Page 25 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
I unhook the latch on the gate box, and the metal creaks with familiarity.
Inside is the usual stack of utility invoices, printed invitations from second-tier families hoping to curry favor, a glossy envelope bearing a cosmetics partnership my mother will pretend to scoff at before privately arranging a meeting.
And then, nearly buried at the bottom, I see an invitation.
The cardstock is cream-colored and impossibly thick, the kind that speaks to money not inherited but earned through fire and force.
Its surface is embossed with gilded filigree, subtle enough to feign modesty, but the seal ruins any illusion of restraint.
Red wax, still faintly fragrant from the press, bears the Salvatore crest: a serpent devouring its own tail, an ouroboros reimagined not as a symbol of balance but of endless hunger.
I do not need to open it to know what it contains.
The Salvatore gala has been circulating through conversation for weeks now, a thing dressed up in the language of charity but pulsing with the unmistakable beat of conquest.
Each year, it grows more elaborate, more ostentatious, an empire flexing its reach beneath the polished sheen of philanthropy.
This time, the pretense is a children's hospital, complete with press releases and official sponsors, but everyone with ties to the underworld knows it is little more than camouflage.
The gala is not an invitation.
It is a summons.
These events function as political theatre for the modern mafia, staged not in smoke-filled back rooms but in marble ballrooms beneath chandeliers heavy enough to crush a man.
They are orchestrated to test loyalty, to map the invisible hierarchy of power in real time.
Who arrives early, who arrives late, who doesn't show at all.
The guest list is a roster of allegiance and ambition, and the Salvatores know exactly how to read it.
To attend is to declare yourself unafraid.
To decline is to risk being seen as irrelevant or weak.
Silence, in this world, is rarely mistaken for diplomacy.
It is usually read as fear.
I run my fingertip along the wax seal, noting the faint warmth still trapped in its center.
This was pressed recently, likely within the last twenty-four hours. The envelope is cooler than the rest of today's correspondence, as if it was delivered in haste, perhaps even reluctantly.
It arrived later than it should have.
That in itself is a message.
The Salvatores, I suspect, did not think we would come.
Perhaps they hoped we wouldn't.
It would be easier to eclipse us that way, to make our absence speak louder than any speech could.
In a world built on reputation and shadow, a single empty seat can be fatal.
That, more than anything, is what decides it for me.
I will go.
