The city was a furnace that day, heat pressing down like punishment, even in the shadows. I drove out past Parramatta Road, where warehouses sat low and square, their roofs corrugated and scarred from years of weather and crime. Vale had sent me to “remind” a supplier who’d been late with payments – a show of force, a loyalty test dressed as busywork.
I already knew what it was. Another of Vale’s traps. Another way to measure how tightly he thought he held my leash.
But when I pulled into the lot, I saw it wasn’t Vale’s men waiting.
Three black SUVs lined the chain-link fence. Men stood easy but disciplined, their shirts tucked, their movements deliberate. No jitter, no wasted gestures. Not Vale’s coke-hollowed scavengers. Soldiers.
And at the centre of them, like the mast of a ship, was Sami Oshana.
He wasn’t tall in the way movie villains are tall. He was thick, built like a dockside crane, shoulders squared, arms hanging heavy with veins carved deep. His black hair was cropped close, flecked with grey, and his eyes – Christ, his eyes – they carried something older than the city around us. Dark, still, like wells you didn’t want to fall into.
On his chest, half-hidden under his open collar, the ink of a cross. On his forearm, the Archangel Michael, sword drawn, wings spread. Not the kind of tattoos you get to impress women at the beach. Marks of faith and war.
When I stepped out of the car, he didn’t move. Just watched me with that calm weight. One of his men muttered in Assyrian Aramaic, and Sami answered back without looking away. The words rolled like stone over stone.
I lit a smoke, took my time.
“You’re not Vale’s men,” I said finally.
He smiled. Slow. Like a man who’d already measured me and found the answer. “No….We’re not.” His voice was low, controlled. “Vale’s men don’t stand straight anymore. They bend.”
I exhaled, the smoke cutting the space between us. “So who are you?”
He stepped closer, his men holding position like chess pieces already placed. “I’m Sami Oshana. My people have been here longer than Vale’s coke habit. We build, we bleed, we bury our dead with prayer. And we don’t answer to parasites.”
The menace was there, plain and hard. But it wasn’t bark. It was creed.
“You’ve been in my lanes,” I said. Not a question.
He nodded once. No denial. “Vale’s time is ending. He’s weak. And weakness invites wolves.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not weak, Boone. I’ve watched you. You carry yourself like a man. Not like a hyena sniffing for scraps.”
I said nothing. Just let the silence settle. Men like Sami filled silence with truth if you gave them the space.
He went on. “I don’t touch women, or children. Not for money, not for leverage. My men don’t sniff powder. Don’t drink when we work. We fight, we bleed, but we keep our code. Without it, we’re no better than Vale.”
There it was – his compass. Crooked maybe, but still pointing to something steadier than Vale’s twitching paranoia.
He stepped closer again, close enough that I could smell him. Not perfume. Not powder. Soap. Sweat. Tobacco. Real.
“I like you, Boone,” he said, voice dropping softer now. “You’re dangerous, but not filthy. You’ve got blood on your hands, but you know who it belongs to. That makes you different.” His eyes locked on mine. “But hear me: if you stand with Vale against me, I’ll put you in the ground. I’ll bury you with respect, but I’ll bury you all the same.”
The men around him stayed stone still. The sun hammered down, the smoke from my cigarette curling between us like scripture written in air.
I flicked the butt away, met his stare cold. “I don’t stand with Vale,” I said. “I stand where I choose.”
For a moment, neither of us moved. Just the hum of the city, the distant growl of trucks on the highway, the weight of two men measuring the other’s marrow.
Then Sami smiled again, small, sharp. “Good.” He turned back to his men, speaking in his tongue, and they broke formation, moving with the precision of soldiers dismissing parade.
Before he climbed into his SUV, he looked back once more. “Vale’s not your brother, Boone. Don’t let him drag you down with him.”
And then he was gone. Engines roaring, tyres kicking gravel, leaving me in the heat with the taste of smoke and the name Sami Oshana branded into my thoughts.
I sat there a long minute, engine off, sweat soaking my collar. The name tasted like iron, like blood I hadn’t yet spilled. Sami Oshana wasn’t Vale. He wasn’t chaos. He was order. Faith and family dressed in muscle and menace.
The soldier in me weighed him. Calm, precise, disciplined. Men like that didn’t make empty threats. He could marshal bodies, run lanes, carve order out of chaos. I didn’t fear him – I’d stared down worse in darker places – but I respected him. And respect from a soldier was worth more than fear.
The killer in me bristled at his words, the warning wrapped in respect. Another man threatening to put me in the ground. I wanted to tear him apart for it, show him I didn’t kneel, not to Vale, not to him. The machine in me pictured his throat open, the sound it would make, the way the earth would drink him. But the machine also knew restraint. Patience. That every blade has its time to cut.
The father in me heard something else. Sami spoke of family, of faith, of burying his dead with prayer. I thought of Lewis – the boy in that photo, the man he’d become, the distance between us. My one failing. Sami’s compass pointed home, even if his hands were bloody. Mine pointed everywhere but.
And Jo. Christ. Jo. She was Assyrian too. I felt it flare in me the second he said his name. The same fire, the same defiance. The way she’d bend her words to cut me, then melt around me like she’d never wanted anyone else. Why it mattered, I didn’t know. Maybe it was just the bloodline echo, the sound of a heritage older than both of us. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was God laughing. But it mattered.
I lit another smoke, let it burn slow, let the compartments talk. Soldier said respect him. Killer said cut him. Father said maybe this is the man who can end Vale, keep me clear, leave Lewis out of the blast. And the sinner… the sinner just sat back, smiling, because Jo was in the room again, whether I wanted her or not.
Sami Oshana was no parasite. He was order, forged in faith and family. And that made him dangerous. Dangerous enough to kill Vale. Dangerous enough to save me. Dangerous enough to damn me too.
By the time I drove back toward the Velvet Hour, the sun was sliding down, bleeding orange into smog. Vale’s world always looked uglier in that half-light – like the city itself was ashamed to show its face.
I found him upstairs in the mezzanine again, coke laid out in neat little rails, his pupils already the size of coins. He was pacing when I walked in, powder sweat dripping, shirt untucked, the hyenas watching from the shadows.
“You saw him, didn’t you?” Vale barked before I’d even sat. His laugh was manic, the kind that rattles around in a skull too long. “The Assyrian. Sami fucking Oshana. Thinks he can walk in here, take my lanes, take my crown? Fuck him. Fuck his God.”
He jabbed a finger at me, powder spilling off his knuckle. “What did he say to you?”
I lit a smoke, calm. “That you’re weak.”
The room went still. Even the hyenas shifted in their seats, eyes flicking between us.
Vale’s grin cracked. He twitched, sniffed, tried to laugh but it came out like a choke. “He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what I’ll do. I’ll burn his family alive if I have to. I’ll string him up in his own church. You hear me? No one replaces Vale. No one.”
But his hands were shaking. His voice broke on the word “family.” The powder was doing the talking, but the fear was doing the shaking. Sami Oshana had crawled under his skin, and the paranoia was eating him alive.
I blew smoke across the table, let it cut through his rant. “Then prove it. Or he’ll take everything.”
Vale’s eyes darted, glassy and wild. He leaned close, breath hot with powder and whisky. “You’re with me, Boone. You’re my brother. Brothers in arms. Brothers in appetite. Say it.”
I met his stare, flat, cold. “I stand where I choose.”
He froze. Just for a heartbeat. Then he laughed again, too loud, too sharp, slapping my back like we were boys in a pub.
“But you’re standing here, brother, with me.” He said with a tone halfway between rest and unrest. But I’d seen the crack. His eyes confirmed it. Fear.
And once fear takes root, men like Vale are already finished.
