I Buried The Don And Took His Throne Chapter 12
The Northern Front
“A kid?”
I lift his hand off my shoulder. My fingertips are ice.
“Dante.” I pull my mouth up at the corner. Doesn’t reach my eyes.
“Are you telling me you don’t think I’m sitting steady enough in this chair yet?”
Right when the air between us goes tight enough to snap, one of my guards kicks the door open. Face white as a ghost.
“Emergency line from the north! The Bratva is over the border. Kozlov’s men. They rolled three of our territories in Buffalo in one night!”
Down in the main hall — the same old capos who were calling me a lapdog that morning are now the color of wet concrete, shaking in their loafers.
“Our guys up there are getting slaughtered — Kozlov brought his full crew — what — what do we do?”
“There’s — there’s only one way. We call a sit-down. We pay them off. Give them the Buffalo territory. Save the city.”
Dante’s on his father’s chair, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping. He doesn’t say a word.
I look at the pale, useless faces around me and I almost laugh out loud.
Sit-down. Give up Buffalo.
Buffalo has been Crestwell territory since my grandfather’s father was in short pants. My grandfather buried three brothers up there. And these clowns want to hand it over in a fax.
“Bunch of cowards.”
I turn to Dante on the dais.
“Dante. I’m asking permission. Give me the northern war. I lead it myself.”
“Three months. If I don’t have Kozlov’s head on your desk in three months, I put a bullet in my own.”
Silence in the hall. You could hear a pin drop.
Every capo in the room is looking at me like I’ve officially cracked.
The Donna, going up north to run a war herself.
Dante stares down at me. The dark thing behind his eyes slowly gets replaced with something almost drunk. Excited.
“Do it.”
The morning I leave, Dante doesn’t watch from a window. He walks all the way down to the gates with me.
Black car idling. Convoy stretched down the block. My guys in body armor, waiting.
He puts his hand flat against the driver’s-side window. Doesn’t say anything for a long second.
Then, quiet, just to me:
“Sloane. I’ll be waiting for you at home.”
—
Buffalo. February. Snow up to your knees, sky the color of dirty steel.
I stand on the roof of a warehouse and look through binoculars at Kozlov’s compound across the river.
Two lives’ worth of memory in my head, playing back like a movie.
Viktor Kozlov. They call him the Wolf of the North. Big man, mean man, but paranoid — sees traitors in his own shadow.
Last life, Marco sent some meathead capo up here to handle him.
Kozlov baited him into a warehouse with a fake informant and burned the whole crew alive.
Twenty of my guys, dead in a fire, because Marco wanted the glory.
This life. My turn.
I split my crew, making it look like I’m undermanned. Lose three skirmishes in a row on purpose. Fall back further and further west.
Kozlov gets greedy. He actually comes chasing, pushing his crew right into the empty warehouse district I want him in.
Ravens Alley. Warehouses on three sides. One road out. And I’ve had my guys on those rooftops for two weeks.
The second his lead car crosses the third block, his driver spots the Crestwell flag hanging from a fire escape and Kozlov finally figures it out.
Too late.
“Light ’em up!”
Every rooftop opens up at once. Rifle fire from every angle. Molotovs down onto the cars. The alley turns into a burning corridor.
I don’t wait for the shooting to finish. I take two of my guys, kick down the side door of the middle warehouse, and go straight for the black SUV with Kozlov in it.
He’s already climbing out to run. Big man, red beard, wild eyes.
I throw a knife. It buries itself in the concrete an inch from his boot. He freezes.
I put a Beretta between his eyes.
“Wolf of the North, huh? In front of Sloane Crestwell, you’re a stray dog like everybody else.”
I take Kozlov alive. What’s left of the Bratva’s East Coast operation gets buried in a lime pit outside Buffalo.
—
Coming home. I roll into New York with Kozlov chained in the trunk of my car and a convoy of black SUVs behind me stretching six blocks.
Every capo who ever called me a lapdog is waiting at the Vitale compound gates on both knees. In the snow.
Genovese — same old bastard — has his forehead flat on the wet pavement. His voice comes out cracked.
“Welcome — welcome home, Donna.”
I drive past them without slowing down.
Lapdog. Somebody say it now.
Come on. I dare you.
I don’t stop until I reach Dante’s office.
The doors are wide open. He’s not wearing a suit—just a black shirt and black slacks, his back to me as he stands by the window.
He hears my boots on the marble and turns slowly.
His eyes land on the blood dried into the plates of my body armor. And whatever is living behind those eyes — it looks like it wants to eat me alive.