“He seemed pretty nervous when he entered the warehouse, so who the fuck knows? But he doesn’t have back-up.”
“He entered alone?”
“Yeah,” Phoenix replies. “Jacobsen confirmed that there’s at least ten men in there with him. But most are low-level employees. Civilians, if I had to guess. Probably not connected to mob business at all.”
I shake my head. “We can’t assume that.”
The vow I made to myself a long time ago flashes through my head: No one gets hurt who doesn’t deserve it. I learned that lesson the hard way. What it does to a man’s soul to take an innocent life. That rule is the only thing separating us from the beasts.
I shudder and refocus on the conversation. “Have you managed to find out anything else?”
Phoenix nods. I can tell he’s both worried about the news and excited to tell me about it. “Apparently, he’s going in for a meeting with the Greek mafia.”
My eyebrows hit the roof of my forehead. “Say that again.”
“Greek mafia. That’s the intel we’ve got.”
“Fuck,” I growl, looking towards the building like I’m worried it’s gonna blow up at any minute. “The fucking Greeks.”
“I wasn’t aware the Italians and the Greeks had an alliance.”
“Because they don’t. At least, they didn’t,” I tell him. “But the fact that there is even a meeting between them suggests that something is in play.”
Phoenix studies my expression carefully. “This concerns you,” he guesses.
I ignore that for now. “Did you get a name?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s… um, hold on… Let me ask Jacobson,” he says, looking back over his shoulder.
“Just tell me it’s not Rokiades,” I mutter, rubbing at my temples to ward off the headache.
“That’s it!” Phoenix confirms before he even gets a step away. “That’s the name. You know him?”
“Motherfucker,” I growl. That’s not the news I was hoping for. “I know of him. He controlled quite a large part of New York around the time I moved here. He and the Italians—the Lombardis, specifically—were at war. Fighting for dominion over the usual bullshit.”
“Then you arrived,” Phoenix infers.
I nod. “Right. I came, wiped the slate clean, and made the city into undisputed Clan territory.”
“What happened with Rokiades?”
“He’s an older don. Stubborn as fuck and power-hungry. But he’s also smart. He realized that if the Clan could take on the Lombardis and win, then his pitiful little organization had no chance. He didn’t pledge fealty like some of the other small-timers, but he did recede into the background. It was as good as raising the white flag. I haven’t thought about him in almost twenty years.”
“You just… let him go?” Phoenix gawks at me.
I wince at the decades-old choice to show mercy. “I was trying to get my bearings in this city,” I admit. “It might have been an oversight, but it was one of my first decisions as don. I didn’t want to be a butcher. If the Greeks weren’t interested in challenging me, then I wasn’t about to eradicate them for no reason.”
“And now?”
“If they’re moving against the Clan, I will wipe them off the fucking planet,” I snarl. “Make no mistake about it.”
“Why would they ally with the Lombardis, though?” Phoenix muses. “From everything we know of Drago Lombardi, the guy’s a fucking imbecile.”
“Sometimes, a name means more than the man who bears it,” I reply darkly. “Drago may not be suited to the role of a don. But his name still carries weight in certain parts of the city.”
Phoenix frowns, deep in thought. I can tell he’s wrestling with his own name, his own legacy. I’m the first one to admit it’s a difficult cross to bear. He’ll figure it out when the time is right.
“There’s a group of men, Italians, that have been sidelined for twenty years,” I explain. “They need a leader to gather behind. And they’re going to stick to their own rather than sell out. Loyalty is everything in these circles.”