Harry could see Ricardo working through it behind his eyes. The Don had stayed alive and in power for decades by being better than everyone else at reading the people in front of him, and he was doing it now, tracking the shift in Harry's posture from someone reactive to someone deliberate, the change in his breathing, the way his eyes had stopped moving and started settling.It was subtle, but Ricardo wasn't built to miss subtle."Mr. Farrow," Ricardo said at last, his voice smooth and unhurried, filling the silence without forcing it. "Thank you for coming. I understand the past few days have been something of an ordeal."The understatement was almost worth laughing at, under different circumstances. An ordeal didn't quite cover being shot, drugged, and maneuvered into framing a psychopath for crimes that belonged to someone else entirely."I appreciate the hospitality," Harry replied, keeping his voice even, measured, carrying just enough courtesy without tipping into flattery or d

Alexei's laughter stopped mid-breath, cut off like a wire had been severed. His entire bearing changed in the space of a single second. The hulking, barely-contained enforcer just ceased to be there. His shoulders dropped out of their aggressive set. His expression moved from brutal amusement into something composed and measured, almost academic. Even his eyes were different, the wild light in them replaced by something sharp and deliberate. He let out a slow breath, more like mild inconvenience than anything else, and looked around the table as if taking stock of the room properly for the first time. "Ah. The families are gathered," he said, and his voice was completely transformed, fluent and unaccented English, controlled and precise, nothing like the guttural Russian from a moment before. "I wondered when this meeting would be called." The blood drained out of Harry's face. What the hell was this? This version of Alexei sat back down with quiet economy and folded his hands on

Harry sat alone in the vast conference room with Ricardo Cavalli, the silence between them sitting as heavy as stone. The other family heads had gone, their footsteps carrying down distant hallways until even those faded out completely. No guards stood at the doors. No one left to witness anything. Just the two of them, separated by a polished table and years of carefully built deception. Ricardo's question still hung in the air between them, deceptively simple: "Tell me, Harry. How much do you know about my daughter?" Harry felt his whole prepared strategy dissolve before it had a chance to take shape. He had walked in ready to defend himself against being named as Osaka's plant, prepared to spin something around Alexei and planted evidence and business ties gone sideways. But this was something different altogether. He had stumbled onto something, something significant enough that Ricardo had cleared a room full of the most powerful criminal figures in the country to address it p

The family heads filed out of the conference room in tight, bristling silence, their faces carefully blank but everything else about them radiating anger. Alexei moved first, the sharp-minded version of him, tablet still in hand, his steps measured and controlled. Octavio Tucci followed behind, fedora gripped in one fist, the other hand clenched at his side. O'Reilly's scarred face was pulled into something barely short of open fury as he crossed through the doorway. The Kurobane head said nothing at all, but his jaw was set hard enough to suggest it was taking effort. This wasn't displeasure. This was outright rage. Ricardo had dismissed them. Sent them out of the room like children being excused from a conversation they weren't old enough to be part of. And for what? To sit alone with some American nobody who had been caught with his hands in the enemy's pocket? Harry should have been dealt with the moment Alexei laid out the evidence, bullet through the skull, body gone, message

Monalisa knew Margot well enough. Had done enough business with her over the years to understand exactly how the woman operated. Cold. Precise. Willing to use whatever was available, including herself, to get to where she was going. If Margot had taken Harry into her custody, and Monalisa knew she had, then things had almost certainly grown complicated in ways that were difficult to predict.But that was part of the point, wasn't it? She wanted to see whether Harry could find his way out of something like this. Whether he had the intelligence, the adaptability, the raw instinct for survival to move through a room full of people who wanted to use or destroy him and come out on the other side. The odds were badly against him. Margot's manipulation, Ricardo's paranoia, the frightening duality of Alexei, the families' shared appetite for blood.If he made it through? He was worth protecting. Worth pulling into the larger picture she was assembling.If he didn't? She had lost nothing but a