kept agrees to help for a cool half million bucks. More money than he’s ever seen in his life. His only stipulation being that he gets to evacuate as soon as the violence starts up.

A fair enough trade I agree to.

“What’s the latest?” I radio in. From my vantage point in a building across the street, another fancy car worth more than most people’s annual salary has pulled up. The doors spring open and out comes petite-sized Botan Saito and his closest advisor. I track them into the bank building with my binoculars.

“Only waiting on Lucius,” answers Arturo over the radio transmission. “He’s last to arrive. The others were just talking about it in the conference room. Apparently, he’s running late.”

“Out of the ordinary. We’ll have to look into that. And Kozlov?”

“Seated inside and waiting. We’re watching him on the security cameras now. He’s getting impatient and starting to complain. ‘Disrespectful’ was the word he used.”

“Keep monitoring them. We’ll be coming in soon.”

I switch off the radio and turn to the other four. Delphine’s closest. She takes the binoculars from my grasp and then presses them to her eyes for a close up. Stitches is next, his pair of glasses low on his skinny, crooked nose. By the puzzled expression on his face, we’re on the same line of thinking.

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