Chapter 6 - The Broken Glass
The world seemed to stop spinning for three agonizing seconds.
Frankie didn't scream. She didn't cry out. She simply went completely still, all the blood draining from her face until her hazel eyes looked enormous, dark, and hollow in the firelight.
“My mother’s ovens,” she whispered. Her voice was cracked, paper-thin, like dried parchment. “The wooden proofing boards. My grandfather built them from reclaimed cedar...”
Massimo was already on his feet.
The warmth, the vulnerability, the quiet man who had touched her hair by the fire—all of it vanished, wiped away in an instant by a terrifying, arctic fury that seemed to drop the kitchen’s temperature by twenty degrees. His jaw was set so hard the muscle bulged against his skin. His eyes were flat, dead, and lethal.
He hit the intercom button. “Tino. Did the fire spread to the upper residential units?”
“No, Boss,” Tino replied instantly through the speaker. “The fire department was two blocks away. They knocked the flames down in six minutes. But the storefront is gutted. Display cases, counters, prep area—all destroyed. And they left a message painted on the brickwork across the street.”
“What message?” Massimo’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the force of a detonator.
“‘A receipt for Silvio.’”
Massimo released the intercom. He turned to Frankie.
She hadn't moved from the stool. She was staring at her hands, which were trembling violently. For the first time since she had pointed a wooden spoon at his chest, she looked fragile. The fierce, untouchable baker from Bridgeport had been stripped to the bone.
Massimo walked over to her. He knelt on the cold marble floor in front of her stool, putting himself at eye level with her. He didn't touch her—not yet. He understood pride; he had spent his life wrapped in it.
“Frankie,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Look at me.”
She slowly raised her eyes. A single tear escaped her lower lid, tracking silently through the dried flour on her cheek. “They burned it, Max. They burned my life because I gave you a cooking lesson.”
A sharp, violent pain lanced through Massimo’s chest—a sensation so unfamiliar he almost didn't recognize it. He had seen warehouses burn, ships sink, men die in alleys, and he had never felt anything beyond cold, tactical calculation. But looking at the tear on Frankie Bello’s cheek, he felt as if someone had plunged a blade between his ribs and twisted it.
“They didn't burn your life,” Massimo said, his voice dropping into a register of absolute, terrifying certainty. He reached up, taking both of her trembling hands into his large, warm palms. He squeezed them tightly. “They burned wood and glass. Wood can be rebuilt. Glass can be replaced.”
“It’s not just glass!” she cried, her voice finally breaking into a sob of pure rage. “That shop was everything my family had! It was eighty years of sweat and honest work, and your disgusting, parasitic war destroyed it in six minutes!”
She tried to wrench her hands away, but he held her fast. He didn't squeeze hard enough to hurt, but he gave her no avenue of retreat.
“You’re right,” Massimo said, accepting her fury without flinching. “It is my fault. It is my war. And because it is my war, Frankie, I am going to finish it tonight.”
He stood up, pulling her to her feet with him.
“Tino!” he roared toward the kitchen doors.
The frosted glass doors swung open instantly. Tino stood there, fully armed, accompanied by four men in heavy coats carrying tactical cases.
“Get the cars ready,” Massimo ordered, not looking at his lieutenant. “Call the heads of the Four Families. The Scalise organization, the Lucchese group, the Morretti family. Tell them I am convening an extraordinary council at four o'clock this morning at the Fulton Market meatpacking terminal.”
Tino’s eyes widened. “Massimo... an emergency council? If you call the Families together on four hours’ notice, that means—”
“It means the Castellano family ceases to exist in the city of Chicago by sunrise,” Massimo said, his words cold, precise, and final. “Tell them that any captain who fails to attend will be treated as an enemy of Riva Logistics. Move.”
“Yes, Boss!” Tino spun on his heel and disappeared down the hall.
Massimo turned back to Frankie. She was wiping the tear from her cheek with the sleeve of her oversized flannel shirt, her breathing ragged, her eyes blazing again with a mixture of grief and sheer, unadulterated fury.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
Massimo paused, his overcoat halfway onto his shoulders. “No. You are staying here, where there are twenty men with rifles guarding the perimeter.”
“I am not sitting in this museum while you decide what happens to my neighborhood!” she shouted, stepping right into his space, poking a finger into the hard center of his chest. “Silvio’s father burned my mother’s ovens! He made this personal with *me*, Massimo Riva! You don't get to lock me in a golden cage while you go play god with a bunch of sociopaths in suits!”
Massimo looked down at the finger pressed against his sternum. Nobody had touched his chest like that since he was twelve years old.
“Frankie,” he said softly, a dangerous edge returning to his voice. “The Fulton Market terminal is not a culinary academy. There will be sixty men in that room carrying automatic weapons. If a single word goes wrong, the floor will be painted red.”
“Then you’d better make sure your words are right,” she snapped, her chin jutting out with that magnificent, reckless Bridgeport defiance. “Because I am getting in that car. Either you take me with you, or I take one of your sports cars in the garage and drive myself down the Kennedy Expressway.”
Massimo stared at her. For five long seconds, the silence stretched between them, taut as a piano wire.
Then, slowly, the ghost of a dark, lethal smile curved the corners of his mouth.
“Gemma was right,” Massimo whispered, shaking his head slightly. “You are completely out of your mind.”
He reached for his coat, threw it over her shoulders once more, and pulled the collar tight around her neck.
May you like
“Put your boots on, baker,” he said. “Let’s go hold a court.”
***
