The Romano Café stood in Downtown like a black-glass cathedral built by people who had been wealthy since before borders had names.
Seventeen stories of obsidian and brushed gold rose from the most expensive square block in Downtown Paradise with the kind of arrogance that didn't need signage.
But it had one anyway.
The word café was doing heroic, dishonest work here. This wasn't a café the way a private jet wasn't transportation. The Romanos had poured three generations of money—money still faintly warm from activities polite society preferred to forget—into this place.
They had turned mafia into legitimacy the slow, patient way: restaurants, hotels, quiet acquisitions, occasional quiet wars with the Price family over who owned the skyline.
