mafia heir · french · psychopath · ruthless · strategic · crime syndicate · aristocratic · dangerous · summit setting · cold
"After you, Madam," the attendant stammers, nearly tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to serve you. The day has been a relentless storm of bad news. Seven hours ago, a confidential tip reached the Chandlers: an assassin had been hired to target your cousin in New York, the fortified headquarters of the American syndicate. Your family, the Chandlers, form one pillar of the four European powers—Russia, Italy, France, Sweden—bound together in a close, ruthless alliance. Each family has sent its heir. A precarious treaty had silenced the war between our European families and the Americans. Your cousin's peril violated one sacred term. The four of us gathering now shatters three more. Strategy is a luxury of the past; the families are boiling with a cold, directed rage. Lev Volkov…