Vow Of Fire

Chapter 1

Dante

The first scream didn’t faze me.

I leaned against the far wall of the basement, arms crossed, the shadows swallowing most of me. The single bulb above the chair swung on its cord—a slow, steady metronome keeping time with the sound of pain.

His, not mine.

Albert Ferro sat tied to a chair, his face, hair and body slick with sweat and blood. The expensive, Fifth Avenue shirt was shredded, torn when Rocco grabbed him off the street earlier today. His lip was split down the middle, blood mingling with saliva as he whimpered through a half-open mouth. His left eye was swollen shut, and a nasty bruise was forming on his right cheekbone. It wasn’t pretty.

His left leg jerked every few seconds, a sure sign his nervous system was starting to give out. He was close.

Rocco Mazzini cracked his knuckles beside me, the sound as sharp as breaking bone. Albert flinched—and yeah, I didn’t blame him. Rocco came from the underground boxing pits. Bare-knuckle matches fought for cash and blood. He’d been a monster down there, and we’d simply given him a cleaner cage. My family paid him well to keep doing what he loved. Breaking people.

“I ain’t gonna ask again,” Rocco growled. “Did you leak the shipment details?”

Albert coughed, then bent over and dribbled blood onto the concrete floor. “No! For fuck’s sake, I didn’t know when the shipment was coming in. How could I? I’m just a bookkeeper at a goddamn gallery.”

I tilted my head. He was lying. I saw it in the way he held his breath half a beat too long, and in the way his fingers twitched against the restraints. He was running calculations in his head… How long could he hold out? How much truth would buy him mercy? I’d seen that look on men who thought they were stronger than the fear that ultimately consumed them.

A decade earlier, I would’ve done the work myself. I didn’t need to anymore.

These days, I watched. Control was its own kind of violence.

Rocco’s fist came down hard. Albert’s head snapped to the side, blood painting the floor in a wide red arc. The chair creaked under the impact. He cried out again, before gasping and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned incoherently. “Oh, God. No.”

“Albert,” I said in a low voice, stepping out from the shadows. His unswollen eye widened, as if noticing me for the first time. Beneath the mess on his face, he paled.

“You know who I am?”

He nodded. “D—Dante Mar—Marc…” He couldn’t get the words out.

“That’s right.” I cut him off. “So believe me when I say this is only going to get worse. You may as well be honest and save yourself the pain.”

Albert let out a wet, broken laugh. “I can’t help you, man. I just do the books for Vince. We launder the cash. I got nothing to do with drug shipments.”

My jaw tightened. Wrong answer.

If he knew it was drugs, he already knew too much. I nodded at Rocco.

His next punch landed deep in Albert’s gut. The gallery assistant folded, and I knew he was choking on bile.

While he recovered, I thought about Vincent Calabria, our fixer. Dubbed “the Composer” because of his love of classical music, and he orchestrated so many different deals to keep our dirty money clean. Vince was the kind of man who made corruption look elegant. He wore cufflinks and a quiet, confident smile. We’d been conducting business with him for nearly a decade now, with no complaints. This was the first time we’d had to call his services into questions, and I didn’t like doing it.                                

It was Vince who’d warned us about a potential hit. He’d heard via the grapevine that an unknown element, possibly a rival crime family, was planning to hit us where it hurt—in our product line. In this case it was a rather large cocaine shipment that had come in last week from our Colombian associates.

Except, it had never reached shore. Armed mercenaries had stormed the ship as it docked, stealing our merchandise and neutralizing our guys waiting to take delivery.

Augusta, Reggie, Davide, amongst others. All fucking good operatives. Gone. Blown apart at the docks in an ambush no one saw coming. Six body bags, three million in product vanished, and the taste of betrayal still sour in my mouth. It had been a goddamn massacre.

Shit. I raked a hand through my hair. A fucking bloodbath.

We weren’t even sure who’d done it. With no survivors, there was nobody to report back.

Someone had leaked the details and it sure as hell wasn’t a Marcelli, so it had to have been Vincent—or his protege, Albert. After digging into Albert’s cell records and bank details, we’d found suspicious payments from an unknown shell company in the Caymans. No names, no addresses, just a hefty sum under the radar. Definitely shady.

It seemed Albert had a nice little earner selling family secrets to anyone willing to pay for them. Like our rivals.

I gritted my jaw. Except, now he would pay.

When he’d sold us out, he’d given them the drop coordinates, the timing, the whole play. The question was, how the hell had he gotten that information?

I took a step forward. Rocco moved back without a word.

I crouched in front of Albert, elbows on my knees. Close enough to smell the copper on his breath.

“How did you know?” I said quietly. “Who gave you the information?”

He blinked up at me through the swelling. “Nobody. I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Should I get Rocco to explain it to you?” I didn’t raise my voice, didn’t threaten. Rage was a waste of energy. Stillness cut deeper.

His pulse stuttered in his throat as his gaze flickered to the bare-knuckled brute. I saw it—the panic starting to bloom behind his eyes. He was shit scared of Rocco.

He shook his head. “No.” It was a hoarse whisper.

“Then who? Was it someone inside our organization?”

My family. A traitor in our midst. I knew it wasn’t my grandfather, my mother, or any of my siblings, but girlfriends, spouses, servants, lovers… They were a different story. Hell, anyone could have gotten access to that shipment information if they’d tried hard enough.

Nico, my genius, hacker brother, kept everything under lock and key, or in this case, encrypted software, but there were still ways and means. I knew this firsthand. There was always someone better, cleverer, more savvy. And everyone had a price. My time in the military had taught me that.

I absently fingered the scar on my forearm, now covered by a tattoo of a bullet hole. The kind with jagged edges, like in comic books. Apt, I’d thought when I’d had it done. A betrayal. A constant reminder that life was cheap.

Ghost Company.

That was what they had called us.

We were an off-the-books, black ops team. Our mission was to “take on jobs the regular army couldn’t touch”. High risk operations that would never be sanctioned by the government. Deemed too risky, too expensive, too dangerous.

Totally deniable.

Deniable—and disposable, as it turned out.

At least at home the lies were honest. Family. Blood. Everybody knew what was expected of them. No hidden agendas, no back-stabbing, no feeding to the dogs. At least, not between us.

I stared at Albert, letting the silence drag out.

“Last chance, Albert. Use it.”

Rocco stepped forward, flexing his hands.

The weedy bookkeeper swallowed. “It wasn’t me. But—But I might know who it was.”

I narrowed my eyes. Was he shifting the blame? Trying to find a scapegoat? Or was there really another player in all this? A third-party leaking information to our rivals that we didn’t know about.

“Who?”

He hesitated, eyes darting from Rocco to me like he thought there was still a deal on the table. There might be—if he was on the level.

I was a reasonable man.

“She knew what was going on,” he blurted. “I handled the paperwork for Vincent. We channeled the funds through the gallery, but she knew… I heard her questioning Vince about it.”

“What about?”

“Well, we set up shell companies under fake names, bought paintings at stupid prices. Half a million for a canvas worth ten. On paper it looks clean, right? Art sale, full payment, tax receipts. The money hits the gallery’s account, legit as it gets.”

I frowned. I already knew how this worked. “What’s your point?”

He swallowed, glancing up at me. “Then we moved part of it out again. Consultancy fees, artist commissions, restoration invoices—whatever made sense on the books. That’s what she was questioning.”

I went still. “You’re saying the gallery owner knew we were using her business to launder funds?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, his front teeth pressing down on his lower lip. He reminded me of a beaver. “And if she knew that, she would have wanted to get revenge. If anyone sold you out, it was her. Not me. Not Vince.”

My voice dropped. “What is her name?”

We had so many fronts we were laundering money through, I didn’t concern myself with the establishment owner’s names. That was Vincent’s job, and he was fucking good at it. I could look it up, but what was the point? Alberto, the groveling idiot, was right here, ready to talk.

“Evelyn Cruz.”

I repeated it to myself. Once, twice. Tasting it on my tongue.

“Gallery name?” I barked.

“Agora Gallery’s in SoHo,” he rushed out, his gaze flicking nervously back to Rocco. “Classy establishment. Wealthy, select clientele.”

I made a mental note.

“How would she get access to the shipment schedule?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, defensively. “But she has connected clients. Investors. Maybe even people who do business with your family. You should ask her.”

“Maybe I will,” I murmured.

I rose slowly.

He might be full of shit, but there was only one way to find out. This was our first tangible lead since my men were ambushed. If this Evelyn Cruz had somehow gotten hold of that information and sold it on, their blood was on her hands.

“What are you going to do with me?” Albert whimpered.

I straightened up. “You’re going to stay put, Albert. Until we can verify what you’re saying is true.”

He gulped, and glanced back at Rocco, who was smiling. A thin, sinister grin.

Perspiration dripped down Albert’s temples. “Ask him to lay off me. I’m telling the truth. I swear—”

I glanced at the man I’d rescued from the pit. His loyalty was unquestionable. He’d do whatever I said, when I said it. I knew that much for certain.

“Rocco, behave yourself until we can verify his story.” I paused, my eyes glinting dangerously back at the prisoner. “And if it turns out he’s lying, I’ll let you do what you want to him.”

The smile deepened.

Albert began to tremble.

Ten minutes later, I stepped out into the cold night. The warehouse door slammed and I left the smell of blood and sweat behind me. The fresh air bit at my skin, sharp and welcome.

Evelyn Cruz.

I didn’t know who she was. Not yet.

But I would.

If she had been in any way responsible for the murder of my men—then she was already dead.

She just didn’t know it yet.