Page 74 of Satin Empire

“Share away. Should I alert the press?”

“Don’t be fresh.” She puts her hands on her hips. “I know what I want to major in.”

“That’s fantastic. Tell me it’s pre-law. We could always use a lawyer.”

She wags a finger at me. “Nope, but I think it’ll be useful for the family in a different way.”

“Surgeon? No, I know, you’re a therapist. God knows we need a fucking therapist in the family.”

“Nope and nope. Not even close. Want to know?”

“Baby, if you make me keep guessing, I’m going to suggest some wild shit. Like a landscape architect. You could give shape to Maddie’s chaos.”

“Yeah, right, and suffer her wrath? No thanks.”

I grab her by the hips and lift her up. She laughs, squirming, as I drop her down and hug her against me. “Enough. Tell me.”

“I want to be an accountant.”

I pull back, sizing her up, not sure if she’s joking or not. Of all the jobs in the world, that’s basically the last one I ever imagined.

She grins and jabs my chest with a finger.

“This is the part where you react,” she says.

“Oh, uh, accountant. That would be?—”

“It’s perfect,” she says, sounding dreamy. “I know you think it’s weird, but I could work with the family that way, and accountants deal with people all the time, right? There’s like a customer service aspect.”

“Do you… like math?” It’s a dumb question because obviously nobody likes math, numbers are lame and boring, but she nods happily.

“Love math. It was my best subject in school. Everything just… makes sense, you know? There’s one way to do it and that’s that. No ambiguity.”

“Right.” I take a deep breath and kiss her gently. “If you want to be an accountant, I am extremely happy for you.”

“Thanks. I can feel the love already.”

I wrap an arm around her shoulders and we keep walking. She talks future plans—opening her own firm, maybe taking on some of the people that orbit around the Famiglia, maybe even taking on the Famiglia itself—and I let her dream. I doubt she’d ever want to be crooked enough to do our books, but I’m not going to rain on her parade right now. She’s happy, and that makes me happy, and even if I don’t necessarily understand this decision, it’s not mine to make.

It’s all hers, and I love that she’s searching for what fulfills her.

Chapter 38

Carlo

The man that cowers in the corner of the basement cell isn’t the same strong Russian Pakhan I captured a little over three months ago.

This creature is emaciated. His skin hangs off his bones like he’s trying to melt into the concrete floor, and he smells like a combination of rotting flesh and open sores. Dozens of half-healed wounds are scattered across his pathetic body, and he’s missing most of his fingers, one entire foot, and all of his teeth.

“We should’ve done this a long time ago,” Renzo says, standing back near the door with his arms crossed over his chest.

Gian leans against the wall. Saul stands a few feet behind me, and I loom directly over the man that was once Jasha Aslanov, but is now nothing more than the shadow of himself.

“Please,” he croaks and his voice comes out raw and disgusting. “I’m ready. I’m ready.”

That’s all he’s been saying for the last few weeks. I’m ready. I’m ready. He wants this hell to end, and at this point, there’s nothing left for us to wring out of his worthless body. We’re cruel men when we have to be, but not wasteful, and Jasha has already told us everything he possibly could about his organization and any other crime syndicates he was allied with.

Even though I wanted to end him right away, Renzo was right in making me wait, because we’ve gathered a wealth of information in the last three months. Jasha was a clever little clock, always creating new opportunities and struggling to remain relevant despite having a smaller and weaker organization. It was thanks to his creativity and ingenuity that he was able to survive and fight us for so long, but it couldn’t last forever.

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