“All of it.”
Mia’s mouth twitched.“Thank you.”
Marco stepped to the console and pointed without touching.“Frame’s from a tourist stall.The tape on the back has a shop’s watermark—Calisto’s—that flea of a place off Via del Leone.”
“Pull the last six weeks of footage from cams on that block.Anyone loitering across more than two days, I want their names.”
Marco nodded and slid back toward the door to give orders.The gallery got bigger once he left and more dangerous.Empty rooms are where men do their best thinking.And their worst.
Mia stood beside me, looking at the photo like it could look back.“He was handsome,” she said, surprising me.
“My father?”I asked.
“Both.That must have been exhausting for everyone.”
I huffed something close to a laugh.“They were exhausting.But worse when together.Men like that don’t have equals.They just have mirrors.”
“And you?”she asked.“Which are you?”
I didn’t answer.Instead I lifted the frame carefully and turned it over.The backing had been resealed with clear tape—clean, tight.A small square of paper lay beneath the cardboard, pinned to the mat with a straight pin, tucked where only a man without nerves would look while alarms slept.
I slid the square free with the knife from my pocket.The blade made a small sigh parting the tape.The paper was old—thin enough to be brittle, strong enough to have survived a generation of men pretending they didn’t keep accounts on anything that could burn.
Numbers ran across the square in columns—a ledger fragment.At the top right, a stamp I recognized: the offshore bank’s seal.Beneath it, a line written in that same precise hand:
Figlio, finish supper.
My stomach pulled tight.
“What is it?”she asked.
“A thing my father said when he wanted me to understand that a job is done whenIsay it is.”
“Figlio,” she said.“Son.”
“Yes.”The old coin in my study had carried the same word carved into its back.I could feel its weight in my palm though it lay two rooms away.“He’s baiting me into a family argument with a dead man.”
“Is it working?”
I met her eyes.
Her gaze flicked to my mouth.The smallest shiver moved across her skin.This was how they always tried to separate men like me from the things that made us human: they took the night and tried to turn it to clay in their hands.Make it shape us into whotheywanted.Make us forget the heat of a woman’s breath when she told the truth and the sound of a house sleeping when you’ve finally convinced it to.
“No more walking this house alone.”I tucked the paper into my inner pocket.“If you need air, I walk with you.Or Catrina.Or a guard you choose.”
We moved along the west corridor.My men were already sliding into positions the house wouldn’t notice—seeing without looking, listening without disturbing the air.The kind of men you thank by not saying thank you.
At the top of the stairs, the security console buzzed again.Another red dot blinked to nothing.The system logged it as an interference event, not a breach.
“Who taught you to fold cranes?”Mia asked as we walked.
The question snagged a piece of memory and pulled it into the light.“Gallo.When I was nine.In a bar I wasn’t supposed to be in.He knows where the old books are buried.”
We reached the study.I ushered her inside and shut the door.I sat the frame on the desk, slid the ledger square beside it, and took a photograph of both.The flash off the glass snapped like a small blade.I texted the images to Marco and to Andre with two words:Pattern match.
Mia circled the desk and rested her hip against the edge.“You know this isn’t going to end at the fence.”
“I know.”
