Page 4 of Claimed Through Deception

"We get out when I say we get out," I reply quietly.

My voice barely carries over the booming bass of the jukebox, but both men instantly shut their mouths. The hierarchy isn't just a title. It’s a physical law of gravity. I am the Underboss of the Severato Syndicate, but every man in our world knows the Don’s crown is already resting on my head. My father is an old man clinging to a throne I built for him.

We walk deeper into the bar.

The reaction is immediate. The noise dies. The laughter cuts off as if someone severed a cord. Men twice my age take one look at my face and step back, practically pressing their spines into the dirty brick walls to get out of my way. They lower their chins. They avert their eyes.

It is a primal display of submission. The sheep recognizing the wolf.

And it bores me out of my fucking mind.

I don't look at them. I don't care about their fear. Fear is cheap. It’s a biological reflex. I demand it and use it, but I stopped feeling anything from it a long time ago.

My eyes scan the crowded, dimly lit room, cutting through the red haze. I am not here to play king. I am here for Pietro, the rat who skimmed from our containers.

"Booth in the back," Enzo says quietly, tipping his chin toward the far wall. "Three o'clock. He’s trying to slide under the table."

I shift my gaze.

Pietro is wedged into a corner booth. His face is a sickly, pale white. He has spotted us. He is trying to push himself out of the booth to make a run for the back exit, his hands shaking so hard he knocks his beer bottle over. It shatters on the floor.

"I'll take the back door," Alessio says cheerfully, unbuttoning his suit jacket. "Just in case the rat learns how to sprint."

"No," I say, my eyes locked on our target. "We go straight to him."

I take a step forward, charting a direct path through the parting crowd.

But as my focus zeros in on Pietro’s booth, my peripheral vision catches movement. Someone who isn't scrambling out of the way. Someone who isn't pressing their chin into their chest.

She is wiping down an adjacent wooden table.

She is small. Maybe five-foot-four. Her dark hair is pulled up, exposing the long, delicate line of her neck. She wears a cheap black uniform that hides her shape, a damp rag clutched in her hand.

I don't know who she is. I didn't come here for a woman. I came here to break a man’s fingers until he gave me my money. But as I walk down the center aisle, the air in my lungs stalls.

The women with their blouses unbuttoned, the ones who usually throw themselves at customers, are cowering. They are looking at the floor, terrified.

But not this waitress.

She stops wiping the wood, slowly straightens her spine, and then, she looks at me.

Not at my suit. Not at the guards flanking me. She looks me dead in the eyes.

Her eyes are wide. I can see the rapid, frantic pulse beating at the base of her throat. Her body recognizes the apex predator in the room. She knows exactly what I represent. But her mind refuses to submit. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't look away. She lifts her chin a fraction of an inch and holds my stare with a blazing, reckless defiance that hits me like a physical punch to the sternum.

In a world where everyone kneels before me, this tiny girl in a dirty apron refuses to bow.

Something dead inside my chest cracks open.

She is an anomaly. A glitch in the control I exert over my city.

I want to see what she does when the cage is rattled. I want to see if that fire in her eyes is a fluke, or if it burns all the way down to her core.

I pull my gaze from her and look back at Pietro.

"We do it here," I order.

Enzo frowns slightly, his steps slowing. "In the open? It’s sloppy, Niccolò. We drag him out the back. No witnesses. No noise."