Every Mafia's Favorite Girl novel Chapter 4

Chapter 4: "Sorry For The Mess"

For the next one hour, the remaining nine Houses presented their arguments for dismantling House Lombardi piece by piece.

Territories. Assets. Contracts. Voting rights.

Aren stood quietly beside Gian Lombardi throughout the proceedings.

She made an effort to listen, only to find herself submerged in a sea of financial jargon.

Approximately twenty percent of the terms made coherent sense to her; the remaining eighty sounded like an encrypted battlefield transmission delivered in another language.

The atmosphere in the room was exceptionally tense.

Her "father" looked increasingly haggard as words like "heavy debt" and "liquidation" were hurled across the table like poisoned daggers.

Aren found herself feeling quietly sorry for him. On the bright side, she found the strawberry cupcake she’d kept for herself exceptionally good.

Across the table, Caio Sartori was not as engaged in the proceedings as he had intended to be.

He had entered the Summit fully prepared to negotiate, evaluate weaknesses, and position himself advantageously once House Lombardi inevitably collapsed.

Instead, against all reason, he found himself staring at Ariana Lombardi.

Or more specifically, to the way her cheeks moved as she chewed.

He watched as she ate with quiet manners, taking small bites, completely composed, as if she were attending an afternoon tea rather than the public execution of her own House.

’What the hell is wrong with her?’

Irritation burned at the back of his mind, yet there was something else — a flicker of unwelcome curiosity. It stirred quietly in his chest, like an itch he could not quite reach.

He shut it down immediately.

’Irrelevant.’

Aren, for her part, noticed none of his attention.

Her focus had long shifted elsewhere entirely. Her instinct, trained by years of battlefield survival, began to pick up sounds beneath the surface noise of the room.

First, there was the metallic ’clack’ of a firearm safety being switched off.

Then came the soft thud of coordinated footfalls from the service entrance.

Aren took another bite, pondering the situation. Earlier at the gate, she had been thoroughly checked for weapons. Now, she heard the distinct signature of submachine guns.

’Is The Hub actually a neutral ground at all?’ she wondered faintly.

Around her, the discussion continued, but something had shifted in the air.

A servant entered to refill the refreshments, but his hands were shaking so violently that the silver pitcher rattled against the glasses.

Aren noticed that as well.

Then—

Everything happened at once.

The room exploded into motion.

The main doors burst inward with a deafening crash while the service entrance flooded with armed figures simultaneously. At the eastern side of the chamber, reinforced glass shattered violently as additional attackers stormed through the windows.

There were twelve of them in total — all masked, armed, and moving with the lethal coordination of professional mercenaries rather than desperate criminals.

The guards of the Houses reacted instantly, but they were already at a disadvantage. The rules of the Hub had stripped them of all weapons, leaving them to fight with nothing but their bodies against opponents carrying automatic weapons.

The imbalance proved catastrophic.

Within less than thirty seconds, every guard in the room had been subdued.

"NOBODY MOVE!" one of the attackers shouted.

"You’re in the wrong room, boy!" the Lombardi security chief shouted back while reaching beneath his jacket for a concealed blade.

The lead attacker didn’t hesitate.

He raised his suppressed handgun and shot the man point-blank.

BANG!

The shot cracked through the chamber with horrifying sharpness.

Blood sprayed across a gold-leaf pillar as the man collapsed instantly, his body striking the marble floor with a sickening thud.

Silence fell, heavy and suffocating.

Behind the seated Dons, advisors and heirs finally began panicking openly.

"Do you have any idea what you’re doing?" someone shouted from the back of the room. "You’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth for this!"

"Shut your mouth!" a gunman barked immediately.

"Hands on the table! Fingers interlaced! Now!" another gunman roared.

The attackers moved efficiently between the seated Dons, black muzzles hovering inches from the heads of the most powerful men in Borgata.

In the middle of the chaos, Jordan Marchetti stood rigidly still.

His fists tightened inside his pockets while calculations flashed rapidly behind his eyes.

’Fastest extraction route for Father.’

’Weapon positions.’

’Cover angles.’

Every instinct in his body strained toward action, yet he remained motionless, waiting for the single opening that might keep his father alive.

Nearby, Jeremiah Castellano looked almost entertained.

Leaning casually against his father’s chair with folded arms, he watched the unfolding violence with a slow, fascinated smile spreading across his beautiful face.

In the chair, his father wore nearly the same expression.

To the Castellanos, this was not a crisis.

It was a performance.

Isidore Accardi, meanwhile, still had not looked up from the financial report in his hands.

He found a miscalculated number.

He pulled out his pen.

He circled it.

At the table, the ten Dons remained disturbingly composed.

They had existed in the underworld long enough that this was merely a business interruption.

Armando Ombra leaned back in his chair, entirely unbothered.

"It seems House Lombardi is failing to host a neutral ground as effectively as they run their nightclubs."

Gian Lombardi didn’t miss a beat.

"The Hub’s security is a collective responsibility, Don Armando. You should be more concerned that an attack of this scale could only occur if someone inside this room leaked the schedule."

The implication settled sharply across the chamber.

The lead attacker stepped forward before anyone could respond further. In one hand, he held a compact black device fitted with a red toggle switch.

"Everyone remain seated and cooperate! This building is wired. You are now hostages!"

Armando regarded him with mild curiosity.

"Do you know who we are?"

The masked man sneered.

"We know exactly who you are."

He lifted the detonator slightly, thumb twitching near the switch.

"You’re dead kings ruling a dying city. We’re just here to collect the crown."

Across the room, Caio’s attention shifted back toward Aren.

He watched as she carefully folded the paper wrapper of her cupcake into a neat square and tucked it into the pocket of her cardigan.

Her movements remained unhurried, precise, while her eyes drifted silently across the room with a calm that struck him as deeply unsettling.

Caio frowned.

’What the hell is she doing?’

’Twelve men.’

’Four submachine guns, eight handguns, twelve combat knives.’

’Three exit points.’

’Potential explosive device located center-left.’

’This room is very beautiful.’

’Minimize blood loss. Target pressure points and nerve clusters. Keep it tidy.’

THWACK!

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