Chapter 57

ADRIANO'S POV~

The room reeked of expensive cigars, testosterone, and blood-earned money.

I leaned back in the high-backed leather chair, the edges of the massive mahogany table lined with men who made the law bend. Each face was different—Russian arms dealers, Sicilian smugglers, Turkish jewel brokers—but the air was the same. Dangerous. No one laughed unless it was a threat. No one shifted without permission.

Salvatore moved like a fucking hawk, pacing around the table, files in hand, double-checking every number and clause before the ink hit the page. He was speaking in clipped Italian to a man from Napoli, something about weight discrepancies in the recent gold shipment. The man tried to argue. Salvatore shut him down with a look that said, Do it again, and your kids will eat without hands.

The deals today were clean by our standards—smuggled luxury watches, counterfeit designer bags worth more than small houses, a few high-stake gambling dens across Europe we were laundering into