The Devil's Bargain

Power was a language I had spoken since birth.

Not the kind that came with titles or certificates or the hollow applause of men in suits. Real power. The kind that lived in a look across a room. The kind that made grown men forget how to breathe. The kind that my grandfather had built with his bare hands in the streets of Palermo before he ever set foot on American soil.

I had inherited every inch of it.

The city spread out beneath me like a living thing, all glittering lights and dark corners, visible through the floor to ceiling windows of my penthouse. Forty two floors up and still I could feel the pulse of it. The hunger of it. This city had tried to swallow my family whole once, a long time ago, before we swallowed it first.

Now it was mine.

Every street. Every port. Every politician who smiled at cameras and took our money in the dark. Every judge who owed us a verdict. Every police captain who looked the other way when we needed him to.

Mine.

"The Sinclair matter has been confirmed." My consigliere, Marco, spoke from behind me. He had been with me for eleven years and had learned long ago not to waste my time with unnecessary words. "He accepted the terms."

"Of course he did." I didn't turn from the window. "He had no other choice."

Richard Sinclair had been a useful man once. Well connected, ambitious, the kind of respectable face that could open doors my name sometimes closed. For three years he had operated on the edges of our world, moving money, facilitating introductions, keeping his hands just clean enough to maintain his social standing.

Then he had gotten greedy.

It was always the greedy ones who caused problems.

He had borrowed from us to fund a venture that failed spectacularly, then spent two years finding increasingly creative ways to avoid repayment. I had been patient. More patient than most men in my position would have been. I had sent reminders. I had extended deadlines. I had given him every opportunity to handle his debt like the businessman he claimed to be.

He had wasted every single one.

So I had changed the terms.

"You've seen the girl?" I asked.

Marco moved to stand beside me. In the reflection of the glass I could see his expression — carefully neutral, the way it always was when he wasn't sure how I would receive what he was about to say. "I have. At the Sinclair Foundation gala last spring. She's—" he paused. "Not what I expected."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning she doesn't look like a man like Sinclair's daughter. She's sharper than him. Watchful." Another pause. "She won't make this easy for you."

I finally turned from the window.

Marco had worked with me long enough to know things that most people spent their entire lives never learning about Dante Vitale. He knew I didn't make impulsive decisions. He knew that every move I made, no matter how it appeared on the surface, was calculated several steps in advance.

What he didn't know — what nobody in this room or any other room needed to know — was that I had seen Aria Sinclair before the gala.

Eight months ago, outside a bookshop on the east side of the city on a grey Tuesday morning. She had been arguing with a cab driver about the fare, completely fearless, her dark hair whipping in the November wind, and she had looked up and caught me staring and hadn't looked away first.

Nobody looked at me and didn't look away first.

It had stayed with me. An irritant under my skin that I couldn't locate well enough to remove.

When Sinclair's debt had reached its final stage and I had sat across from my advisors weighing options, her face had surfaced in my mind with inconvenient clarity. And I had made a decision that was equal parts business and something else I hadn't examined too closely.

"She doesn't need to make it easy," I said. "She needs to show up."

Marco was quiet for a moment. "And if she refuses?"

I walked to my desk and picked up the crystal glass of whiskey waiting there. "She won't."

"You sound certain for a man who hasn't met her yet."

"I'm certain because her father understands what refusal would cost him." I took a slow sip. The whiskey was twenty five years old and worth every cent. "And because whatever Aria Sinclair is, she loves her father enough to protect him. Even from himself."

That much I had learned from watching her. From the quiet, careful research I had conducted over the past several months with the thoroughness I applied to every acquisition. Aria Sinclair was brilliant — top of her class at Columbia, fluent in three languages, currently running the charitable arm of her father's foundation with a competence that made his own management look embarrassing. She visited her father every Sunday for dinner. She had turned down three job offers from firms outside the city because she hadn't wanted to leave him alone.

She was loyal to a man who didn't deserve it.

That loyalty was going to cost her.

"The engagement announcement goes out Friday," I said, setting my glass down. "I want the venue for the wedding secured by end of week. The Bellini estate upstate."

"The family will want to meet her before the wedding."

"They'll meet her at the engagement dinner." I moved back toward the window. The city glittered indifferently below. "Make sure my mother understands that I expect her to be civil."

Marco made a sound that in another man might have been a laugh. My mother's civility was a complicated subject at the best of times. "And your brothers?"

"Tell Luca to keep his opinions to himself." I paused. "Tell Nico the same."

"And if they don't?"

"Then they'll answer to me."

The room settled into silence. Marco knew better than to fill it. Outside, the city hummed and breathed and carried on its business, unaware that its king was standing forty two floors above it thinking about a woman with dark hair who hadn't looked away.

In six weeks she would be mine.

Not because I needed a wife. I had spent thirty four years perfectly content without one and could have spent thirty four more the same way. Not even entirely because of the debt, though that was the frame that made it legible to everyone around me.

But because Aria Sinclair had looked at me on a grey Tuesday morning like I was something worth looking at, and I had not been able to get her out of my head since.

And Dante Vitale did not tolerate things he couldn't control.

Least of all himself.

I picked up my phone and dialed.

It rang twice before his voice came through, tight with the particular strain of a man who had been waiting for a verdict.

"Vitale," Sinclair said.

"It's done," I said. "Make sure she's ready."

I ended the call before he could respond and stood for a long moment in the quiet of my penthouse, the city spread out below me like everything I had ever taken and everything I had yet to take.

Then I picked up my whiskey, finished it in one slow swallow, and went back to work.

There would be time enough to think about Aria Sinclair later.

There would be, I suspected, a great deal of time.