Chapter 2 - Blood, Cheese, and Blackmail
By 7:15 PM, the Rinaldi kitchen looked less like a crime syndicate headquarters and more like a chaotic Italian Sunday dinner.
Nico, realizing that throwing fruit had gotten him zero emotional leverage, opted for passive-aggressive sabotage. He deliberately spilled a cup of flour onto the freshly mopped marble floor, turning it into a powdery white trap right where Serena needed to walk.
Serena didn’t look down. She didn’t yell. As she whipped the egg yolks and pecorino together with a wooden spoon, her foot slid smoothly over the flour, turning it into a theatrical moonwalk that made Alessandro gasp in pure delight.
“Nice slide,” Alessandro whispered, holding up his scorecard—a greasy napkin with a crude number 8 written on it.
“Save the scores for dessert, kid,” Serena muttered, tossing a clean dish towel directly at Nico’s head. It caught him square in the eyes. “And since you brought the flour into the game, Nico, you’re in charge of sweeping it up the second this pasta is drained. No exceptions.”
“I don’t clean,” Nico scoffed, crossing his arms and puffing out his chest. “We have staff for that.”
“Not tonight, you don’t,” Serena said sharply, dumping the golden strands of bucatini into the boiling water with a dramatic splash. “Out in the real world—outside these high gates and bulletproof glass—nobody cleans up after spoiled little princes who think destruction is a personality trait. My daughter, Lucia, is seven years old. She cleans her own room, she ties her own shoes, and if she wasted orange juice like you did, she’d be crying because we couldn't afford to buy more. You boys have everything, and you act like you have nothing.”
Victor, still leaning against the counter, suddenly set his wine glass down. The glass made a sharp clink against the marble, silencing the room instantly. The atmosphere shifted from domestic sparring to something heavy and atmospheric, charged with the dangerous energy of a man who controlled half the shipping ports on the East Coast.
“Watch your tongue, Miss Valente,” Victor said, his voice dropping an octave, smooth and lethal as a switchblade. “You know nothing about what these boys have, or what they’ve lost.”
Serena didn’t flinch. She turned off the stove, grabbed a heavy hot pad, and met his dark, unblinking stare head-on.
“I know they’re lonely, Mr. Rinaldi,” Serena fired back, stepping right up to the edge of the island, inches away from the most feared man in New York. “And I know you’re using wine and silence to hide behind the ghost of a dead wife while your sons tear this house apart just to see if you still know how to look at them. Dinner is in ten minutes. Are you sitting with us, or do you prefer eating alone in the dark?”
The silence that followed was so thick you could cut it with the chef’s knife Serena had left on the cutting board. Marco held his breath. Nico stopped breathing entirely.
May you like
Victor Rinaldi stared at her for three agonizing seconds—seconds where any other person would have withered under the sheer weight of his executioner stare. Then, slowly, dangerously, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a genuine, albeit grim, smile.
“Pull up a chair, Miss Valente,” Victor murmured, walking slowly toward the table. “Let’s see if your cooking is as sharp as your mouth.”
