I brushed a strand of hair from her face.“I promise.I won’t become my father.”
“Good,” she said.“Because I married you, not his ghost.”
Later that night, after she’d gone upstairs, I made the calls.By the time I hung up, the house was still again.The rain slowed.Smoke curled from the cigar in my hand, the smell rich and bitter.
I was battling two sides of myself—me, the man I was made to be, and for her, the one I was trying to become.My father’s voice still lingered in my head, but quieter now.His lessons had built my empire.
But Mia had built something stronger.Not a kingdom.A reason.
I buttoned my coat in the mirror; the fabric falling into place with the obedient weight of something that knew who it belonged to.The house exhaled around me—the last shuffle of guards taking posts, the low murmur of an engine warming in the drive.
In the hall, I paused at the base of the stairs and glanced up.The landing light washed everything in soft gold.For a heartbeat I expected her there, barefoot and stubborn, ready to argue me back into bed or into a different version of myself.
She didn’t come.Good.Better to leave before I chose her over war and paid the kind of price men like me only pay once.I stepped out into the night.The rain thinned to a fine mist.
“Route’s clear,” Luca said, opening the rear door.
“Make it stay that way,” I answered, sliding in.
I glanced back through the open triangle of door and frame, past the portico columns and the thinning veil of rain.She stood at the study window, one hand braced on the sill, the other cradling her sore shoulder through my shirt.No dramatic silhouette, no hand pressed grief—just Mia watching me go, steady as a lighthouse that would never beg the storm to be kind.I lifted my hand—half wave, half vow.She didn’t wave back.She nodded once, the smallest coronation I’d ever been given.Go.Come back the same man.
The car door shut with a clean thud and then eased forward; the gates obeyed.Gravel hissed under the tires and then gave way to a smooth road.
“Alessio?”I said, eyes on the dark ahead.
“In position,” came the reply over the speaker.
“Make them spill everything.”
“Understood.”
28
ENRICO
The lights buzzed overhead, flickering like nerves.A man sat in the center of the ring, bound to a chair with a strip of duct tape pressed against his mouth.His nose bled sluggishly, dripping onto the mat.Marco drug him here an hour ago, and patience had been wearing thin ever since.I stepped closer, slow, deliberate.My reflection shivered in the metal post of the boxing ring—black suit, wet cuffs, the faint glint of a gold chain at my throat.
“Remove it.”
Marco peeled the tape away, and the man sucked in a ragged breath.“I didn’t—I don’t know?—”
My palm came down on the ring post, hard enough to echo.The sound cut through his words like thunder.
“Then start.”
He flinched, his Adam’s apple bobbing.“It wasn’t me!I just—I just delivered a message!”
I circled him, my shoes whispering across the mat.“Delivered from whom?”
His silence was a dare.It lasted three seconds too long.
I leaned down, letting the edge of my tone cut where my hands didn’t.“You think I’m asking.I’m not.”
A tremor ran through him.Then, the words spilled out.
“Gallo!It was Gallo!He said—he said it was a warning.Said you were slipping.That your father would’ve never allowed this chaos?—”
Gallo.Old rival.Former ally.One of my father’s original lieutenants who’d once kissed his ring.So this wasn’t random.This was legacy bleeding back through the cracks.
