Page 52 of The Secrets We Keep

Matteo glanced up, setting down his pen and rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “There’s another tenant moving in today, so I decided to skip the noise of it. Dom and Carina should be here in about thirty minutes.”

Luca nodded, bracing himself for Matteo’s inquisition about where he’d been all morning. When none came, he sank onto the leather couch and flipped open the folder.

Luca scanned the report in front of him and did a quick tally of numbers in his head. Business had leveled out at their two western casinos, and it should be picking up this time of year. He made a mental note to go out there and see if money had plateaued because there weren’t as many customers or if there was another issue at play.

The northern casino where he and Alexei had tossed out the card counters was doing very well, almost enough to compensate for the downturn in the west, but he’d prefer all of the casinos to be operating at max capacity. More profits were always better, and if any of the casinos were sluggish, they needed to know why so they could fix it.

Dropping that first folder next to him on the couch, he reached for the next one, pausing when he realized Matteo was watching him. Matteo didn’t acknowledge that Luca was looking at him, and Luca wondered if Matteo was really seeing him at all or staring at something else.

Luca snapped his fingers, and Matteo jumped. “You with me?”

“Yeah.” Matteo rubbed his fingers over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m with you. Just…never mind.”

“Just what?” Luca asked.

“Nothing. It’s not important.”

“Since when do you consider something you have to say not important?” Luca raised a brow when Matteo didn’t even rise to the bait. Was everyone in his life slowly falling apart around him? “Matteo.”

“I’ve…just been wondering if I’m taking this in the right direction. If I’m—” He caught himself. “If we’re up to the task.”

Luca had no idea what to say, the silence stretching uncomfortably between them. He’d never heard Matteo doubt himself before. Not before he left, and certainly not since returning. His brother had always been a steady force, driving forward toward his goal no matter the cost.

“I think it—”

He was interrupted by voices murmuring in the hallway, and when he looked back at Matteo, the indifferent mask he usually wore was back in place, all trace of vulnerability gone like it had never existed at all.

“I hope you didn’t start without us,” Carina said from the doorway, seemingly reading whatever nameless thing had transpired between them and looking from Matteo to Luca with a raised brow.

Luca lifted a shoulder. He had no idea what the fuck that just was. “We’d never leave you out, sorellina,” Luca assured her. “Not since we saw what you did to Baranello.”

Carina shook her head with a smile. “Better to be afraid of me, I suppose. Alexei sends his regrets. He’s getting his hands dirty today.”

“Can we get this going?” Dom said. “I have a meeting with my capos later.”

“My capos, you mean?” Matteo pushed to his feet and rounded the desk, leaning against it and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Until you liberate us from the Agrigento territory, they’re my capos. You said you had a game plan you didn’t want to share on the phone. What is it?”

“I want to twist the screws on Gallo. It doesn’t do much for us to drag this out too long. The swifter his fall, the easier it’ll be to build Gallo Industries back up again once we have control.”

“Music to my fucking ears,” Luca said, ignoring Carina’s curious nudge. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“I want to target larger and larger shipments, one right after the other, over the course of the next couple weeks. Then I want to make one really big move right before Christmas.”

“What kind of really big move?” Carina wondered.

“I want to derail a train.”

“Come again?” Luca said.

“Gallo Industries uses trains to move things quickly across Europe.”

“And you know of a large gun shipment coming in on one of them?”

Matteo shook his head at Dom. “No. But that close to the holiday, he’ll be running multiple trains carrying lots of cargo. A single train is bound to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Not a bad blow for a single mission.”

“Risky, though,” Luca said.

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