Page 30 of Sapphires and Snakes

I chuckle, endlessly amused. “Later.”

Zarina groans and falls back into bed.

I pull the door shut, smile plastered across my face, and head out alone. Zarina hasn’t slept in her own bed for over a week now, ever since the engagement party. It’s been easy to slip in beside her at the end of each day, easy to share pasts and presents in the dark of night, easy to slide inside each other’s wet warmth with whispered pleas. A blessing and a curse.

A blessing because Zarina Gallo was made for me. What she wants, who she is, the way she thinks and moves and fights—all of it, all of her, fits into my puzzled edges. We interlock without an ounce of force. Snug and easy.

Which makes her my own, personal curse.

The universe must think it’s fucking hilarious to lock us together. Her, the Gallo princess, daughter of the family that wrecked everything. Me, the gangster who has dedicated more than half of my life to ruining the Gallos. Ruining her.

And I’m about to spend the morning taking another step toward that end.

I park my car on Irving Street. This territory lies near the southeast border between the Falcones and the Gallos. The D train rumbles overhead, black steel trusses shaking where they hold up the tracks. My capo, Gemma, waits on the sidewalk with a thermos of coffee in hand, which I accept with a murmured thanks. I lead us toward an early nineteenth-century skyscraper with white bricks and black-lined windows and extraneous cornices.

We stop in front of a door tucked between a corner mart and a Black hair salon, a sun-bleached poster of a Black woman with pressed hair and flawless skin staring out of the front window. I dig into my pocket and toss Gemma a set of keys. She snatches them out of the air and twirls the keyring on her finger as she drags her gaze up to the offices above and down again to the patrons ducking out of the mart with Styrofoam cups of coffee in hand.

“What do you think?” I ask.

Gemma considers the small skyscraper, face pulled in a grimace. “It’s not really mine.”

“It’s your responsibility, your profit.”

She shakes her head. “But it’s yours, Tamayo.”

“Ours. Think of it like employee shares—you own a stake in the success and failure of the family. This building is stock.” Stock and insurance. Not that I allow disloyal people to rise up the ranks, but in this way, we make a mutual promise to each other: I’ll continue to provide wealth and protection, they’ll continue to provide labor and loyalty.

“I get it, just…” Gemma stares at the keys in her palm for a long breath. “I never thought I’d own anything, let alone a whole building.”

Another reason I do this for my family. Most of us have come from so little, pushed to desperate action by loss, poverty, both, or worse. It’s not free, and it’s not without strings, but being able to provide them with their own wealth that is theirs to manage, theirs to profit from, is one of my favorite things about this life.

“I felt that way, too.” And I did. Amassing wealth like this felt foreign before and still does, even now.

Gemma shakes her head. “And now you’re building a fucking kingdom.”

“Which I can’t do without all of you,” I say.

“Ergo, stock.” She waves a hand at the building.

I nod, passing her a manilla envelope stuffed full of paperwork that marks this building as hers. “The shell company belongs to you.”

“And I belong to the family.” She accepts the envelope.

“Exactly.” I sip my coffee and stuff my other hand into the pocket of my wool coat.

Gemma clutches the papers that prove her new status as owner to her chest. “Thanks, Tamayo. This is… wild.”

I only nod, watching pedestrians walk past on their way to wherever at nine o’clock on a Wednesday. I say to Gemma, “It’s a lot of work.”

She snorts. “No more than what’s already on my plate.”

“Do you need more hands?”

“I could use a few more associates.”

“Talk to Darius.” I tilt my head to indicate the entrance. “Shall we go inside?”

Gemma doesn’t answer, simply walking forward to unlock the door between the salon and the corner mart. It leads down a narrow hall to a small, dim elevator lobby. We’re not in the heart of Louredo where office buildings are mini fortresses with audacious opulence meant to showcase the self-importance of the companies and CEOs who work there. We’re barely within the downtown limits, surrounded by walk-up apartments and offices leased to smaller businesses. The grandest things here are the cornices on the facade of the building.