Page 11 of Ice & Steel

“Who do we have left?” I asked.

“Viktor Borisyuk,” Cosimo said. “He owes us one and he knows it.”

That had been an ugly mess I would much rather have left behind. Viktor Anatole Borisyuk was the former head of the Russian Mafia and he was married to my cousin, Sienna. He’d betrayed me in favor of taking the territory around Boston. We’d reconciled on the grounds that we would take Boston together, but at the last minute, he pulled out and disappeared. Without him, I’d been forced to drop the whole thing.

He did owe me and I knew he wasn’t without honor. If I called on him to balance the scales, he would do it.

“Leonid Orlov, his former right hand, runs the Bratva now,” Cosimo said. “But Viktor is still considered an emeritus of sorts. If he pushed for us, we’d have a shot at pulling through.”

I jerked my chin, shaking my head once. “It would take a few drinks to get me in bed with Viktor Borisyuk again.”

Cosimo laughed. “He fucked us a few too many times for comfort.”

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my ankle over my knee. Down below, the clock struck six and I knew my sons would be waking up soon. If she wasn’t already, Olivia would be changing Atlas and Ettore and getting them prepped for the day.

“Let me think on it,” I said. “It’s a difficult choice.”

“I get it,” Cosimo said. There was a short silence and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Hey, can I ask for some time off next month?”

I frowned, rising. “When? Now really isn’t a great time.”

“Medical thing,” Cosimo said, slamming his car door again. His shoes crunched on gravel.

“Are you sick?”

“No, I’m getting my balls cut off.”

“Beg pardon?”

He sighed. “I’m getting a vasectomy and I just need a day to sit on the couch with an ice pack. And I need like a week of not lifting anything too heavy.”

“Can’t this wait?” I asked. “It’s not a great time.”

“No, we had a pretty intense scare earlier in the year that shook up Enza. She doesn’t want to get pregnant again and she’s been begging me to have this done since we had our son.”

I ran my fingers over my eyes, rubbing hard until my vision popped. “Fine, just set things up with Duran to handle everything while you’re off.”

“Already done,” he said. “I’ll see you later in the week.”

I hung up and snapped my laptop shut. The muscles between my shoulder blades were tight as a drum. I arced my spine and rolled my neck, the bones crackling. There was a faint pain in my right hip that never went away and a numbness in my left hand where the skin had been ripped off years ago.

Sometimes I forgot that I wasn’t as young as I thought I was in my head. Things like Cosimo getting a vasectomy pulled me back down to earth. His wife, Enza, was older than him, younger than me by a few years. They’d had their children and they were moving onto the next stage of their lives.

Was I ready for that?

Was I ready to close the door and focus on raising the next generation?

There was a quiet knock at the door and I turned. “Come in.”

It creaked ajar and Marco peered in, his eyes owlish. “Hey, dad.”

I beckoned to him and he slipped into my office. He was eleven now, on the cusp of leaving childhood behind and entering his teenage years. The older he got, the harder it was to tell which one of his parents he took after. He’d always had Olivia’s pointed nose, but now it had an aquiline bridge like mine. His hazel eyes were the same shade as mine, but carried his mother’s expression.

He was my oldest son and according to the laws of primogeniture, he was my heir and the future boss of the city. I sank down into my chair and studied him as he drew closer.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Working.”