I straightened.“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know!They move every few?—”
Marco’s phone buzzed.He silenced it with a thumb and met my eyes.“Warehouse’s been cleaned out.Whoever tipped him off knew we were coming.”
Of course they did.I’d made too much noise.Blood on the docks carried its own signal.“Handle it.”
Marco nodded.The man in the chair shook, mumbling pleas I ignored as I walked toward the door.Rain fell harder, turning the streetlights into blurs of gold.
I could feel my father’s ghost in every step I took.He would’ve burned the whole block for the insult.He would’ve called it justice.But justice had a cost, and mine was waiting at home, sleeping in silk sheets, bruised from the world I’d dragged her into.
The drive back to the estate was in silence.The city’s lights rolled by in ribbons, bleeding across the windshield.My thoughts were jagged, circling Gallo’s name.By the time the gates opened, dawn was pressing against the horizon.I killed the engine, sat for a moment in the stillness, and forced my breathing to match the rain.
Inside, Mia’s voice drifted from the study when I stepped inside.
“You’re finally home.Can we talk, baby?Why are you shutting me out?”
Her tone was soft, but it cut through me.I stopped, half in shadow, watching her through the doorway.She stood by the window, hair spilling loose over her shoulders, the faintest trace of tiredness around her eyes.The bruise near her collarbone had faded to a pale lavender, a ghost of what had been done to her.
“I’m not,” I said finally.My voice sounded foreign, scraped raw.
She turned.“You think I don’t notice when you disappear?When your phone lights up and you step outside to answer it like I’m too fragile to handle the truth?”
The accusation in her eyes made something in my chest twist.I took a slow breath, closing the door behind me.“There are things I can’t tell you.Not yet.”
“Not yet?”Her laugh was short, humorless.“You meannever.”
Her words found the fractures I tried to ignore.“Mia.”I crossed the room.“If I tell you everything, you’ll hate me for it.”
“Maybe,” she said.“But at least it would behonest.”
Silence.The kind that pressed against the ribs, waiting to break something.I reached for her hand.She didn’t pull away—but she didn’t move closer either.
“They came after you because of me.Because someone wants to remind me what kind of man my father raised.And because they think I’m losing control.”
“Are you?”
Her question was a knife, clean and curious.“No.”I caught her chin.“But I might have to become someone you don’t recognize to end this.”
She swallowed.“Then don’t forget who you are when it’s over.”
Her words—so simple—landed deeper than any threat.
I kissed her, once.She trembled.When I pulled back, I saw the question still in her eyes.The one I didn’t want to answer.
Later, when she’d gone to bed, I stayed in the study.Marco came in.His shirt was damp, his expression grim.He handed me a folded slip of paper.
“Found this taped to the gates.No cameras caught who left it.”
I unfolded it.One sentence scrawled in dark ink, sharp and deliberate.
Your father’s sins were never buried.Neither will yours.
The paper trembled between my fingers.Not from fear—never fear.From recognition.The handwriting wasn’t just familiar.It was identical to letters my father received years ago, right before his own right-hand man vanished.
Gallo wasn’t alone.This was deeper.Older.
I let out a slow breath and sat the paper on the desk.My reflection wavered in the dark glass of the window—black suit, gold cufflinks, the faintest smear of Mia’s lipstick near my jaw.A man divided between two worlds.
