Bout Damn Time

Bout Damn Time
Enzo

He pushed his espresso aside, no appetite for it. Lola sat next to him, shoulders small, eyes hollowed out, picking at her food like she wanted it to disappear.

Across from them, Dottie dragged from her cigarette, eyes sharp as knives.

“You’ll come with me today,” he said finally. “To the war room. You’ll share what you know.”

Her gaze cut to him. Steady. Testing. Then she nodded, like she’d been waiting for him to ask.

“About time. Let’s see if your men can handle what’s coming.”

Lola’s brow furrowed. “You’re just… agreeing? Like that?”

“Bug,” Dottie said, smoke curling, “I don’t sit at a table I don’t intend to cook at.”

Enzo felt the corner of his jaw tighten. Nico should’ve been here for this—should’ve been the one leaning back in his chair, cracking some quiet joke, reminding him not to grind his teeth. Instead, it was just the hollow space where his brother should be. He forced the thought down before it cracked him open.

Christ, fratello \[brother\]. You should be here for this. Not me alone.

“And I’ll be staying,” Dottie added, casual as a hammer. “Couple weeks. Maybe longer. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you two before you drown yourselves.”

Lola froze. “Staying? As in—”

“Not moving in,” Dottie cut, “haunting.”

Enzo almost smiled. Almost. She wasn’t wrong.

Lola turned to him, suspicion in her voice. “You don’t look surprised.”

He met her gaze evenly. “Because I’m not.”

Because I asked for this. Because I trust her with you in ways I can’t even trust myself.

She blinked, like she’d just caught the edge of something bigger, something she didn’t know yet. He let her. Some truths didn’t belong to this table.

Dottie stubbed her cigarette out with finality. “Good. Then after breakfast, show me your war room. I want to meet the men who’ve been holding this city up while you two hid under blankets.”

Enzo’s hand slid over Lola’s under the table, steady where his chest felt anything but. Her fingers tightened against his.

Let them come. I’ll put every last one in the ground before I let them touch what’s mine.

They left the kitchen in silence, footsteps muffled against marble. Lola brushed his hand now and then as they walked—small jolts of warmth through the ice in his chest. Dottie followed with her cane tapping steady, like punctuation. Every strike on the floor said: I know where we’re going. I’ve been here before.

The elevator ride down was short, but heavy. Dottie leaned into her cane, expression unreadable, while Lola stared at her reflection in the mirrored wall like she didn’t quite recognize the girl looking back.

Enzo reached for her hand, grounding her. She didn’t look up, but her fingers twitched tighter in his.

The doors opened onto the war room—screens glowing, maps spread, the table still littered with Dmitri’s carcass in black and red. Dom and Gino were already inside, braced like sentries on either side of the table. Jake hunched over his monitors, fingers flicking across keys.

Dottie didn’t pause on the threshold. She strode in like it was her living room, cane striking the tile, eyes sharp as razors as she scanned the setup.

Dom muttered low, “Who the fuck invited grandma?”

The thunk of wood on bone cracked across the room as Dottie smacked her cane against his shin. Dom jerked back, swearing.

“Respect your elders, boy,” she said, tone dry as dust. “Or I’ll aim higher next time.”

Gino barked a laugh before catching himself, and Jake smirked into his monitor.

Enzo didn’t twitch. “This is Dottie,” he said simply. “You’ll listen when she speaks.”

She eased into a chair at the far end like a queen taking her throne. Dom rubbed his shin and muttered under his breath, but even he didn’t push further.

Enzo guided Lola to a seat beside him, hand warm at her back. His gaze swept the table, heavy, silent steel.

For the first time since Nico’s body went cold, the room didn’t feel hollow.

Alright, fratello. We keep moving. We sharpen teeth. We burn them out.

Dottie settled back in the chair, cane leaning against her shoulder, eyes glittering like she’d been waiting years for this room. Smoke still clung to her scarf, a sharp reminder she’d been living long enough not to care about what killed her.

She let the silence drag just long enough for Dom’s scowl to deepen and Jake’s fingers to stutter once on the keys. Then she spoke.

“You boys think Dmitri was your storm. Think Russians and turf lines and smuggling routes were the mountain to climb.” Her gaze cut across the table, pinning each of them in turn before it landed on Lola. “That was a hill. Pebble on the road. What’s ahead of you? That’s avalanche.”

Lola shifted beside him, her hands knotted tight in her hoodie sleeves. He felt the heat rising under her skin, anger bubbling where the grief had been.

Enzo stayed still, his jaw tight. “Say it plain, Dottie.”

Her smirk didn’t reach her eyes. “Plain is this: you already know the name, or you wouldn’t be sniffing at the edges. Academy.” She spat the word like it burned her tongue. “You think it’s rumor. A story gangsters tell each other to make themselves feel small. But I’ve seen the shadows it leaves. Men and women walking out of nowhere into power, polished like glass, soulless like statues. Children funneled through like cattle, turned into assets. Sold.”

The word cracked sharp. Lola flinched.

Her voice was quieter now, but every syllable rang like iron. “Not just mob hands. Not just cartels. Senators. Bankers. Judges. Anyone with the right wallet and the right filth in their bloodline. Dmitri? He was nothing. He bought scraps. You want to know why Nico’s gone?”

“Don’t.” Lola’s voice split, raw.

Dottie leaned forward, elbows heavy on the table. “Then don’t ask me to sugarcoat, bug. Your boy wasn’t killed by some bratva rat with a twitchy trigger. He was taken because someone out there wants you hollow. Wants you obedient.” Her cane tapped once against the floor, sharp as a gavel. “Because they know what you are, and they don’t like their investments running loose.”

The temperature in the room shifted. Gino’s shoulders went tight as pulled wire. Dom muttered a curse. Even Jake’s fingers paused mid-type.

Lola’s head snapped up. Her fingers clamped the edge of the table so hard it creaked. “They killed him to hollow me out?” she whispered, voice soft at first and then hardening like steel. “They ripped him away because they want me empty—so they can stitch whatever they like into the seams.”

She rose so fast the chair complained. The room inhaled and held its breath.

“Fine.” Her eyes were knives now. “Then I’ll jam a pyre into that hole and feed them the flames. I’ll trace every ledger to its rotten root, strip their names from their pedestals, and leave nothing but ash where they thought they could catalog me.”

The sentence landed like a detonator.

Enzo watched the shift—this was no longer the reckless spark that used to laugh in the dark. This was careful, precise, hungry. There was a silence around her now that carried teeth. She looked like a storm about to make landfall: inevitable, unavoidable annihilation.

He didn’t answer with words. He locked his fingers over hers beneath the table, a hard anchor. The squeeze said what the room didn’t need spoken: I’m with you. I go where you go. Always.

Dottie clicked her tongue, pleased and dangerous. “Bout damn time,” she murmured, ash falling into the saucer like punctuation. “Talk is for the weak. We’ll make plans. Then we’ll make ruins.”

Around the war table, the others shifted—Dom’s hand went to the map, Gino’s jaw set. Grief steeled into purpose; their sorrow hardened into an appetite for dismantling. Lola’s eyes burned brighter. Her vow hung in the air, a promise and a verdict both.

They had just given themselves a mission that would not end until the names that tried to break her were nothing but dust.