“They’re taunting you,” Marco said.
“They’re tauntinghim.” My voice came out harder than intended.“His ghost.His empire.I buried that man years ago.”
I crouched again.Someone wanted me to find this.Wanted to make sure I understood that the feud wasn’t finished.
A memory broke through: my father’s voice, sharp and cold.“Control, Enrico, is a knife you hold by the blade.It always draws blood, but if you let go, you lose everything.”
I spent my life gripping that knife, pretending I didn’t feel the cuts.
Marco nudged a crate aside.Beneath it laid a sealed envelope.My name written across it in my father’s handwriting.The sight rooted me.My throat closed as I picked it up.
“Do you want—” Marco began.
“I’ll read it alone.”
He nodded, stepping back toward the doorway.
I tore the envelope open.
My son.The Gallos have come for what was theirs.You’ll believe this is revenge.It isn’t.It’s reclamation.I took from Giovanni more than money.I took his blood, his loyalty, and his heir’s future.If the sins of the father are ever to be repaid, it will be through you.There is only one truth that matters: power cannot be shared.
I folded the paper, fingers trembling.
“Enrico?”Marco called.
I looked up.
“We should go.”
I nodded, sliding the letter into my jacket.As we stepped back onto the street, dawn was bleeding across the horizon, painting the sky in bruised gold.The city didn’t know it yet, but war had already begun.I didn’t speak on the drive back.Marco knew better.He drove like a man who’d memorized the city.We cut through the old quarter, the sky bruising toward daylight.
At the gate, the cameras recognized the car, and let us through.The gravel whispered under the tires.Men who were mine but not my friends acknowledged us with the smallest tilt of their heads.Loyalty was a language of gestures.So was fear.
“Kitchen entrance.”
Marco parked by the service door where deliveries came and bodies sometimes left.We stepped inside and the baker’s assistant glanced up, startled.She crossed herself when she recognized me and then pretended she hadn’t.I didn’t correct her.
In the corridor beyond, my study door was half open.I pushed it with two fingers and waited until the hinges finished speaking.Empty.
I set the letter on the blotter and stood there.
“Gather the captains,” I said without looking at Marco.“They’ll have three questions: Are we buying time?Are we going to war?The answers are yes, and not the way they expect.”
“Name the traitor?”he asked.
“Not yet.We let him think the play worked.Men who taste blood get careless.”
He nodded once, almost approving.“And Mia?”
“Protected.She doesn’t leave the estate without me or Catrina.If she insists, she chooses the guard.”
He headed for the door.He paused with his hand on the frame.“You’re going to have to tell her something.”
“I will.Just not everything.”
The intercom on the desk clicked.“Signore?”the housekeepers asked.“Mia is waiting for you in the dining hall.”
I pictured Mia in one of my shirts, sleeves pushed up, chin tipped like a dare.The memory of her hand on my wrist two nights ago moved through me like heat that learned to wait.
