“They’re going to push you where everyone can see.”
I moved to her and bracketed the desk on either side of her hips with my hands.Close enough to feel her heartbeat alter mine, not close enough to be inefficient.
“I’ll ask you once.Are you afraid?”
“Yes, but I’m not leaving.”
“Good,” I said, and pressed my mouth to her temple.“Because I’m done being a man who’s everywhere but at home.”
A tap at the door interrupted the moment.Marco again, face set, eyes sharper.He slipped a tablet onto the desk and brought up a split screen: cam footage from Via del Leone on the left; our north gate camera on the right.
On the left, a black sedan idled across from the shuttered tailor shop two nights in a row.Headlights off.On the right, our north camera hiccuped to static and cleared to show the same sedan two blocks away in the spillover of streetlight.The timestamps were cousins—close enough to hold hands, far enough to pretend they weren’t related.
“Same make, same bumper damage,” Marco said.He tapped the image; a zoom found the scar along the rear quarter panel, an ugly crescent.“No plate in either.But look here.”
He drew a box around the rear windshield on the cam.A faint sticker ghosted the glass—red on dark.A parking decal from a private garage on the east side I knew too well: my father’s old lot, where he’d kept the cars he didn’t want listed, titled, or named.Half the city tried to buy that lot from me after the funeral.I’d bricked half of it and salted the rest.
I looked down.
Figlio, finish supper.
He wanted me there.He wanted me to kneel at the table where another man had eaten and died.
“Pull the garage records.If anyone used a legacy code, cross it with the old staff lists.Somebody sold a key or somebody never turned one in.”
“On it,” Marco said.He hesitated, glanced at Mia again, then back to me.“You want me to move her and Catrina to the south house?”
“No,” Mia said before I could.
Marco’s mouth tugged like he wanted to smile but his face had forgotten how.He waited for my call.
“She stays, but we double interior rotation.Swap outside men with fresh eyes every two hours.If anyone yawns, send them home and don’t let them back for twenty-four hours.”
Marco nodded once and left, dragging plans behind him like nets.
Dawn was somewhere behind the clouds trying to be born and being told to wait.Mia traced the edge of the ledger square’s plastic sleeve with a fingertip.
“What did he mean,” she asked, “about a kingdom your father promised him?”
I leaned back against the desk, arms crossed.“Before I was born, there was a piece of the city nobody could hold.Too many families wanted it; too many cops were for sale at the same time.My father cut a circle around it and said, ‘Whoever keeps books clean and violence quiet gets it.’Gallo thought it would be him.My father was wrong about a lot of things.He wasn’t wrong about himself.”
“He took it.”
“He took it.Then he taught me the numbers that made it make sense.He also taught me that when a man feels he’s owed, he will do anything to get it.”
“And now his son is here to collect.”
“Yes.”
“And you will pay?”
“That’s what he thinks, yes.”
The house pinged again.Not an alarm.A door.East service entry.Authorized access.I checked the log automatically and stilled.The access code used was one I’d deactivated years ago, a ghost number meant to vanish in a fire.
“Marco, east service entry shows an old code—five three three nine.That shouldn’t exist.”
“Copy,” he answered.“We’ve got men on the door.No breach.”
