The Summit was held in the Sapphire Room of the Hotel Leonesse. It was a cavernous space of velvet walls, low light, and air so thick with cigar smoke it looked like a storm front rolling in over a battlefield.
Kevin Corvini hated it.
He sat at the round mahogany table designated for his family, his back rigid against the leather chair. He adjusted his cuffs. He smoothed his tie. He took a sip of water, his hand trembling just enough to make the ice cubes chime against the crystal. Clinkclink.
The sound seemed deafening in the low hum of the room.
To his right sat John Corvini. His father. The King. John was a study in absolute, terrifying stasis. He sat with his hands folded loosely on the tablecloth, his eyes halflidded, watching the room with the disinterested patience of a reptile sunning itself on a rock. He hadn't spoken a word since they entered. He hadn't greeted the other Dons. He hadn't ordered a drink. He simply existed, a black hole of silence in a room full of noise.
To Kevin's left was the empty chair.
It was just a chair, highbacked, upholstered in dark blue leather, identical to every other seat at the table. But to Kevin, it felt like a gaping wound. It was the physical manifestation of the family's fracture, a billboard announcing their incompleteness to the most dangerous men on the continent.
"It's hot in here," Kevin whispered, pulling at his collar.
John didn't answer. He didn't even blink.
The other families were circling. They moved between the tables, exchanging pleasantries that were really threat assessments, shaking hands while checking for wires. The room was a shark tank where everyone was smiling.
Don Vargo, the current head of the West Side Syndicate, detached himself from a group of Russian importers. He was a massive man, his suit straining against a chest like a beer keg. He had a face like a catchers' mitt, worn, leathered, and shaped by decades of impact.
Vargo walked straight to the Corvini table. He didn't approach with respect; he approached with the swagger of a man who smells blood in the water.
"John," Vargo boomed, his voice gravel and gin. He stopped at the edge of the table, ignoring Kevin entirely. "You're looking... rested. I haven't seen you since the port authority hearing."
John lifted his eyes slowly. He offered Vargo a microscopic nod. "Victor."
Vargo grinned. It wasn't a friendly expression. It was a baring of teeth. He placed a heavy hand on the back of the empty chair, leaning his weight on it.
"I see you're traveling light tonight," Vargo said, his voice dropping to a theatrical whisper that was meant to be heard by the neighboring tables. "Budget cuts? Or did you just run out of men you can trust?"
Kevin felt the flush creep up his neck. His hands balled into fists under the table. Rust, he thought. He thinks we're rusting.
He wanted to stand up. He wanted to tell Vargo about the lab. He wanted to tell him about Arpika, about the five bodies in the penthouse, about the chemical genius that Kevin, Kevin, was orchestrating. He wanted to scream that the Corvini were not weak, that they were evolving into something Vargo couldn't even comprehend.
But he couldn't. He was an asset. He was an heir. He was terrified.
"We travel with what is necessary," Kevin said, his voice sounding thin and reedy in his own ears. He hated himself for speaking, but the silence was crushing him.
Vargo turned his gaze to Kevin. It was a look of pure, amused contempt.
"Is that right, kid?" Vargo chuckled. He patted the empty chair again. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're short a leg. A table with three legs wobbles, Kevin. It spills the wine."
The other lords nearby, Volkov of the Russians, Chen of the Triad offshoots, had stopped their conversations. They were watching. They were waiting to see if the old lion would bite back.
Vargo leaned in closer to John, emboldened by the lack of response.
"The word on the street is chaos, John," Vargo said, dropping the pretense of pleasantry. "We hear about noise in the fish markets. We hear about bodies dropping in penthouses without sanction. We hear the police are sniffing around your skirts because you can't keep your house in order."
Vargo gestured to the room.
"We built this Summit on stability. Order. If the Corvini are losing their grip... if the rot is setting in... maybe it's time we redrew the maps. Maybe two chairs is just the start of the downsizing."
The insult hung in the air, thick and toxic. It was a challenge to their sovereignty. Vargo was suggesting the Corvinis were finished, that they were old men and frightened boys holding onto a legacy they could no longer defend.
Kevin looked at his father, his heart hammering against his ribs. Do something, he begged silently. Say something. Threaten him. Call Vikram. Mention James. Do anything but this.
John did nothing.
He didn't frown. He didn't tense. He reached out with a slow, deliberate hand and picked up his water glass. He took a sip. He set it down.
He looked at Vargo.
John's eyes were not angry. They were empty. They were vast, deep wells of indifference. He looked at Vargo not as a rival, or a threat, or even an equal. He looked at Vargo the way a man looks at a passing cloud, a temporary, irrelevant phenomenon.
He held the gaze.
Five seconds. Ten seconds.
The silence stretched. It expanded, filling the room, pressing against the eardrums. Vargo's grin began to falter. He shifted his weight. He cleared his throat. He looked around for support, but the other lords had looked away, suddenly finding their drinks very interesting.
John didn't blink. He just sat there, encased in his absolute selfassurance, letting Vargo's words dissolve into nothingness against the armor of his silence.
It was terrifying.
It was worse than a threat. A threat implies fear; a threat implies that the enemy is worth fighting. John's silence implied that Vargo didn't even exist.
Vargo's face turned a darker shade of red. He was losing, and he hadn't even been fought. The empty chair wasn't a sign of weakness; in John's presence, it felt like a trap door waiting to open.
"Right," Vargo muttered, stepping back, pulling his hand off the chair as if it had burned him. "Just... concern. For the business."
He retreated, moving quickly back to his own table, his swagger gone, replaced by a confused, hasty shuffle.
Kevin let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He looked at his father with a mixture of awe and resentment. John hadn't needed to defend the family. He was the family.
But as Kevin looked at the empty chair, the seat that Asuma said belonged to a ghost, he realized something else.
Vargo was right about one thing. There was a rot. There was chaos. The recruits were unstable, the police were watching, and Kevin himself was a ball of chemically induced nerves.
John's silence worked in this room, under the crystal chandeliers. But out there? In the streets? In the labs?
Silence wasn't enough.
Kevin looked at the empty chair and felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. The sharks had retreated for now, confused by the lack of blood in the water. But they were still circling.
And Kevin knew, with a sickening certainty, that he was the bait.