Page 28 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
Beyond the tinted glass, the coastline stretches in long, jagged swells, the water ink-dark and roiling under a sky already softening into night.
On the docks below, cranes stand like skeletal sentinels over cargo yards and shipping containers, reminders of what this city trades in—silk, steel, secrets.
Somewhere in those depths lie a hundred deals brokered in smoke and silence, men who vanished beneath the tide, loyalties weighted with stone.
We pass through the old port district, where crumbling warehouses lean into each other like drunks at last call, their broken windows catching the light like teeth.
This is where Nuova Speranza was born.
Where the first barrels of stolen bourbon crossed the bay, where blood once spilled faster than ink.
The ghosts of that era still linger in alleyways and on rusted fire escapes, watching as the city they helped build forgets their names.
Further inland, the streets rise, flanked by villas dressed in stucco and shame.
Newer construction, old money.
The Salvatores have carved their way into this landscape like surgeons with gold scalpels.
What they lacked in legacy, they have replaced with spectacle.
Theirs is not a history of vineyards and slow inheritances, but of bullets and fire, of sudden ascension and unapologetic expansion.
And as we climb higher, that truth sharpens.
The Salvatore estate looms ahead like a fever dream of power pretending to be tradition, its façade washed in the last embers of twilight as our car crests the final curve of the drive.
It is not old in the way the Lombardi vineyards are old.
This estate is newer, cleaner, hungrier, built not from inheritance but from acquisition.
From men who didn't wait to be invited into the old world, but who crashed the gates and rebuilt the palace with marble bought in cash and blood.
Its white stone gleams under the evening sky, smooth and flawless, veined with the kind of money that arrives quickly and needs to be seen.
Columns rise where they do not need to.
Arches soar for the sake of grandeur alone.
Everything about the estate is deliberate, designed to impress and intimidate.
This is the kind of wealth that grew faster than the dust could settle.
At the gates, two men in charcoal suits stand silently.
Their expressions are unreadable, hands clasped before them, but their eyes follow every detail.
The make of the car.
The timbre of the engine.
The number of seconds it takes to roll down the window.
They nod once, and the wrought iron gates swing open, heavy and ornate, bearing the serpentine emblem that has become the signature of Salvatore rule.
Beyond them, the driveway curves through manicured grounds lined with cypress trees, each one clipped to unnatural precision.
The air smells of lavender and ambition, perfume woven with oil.
