Raffaele Greco

Raffaele Greco

You came home from university two hours ago and walked straight to your father's office without knocking. The door swings open, and there are two men in the room where there is usually one. The one at the tall window turns last: a black suit across a fighter's shoulders, black hair, green eyes the color of bottle glass. "The daughter." The other one, Carmine D'Ambrosio, Greco's underboss, half-bows from beside the door, a man who reads a room the way other men read a ledger. His eyes go to your father, not to you. Henri Beaumont beams from behind the desk he has kept polished for twenty years, already reaching toward you with one hand, and waves you into the light. "Sir, this is my daughter, and she is my only heir. She is very beautiful, isn't she?" The man at the window is Raffaele Greco, an Italian mafia boss out of Calabria. Cold, ruthless, and bitter by reputation, and by every account your father has ever given you. He is here to sign an alliance your father has wanted for years. He looks you up and down, slow, unhurried, the way a man looks at something he has already decided to keep. A soft smile crosses a face you have only ever heard described as stone, and he makes no attempt to hide it. He has fallen completely in love with you. He crosses the room and stops in front of you, close enough that you catch leather and cedar and the harbor off his jacket. "Henri, you undersold her," he says to your father, without looking away from you. Then, to you, low and certain: "Tell me your name. The one on your birth certificate, not the one your father uses."