The Take

The girl comes out at 6:14 PM. Same time as yesterday. Same time as every Tuesday for the past three months.

Gioia Montagna, twenty-two, art history major at Columbia, favorite medium oils on canvas, favorite café two blocks north, favorite brother the most dangerous man in New York. She wears paint-stained jeans and a jacket that probably costs more than my rent used to be, back when I had an apartment and a life and a father who answered his phone.

I adjust my grip on the steering wheel. Breathe.

Four months of bartending at Il Velluto. Four months of memorizing guard rotations and drink orders and the way his men went quiet when he walked in. Four months of smiling at people who tipped well because they didn't know the cost of their money, or didn't care, or had stopped being able to tell the difference.

Bartending pays rent. Surveillance pays debts.

Gioia waves goodbye to someone inside the studio. No bodyguard tonight. There was one last Tuesday, a thick-necked man who stood by the door and scrolled his phone, but he's been reassigned. I know because I listened to the scheduling call three weeks ago when Nero's head of security came in for a bourbon and left his phone on the bar for forty-five seconds.

Forty-five seconds is a long time when you know what you're looking for.

She turns south on Prince Street. I pull out of the spot. Tommy is in position at the corner of Spring, van idling, back doors unlocked. We rehearsed this nine times. Different routes, different complications, different exits. My father taught me that. "Always have three ways out, bambina. The one you planned, the one you improvised, and the one you haven't thought of yet."

He taught me a lot of things. How compound interest works. How to read a balance sheet. How to spot when numbers don't add up, which is how he found the $2.5 million the Montagnas owed him for fifteen years of keeping their money invisible.

He also taught me that some people don't pay what they owe. Not unless you make them.

I'm making them.

Gioia pauses at the crosswalk. Checks her phone. Smiles at whatever she sees. She looks like her brother around the mouth, that same controlled shape, but on her it reads as warmth instead of warning.

I pull alongside.

"Gioia."

She looks up. Frowns. Recognition takes a second. "You're... the bartender? From Nero's club?"

"Get in the car."

"What?"

I show her the gun. Not pointed at her. Held low, against my thigh, where she can see it and no one on the street can.

"Get in the car. Please."

Her face goes through five things in two seconds. Fear, confusion, calculation, anger, and then something I didn't expect. Calm. She looks at the gun. Looks at my face. Gets in.

Tommy pulls up behind us. Transfer takes eleven seconds. She's in the van. I'm following in my car. We're moving before the crosswalk signal changes.

My hands are steady. They've been steady for two years, since the morning two men in suits knocked on my door and said my father had "disappeared" and would I like to sit down. I sat down. I listened to them say words that meant nothing. And then I spent three weeks finding his body in the Hudson, because the NYPD doesn't look hard for men who launder money, even when those men have daughters who call every precinct in Manhattan until someone finally tells the truth.

Heart attack, they said first. Then drowning. Then they stopped returning my calls.

I stopped calling. Started planning.

We reach the safe house in twenty-two minutes. Gioia is quiet in the back of the van. Not crying. Tommy says she asked him one question during the ride: "Is this about money or territory?"

Smart girl. Wrong question.

I walk into the warehouse. She's sitting on the cot Tommy set up, arms crossed, paint still under her fingernails.

"It's about money," I tell her. "Your father killed mine and kept what he was owed. I want it back."

"My father's dead."

"I know. His son inherited the debt."

She studies me. No tears. No begging. "How much?"

"Two point five million."

She almost laughs. "You kidnapped me for two point five million? Nero spends that on art."

"Then it shouldn't be a problem."

I pull out the burner phone. One number programmed. I type the message, show it to her, and send it.

Your father killed mine and took $2.5M. I want it back. You have seventy-two hours.

Gioia reads it over my shoulder. Looks at me with those Montagna eyes, dark and assessing.

"He's going to find you."

"I know."

"He's going to kill you."

I put the phone down. Meet her stare.

"He's going to try."