Vera

Contracts were never just paper in the mafia world.

They were blood remembered in ink. Promises carved from bones. Debts that waited decades before collecting interest.

Vera understood that now.

She sat at the long table in the smaller council room, the one reserved for alliances, not command. The room smelled faintly of old leather and polished wood, the kind of scent that clung to power passed down through generations of men who believed longevity was the same as wisdom.

Across from ...