“They’re here because I said they could be,” she replied, voice calm but firm.
A few glances were exchanged around the table. No one else jumped in, not yet, but I could feel the shift. The tension stretched like a wire pulled too tight.
Gino leaned back slightly, his mouth pressing into a thin line. “With all due respect, Donna… that’s not how we’ve done things in the past.”
Tatum smiled, and for a second, it was almost sweet.
“Well, with all due respect, Gino,” she said, the edge in her voice shrill enough to draw blood, “the way we’ve done things in the past almost ruined this family and put my father in hiding. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not interested in nostalgia.”
That landed, and the room went still again, this time for a different reason. She wasn’t Vera’s daughter defending herself. This was a Don establishing rules.
Gino nodded, slowly. Not in agreement, but in acknowledgment. He’d made his point, and so had she.
Tatum glanced around the table, her eyes landing on each man like she was weighing them against a standard they hadn’t been informed of. “We’re not here to debate decorum,” she said. “We’re here to restructure and move forward. The world doesn’t care about tradition. It cares about power, and I don’t plan to lose any more of it because of pride and protocol.”
I watched her with a strange mix of pride and caution. She was doing it—standing firm, commanding the table, making it clear that she wasn’t a placeholder, but I also knew what it took to maintain control, how easy it was for power to turn on you the second you let your guard down.
She was playing the game well.
I just hoped she remembered it was a blood sport.
Chapter 6
Black Girl Magic
Tatum Genevese-Bulgari
The conference room smelled like money and mistrust—a potent mix I’d grown used to. Thick ribbons of cigar smoke slithered through the air, settling into the plush leather seats and hanging above the table. The mahogany gleamed beneath the overhead light, polished to perfection, as if that shine could distract from the fact that every man seated at it had blood on his hands.
I slowly crossed my legs and leaned back just enough to remind them who was at the head of this table now. My eyes swept across the room, taking inventory of the faces staring back at me. They’d all once served my father without question. Now, they called themselves loyal to me, though the doubt in their eyes said otherwise.
Behind me, Naeem stood like a storm waiting to happen. He was silent, watchful, and a little too close. His presencewasn’t just protective. It was strategic. He knew how this looked, and I knew exactly what he was doing.
Uncle Rio was the first to speak, as expected. His voice carried a particularly smooth threat only age and arrogance could create. “We got another issue at the Southside clinic,” he said, his voice as slick as the tires on my last car. “Blood’s missing from the off-books freezer. Not a full shipment, yet, but enough to notice. What’s your play?”
I’d reviewed the surveillance footage myself that morning and already traced the gap in our route logs back to one of the junior drivers. The plan I had in place was solid. I knew exactly what needed to happen and how to execute it cleanly, but before I could speak, Naeem lowered his mouth to my ear, his breath brushing the curve of my jaw.
“Say you’ll run an internal audit. Keep it quiet. Then pin it on a smaller crew, send a message.”
His tone was low, confident, and too confident. It was as if he hadn’t even considered that I might already have it handled. I didn’t need him speaking for me, and I damn sure didn’t need him putting words in my mouth in front ofmymen.
My instinct was to shut it down, correct him, speak my own strategy, and let them hear it from me, the one actually running point, but I hesitated, not because I lacked the nerve, but because I knew the second I checked him in front of them, the spotlight would shift. It would no longer be about the clinic or the breach; it would be about us, about the cracks in our so-called loving marriage.
So, instead of checking him right then and making it obvious I didn’t agree, I gave a small nod, swallowing my irritation, and repeated his words as if they were mine.
“We’ll audit the clinic quietly. If what we find leads back to one of our own, we’ll deal with it in-house. If not, we bleed someone smaller to remind the city we’re watching.”
Rio grunted in approval, eating up Naeem’s little power play like it was genius. But the truth was that move was surface-level. Any halfway-decent rival crew would spot it and sidestep the hit before we made our move. Quiet wasn’t what we needed. We needed noise.
A beat passed before another voice chimed in from across the table. “What about Monroe’s crew?” Dominic asked, flipping a toothpick between his teeth. “They’ve been running falsified lab referrals through two of our clinics without kickin’ anything back.”
Monroe’s name always left a bitter taste in my mouth. He and my father used to run together back in the day, but even then, I didn’t trust him. Something about him always rubbed me the wrong way. He was too polished, too eager, and way too comfortable speaking when he should’ve been quiet and just listened.
Eventually, he stopped wanting to follow and started itching to lead. Tried finessing a side deal that cut my father out. That was the beginning of the end. They fell out. Bad. And when it was over, blood was shed, and Monroe vanished. However, now that my father’s no longer in charge, he’s suddenly resurfaced. Perhaps he had been waiting for the right moment to crawl back out.
I took a breath, ready to cut into it myself this time, but again, Naeem’s shadow moved. His whisper came before mine, and I watched to scream. Tension settled at the base of my skull like pressure waiting to snap, and heat bloomed at the base of my neck, an ember of irritation that was already too close to catching flame.
“They’re testing you. Let ’em. We catch them mid-scheme, flip the leverage, then kill the middleman.”
