Page 96 of Infamous
Scar’s phone cuts through the room. He looks at the screen like he’s been expecting the call, then answers with one clipped syllable. “Gatti.”
He flips it to speaker. The walls lean in.
A smooth, oily voice glides through the speaker. “Scar Gatti. You’ve been trying to reach me.”
Scar wastes no time. “Senator Graves. It’s about fucking time you called.”
“I’m sure you can appreciate my schedule,” the senator purrs, voice smooth. The words drip entitlement - polite on the surface, hungry underneath - like a man who treats lives as interruptions to be stamped and filed.
“Then this won’t take long,” Scar informs him. “One of my people is missing. Doctor Nadia Reed. I believe she’s in the custody of Chief Kellerman and I want her back. Today.”
A measured pause on the line - the slow, practiced pause of a guilty man deciding which way to direct the conversation. “And this concerns me how?”
Scar’s tone freezes. “Don’t insult me, senator. You and Kellerman are in each other’s pockets. Either you bring herback unharmed, or I paint the city with everything I have on you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Gatti.”
“Whether you do or not is none of my concern. You have access to Kellerman. Either you facilitate the doctor’s return, or I’ll hold you complicit in this.”
The senator pauses, as though weighing his options. It feels like he knows he’s at the end of the road. “And if I refuse?”
“If you refuse, I will bury you.”
“You seem to forget who you’re dealing with,” the senator says, and the civility curdles into something sharp and cold. His voice loses the velvety patina and comes out like a blade: patient, practiced, and utterly sure of its power. “I move men, Mr. Gatti. I close investigations. I open doors that would otherwise stay closed for a lifetime.” The threat isn’t shouted - it’s worn like a scent, intimate and inescapable - and for the first time his true colors show. He’s hungry, entitled, dangerous, and he thinks he has the upper hand in this situation.
Scar’s smile is slow and ugly, even though the senator cannot see it through the phone. “Not this man. You cannot control Scar Gatti. You can try, but make no mistake - I will put you on your knees the same way I have so many others before you.”
“Threats don’t become you, Gatti…”
“You have thirty minutes to bring me Nadia Reed or send me a location,” Scar shoots, reaching for the phone. “Or the next person you hear from will be Dante Accardi.”
Dante Accardi. They call himThe Saint- irony at its finest. Once, he wore the collar of a priest, soft-spoken and holy, a man who could make confession sound like absolution. Now, he runs Seattle like it’s a pulpit built on bones. The five families bend to him, not because they want to, but because no one else has the spine to stand against him. His sermons are written in blood; his commandments enforced with bullets.
Dante doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. He looks at you with those cold, slate-gray eyes, and suddenly you understand the hierarchy of heaven and hell.
He built his empire out of chaos and revenge, one bloody victory at a time, until the city learned to move when he did. The press calls himuntouchable.The men under him call himmerciful- but only because they’ve seen what happens when you’re not. Dante doesn’t forgive betrayal. He doesn’t warn twice. He makes examples out of those who forget where their loyalty lies, and the message always lands the same way: no one crossesThe Saintand lives to confess it.
And the Gatti family? They’re his chosen. His enforcers. The sword of his so-called gospel.
If Scar calls him - ifThe Saintgets involved - Graves will be begging for a burial deep enough to hide what’s left of him.
Mason breaks the silence, voice low and grim. “You think that’s enough with a man like Graves?”
Scar leans back, the leather creaking under him, eyes narrowing with that quiet, deadly focus that always comes before something biblical. He swirls the scotch once, watching the amber catch the light like it’s prophecy.
“Enough?” he murmurs, a faint smile cutting through the dark. “No. But it’s the beginning of the end for him.”
Outside, thunder rolls - closer this time, a deep, crawling sound that rattles the windows. The storm’s coming, heavy and mean. And somewhere out there, Graves just signed his own obituary.
57
NADIA
My chest heaves, shallow and uneven, and whatever fragile hope I had left dissolves into the sterile air. I’m alone. Still strapped down. Still at the mercy of a man who’s traded reason for obsession.
Kellerman turns the syringe between his fingers like it’s something precious, holding it up to the light, watching the liquid shimmer before he taps the plunger. A single drop swells at the tip - delicate, deadly. His calm is absolute, unnerving. The kind of calm that only belongs to men who are evil to their very core.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper, my voice cracked and paper-thin. My lips are dry, my tongue heavy in my mouth. He doesn’t answer right away, and maybe that’s worse. The silence stretches, thick and deliberate.
