I see someone running as I drive up to the garage. It looks like one of Big Tony’s enforcers. Not a Riela, but one of the guys from outside the family who worked his way up pretty high. Michael, yeah that’s it. I try to wave to him, but I see him sprinting as if a lion were chasing him or something.

I shrug it off and drive up to the garage. I park outside, and when I get out of the car, I hear someone shouting.

Dots start connecting in my head, and I instinctively grab my gun. I chamber a round and disengage the safety. I raise the gun and move into the garage.

Fuck. Fuck.

Jeremy, one of the mechanics, is squirming around on the ground, moaning in pain. A big pool of blood is beneath him, and he’s clutching his leg.

“I’m fine,” he groans. “Get Vinny!”

“Where’s Vinny?” I shout. “Vinny!”

He points toward a car. I look over toward it, but hear nothing. No cries, no groans, just nothing.

I get a really bad feeling in my gut, like someone stoked a bunch of hot coals and just threw them down my throat until they started smoldering at the bottom of my stomach. It makes it hard to walk, so I run.

As soon as I get near the car, I see blood all along the bumper and the floor. I get behind it and turn around, and I see Vinny. He’s been shot three or four times, and it’s clear as day that he’s dead. I’ve seen lots of dead guys in my time, many that I shot myself, and Vinny is dead. His eyes are still open, his mouth is agape, and he’s not even bleeding anymore. Just gone.

“Who the fuck did this,” I shout, to no one in particular, but Jeremy answers.

“It was Michael,” Jeremy says. “He’s with the Rielas. They shit all over your truce, Luca.”

I pull my phone out and make a call to Donovan. He’s an EMT, and I pay him a good chunk per month to pick up our casualties and get them to the hospital. No questions asked.

“Two at the garage,” I say, and hang up.

“I gotta find Bella,” I say. “And where the fuck is Gio.”

I look over at his fucking table. The damn peanut bowl is empty, and his stool is on the ground.

“He was supposed to be keeping watch here!”

Jeremy points toward the office. “Bella’s in there with Gio–”

Why the fuck is Bella here? But I’m running toward the office before Jeremy even finishes talking. I go to open the door, and it’s locked, so I kick it.

I hear a gunshot, and a bullet blasts through the door. I hear it whoosh past my ear.

“Gio!” I shout, my adrenaline spiking even harder. “You fuck, it’s me! Luca!”

The door swings open, and I can smell gunpowder. Gio’s still got the smoking gun in his hand. I look past him and see Bella sitting in my chair.

“I protected her,” Gio says, stammering.

Bella nods, tears in her eyes. “Is everyone okay?”

She’s wearing a bright yellow sundress, and I can tell she spent a lot of time on her makeup, because it’s all smeared and across her tear-stained face. Her perfume is filling the office, but the smell of fear is even thicker.

I grab hold of her, squeezing her tight against me. I hold her so tight that I can tell she’s struggling to breathe, so I let go some. “Fuck. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“We heard the gunshots,” Gio says, “And naturally if Bella weren’t here, I’d have run out there with guns blazing. I’d have brought down whoever the fuck was that did this, but seeing as Bella was here, I prioritized like I knew you would, Luca. I knew you said Vinny was priority, but I figured Bella is even more priority, so I guarded this door with my life. That’s why I almost shot you, I thought you were the guy coming for us.”

I pat him on the shoulder. “You did good, Gio. Except for the part where you almost shot me. But fuck it, you did good. This is why I trust you. Anyone else would have got hot-headed and abandoned Bella, maybe drawn them to her.”

“Luca,” Bella says, pulling on my arm. “Is everyone okay?”

I shake my head. “They got VInny.”

I hear ambulance sirens in the distance.

“Jeremy got shot too,” I say, “But he’s fine.”

Bella rushes through the door, and Gio and I barely can catch up to her.

She drops down beside Jeremy.

“I’m fine,” he grunts. “For real. I’ve been shot before. This one went clean through.”

Bella finds a clean rag and presses it to Jeremy’s leg.

“Who was it?” she asks, examining the rag and frowning at the amount of blood.

I frown now. We know it was Michael, but can we be sure it was Big Tony who sent him?

“We don’t know yet,” I say.

I don’t want to talk about who it might have been in front of Gio, there’s too much risk that he’d–

“It was Michael,” Jeremy says. “He runs with Big Tony Riela.”

Bella drops the rag and looks up at me, her jaw hanging wide.

Gio starts bouncing up and down, punching his open palm with a fist. “Fuck! I knew it! I knew we couldn’t trust those Riela fucks!”

He looks down at Bella and frowns. “I mean. You excluded, of course.”

“He wouldn’t have broken his word,” she says, looking up at me. “Luca, I swear. Let me...let me talk to him. I’ll figure out what happened. I’ll get him to ask Michael, and–”

The ambulance sirens get so loud that I can’t hear her, and the ambulance rolls in. Donovan jumps out and starts clapping. “Let’s go, let’s go! You know the drill!”

I help Donovan get Jeremy onto a stretcher. Whenever I call him over like this, he usually has to come alone. He has some kind of setup that erases the records from the dispatch system, and he can’t risk bringing anyone else in on it in case he ever gets caught. The end result is our guys just appearing at the hospital, without anyone able to ask too many nosy questions about how they got there, or who called it in.

“Where’s the other one?” Donovan asks. “You said two.”

“He’s dead,” I say.

Donovan frowns and tilts his head toward the ambulance. “That one will be fine, you want me to bring the stiff in–”

I shove him against the side of the ambulance. “That stiff deserves your respect.”

He holds his palms up at me, and I can feel Bella pulling on me too.

I let go of him. “Yeah. Take him too. We gotta clean this mess up, no time for...just take care of him, Donovan. With respect.”

Donovan nods, and the two of us get Vinny into a body bag.

Fuck. He was supposed to stay out of all this. Now I got him killed. We zip up the bag, and I start wondering how the hell I’m going to tell this to his family. They will blame me, and I know I’ll deserve every bit of that blame.

I tap twice on the back of the ambulance, and Donovan drives off, sirens blaring.

Bella holds onto me, her head resting on my shoulder, tears staining my shirt, and the silence finally settles over the garage, but only for a brief moment.

At least a dozen of my men roll in in three different cars. Suddenly I’m the fucking kingpin again, and I’m shouting orders at them.

“Take three cars,” I say. “Three guys in each car. Send two cars to the nearest choke points out of Queens, and send one around looking for him on foot.”

I point, “You, you, you, and you, I want you all to fan out around here. Look in every nook and cranny like you were trying to find a fucking cockroach. If you find the fucker who did this, I want him back here. Alive.”

“What if he fights back?” Someone asks.

“We need him alive to figure out who put him up to it.”

Everyone starts looking at Bella. They know it was Michael, or that it very likely was Michael.

I glare at them. “Michael isn’t a Riela,” I say. “He just works for them. If a Riela had done this, it would be different, but we need to figure out what happened, to protect the truce.”

“The way I see it,” one of my second cousins, Leo, says. “The truce is dead and buried.”

Everyone starts muttering, their voices getting louder. I see them all nodding.

“The truce holds!” I shout. “Don’t go starting a war here. Just get Michael, and bring that fuck to me. Got it?”