“I should congratulate you, Gabriel Pasini. It’s an honor to be deceived by a member of Calabria.”
“Lorenzo Vitale.” He simply states my name, his eyes drifting past me, trying to assess who controls the situation. “I should be congratulating you. It seems you recovered your shipment. You figured everything out,” he says, almost resigned.
“We both know I haven’t figured everything out, don’t we? What are these shipments except scratches against me and just another step toward Nero? They’re only drugs when they’re lost—more can always replace them. Do you know what cannot be replaced? A direct insult from your people.”
“What? You think we have some grand conspiracy? You know we’d fail if we tried something like that. We simply saw the heroin market as a good opportunity to increase profi
