Marco’s gaze stayed on me.“You want him to talk, or you want him to bleed?”
“Both.”I stepped closer.“No one touches her.If Russo even says her name again, you make sure he never speaks another word.”
For a moment Marco just peered at me then, quietly: “She isn’t yours to protect yet.”
“Everything in this city becomes mine to protect,” I said.“And to destroy.”
He exhaled once, somewhere between warning and surrender.“I’ll handle it.”
When he left, the door shut soft as a gun being cocked.I poured a drink I didn’t need and stared through the rain-smeared glass.Beyond the river, lightning split the sky—brief, blinding, gone.
Peace was the word we used when we were too tired to admit the war never ended.
The whiskey burned going down, smooth and useless.I set the glass aside and crossed to the balcony.The doors opened.Below, headlights crawled through fog, the sound of engines softened by distance.Thunder rolled somewhere far off.I leaned against the rail and let the rain find me.It slicked across my cuffs, my throat, the scar on my hand.
Inside, the pins marked borders that meant nothing outside the paper.I’d spent years drawing those lines, convincing myself that owning the city meant understanding it.Now all I could see was her face at the dinner table.She’d gawked at me as if she could already see the man I’d let no one else notice.Not the killer.Not the king.Just me.
I’d built an empire on discipline.Then one woman spoke my name, and I forgot the rules.
Tomorrow would come with new orders, new bodies, new bargains.That was the currency of survival.
But tonight—just for a heartbeat—I let myself imagine what it would be like if peace meant more than an illusion we sold between wars.
7
MIA
The house was ominous.No laughter from the kitchen, no footsteps in the hall—just the muffled tick of the old clock in the corridor.I sat at the edge of my bed, bare feet on cold marble, trying to convince myself the ache in my chest was just from lack of sleep.Everything in this house always appeared perfect until you got close enough to see the cracks.
Celia appeared at the door, hands twisting in her apron.“Your father left early, signorina.He said to tell you not to worry.”
That sentence had never once meant I shouldn’t.“Did he say where?”
She hesitated, then shook her head.“No, miss.Only that he had business with Di Fiore.”
The name struck harder than I wanted to admit.It was like a match in the dark—small, bright, impossible to ignore.
“Thank you,” I whispered.She dipped her head and vanished, grateful to be dismissed.
When I made it downstairs, the dining room had a folded note waiting at my father’s place.I recognized the handwriting—precise, confident, every letter the same weight.
Business with Di Fiore.Stay inside.
No greeting.No signature.Just orders.
I read it twice before setting it down.The commandstay insideappeared less like protection and more like a lock.Whatever had happened between them last night, it wasn’t over.
I crossed to the window.The fog had thickened, swallowing the gates and the road beyond.Even the sun was hesitant to rise.Some silences don’t mean peace.They mean someone’s reloading to prepare for war.
Somewhere out there, the world kept moving.Deals were being struck, debts collected, enemies erased.And I was expected to pretend like nothing had shifted—pretend I didn’t feel the ripple of something vast, dangerous, and irrevocably tied to him.
I turned from the window, spine straightening.If this was peace, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what war would be like.
The study smelled like old smoke and polished wood.I came here because I wanted answers.Instead, I found silence—and a single paper folded on his desk.
UNREST AT THE DOCKS — RUSSO HOLDINGS TORCHED IN OVERNIGHT ATTACK
The words blurred for a moment before they sank in.It wasn’t a coincidence.It never was.Somewhere between the lines, I could feel his presence—Enrico Di Fiore, doing what he always did: restoring order through destruction, balance through blood.
