“No, you are coming with me to our father’s old garage.Quiet.No convoy.Just you and me and one other I trust.”
“Luca?”
“Andre,” I said.
Marco grunted, approval again.“When?”
“Two in the morning.”
He hung up.
I set the phone down, opened the safe, and slid the letter inside.It laid there beside the ledger square and the sleeved cranes.
By dusk, the house settled.Mia passed me twice—once near the library with a book under her arm, once at the top of the stairs barefoot, hair down.At midnight, a courier I paid too much and trusted too little walked into a flower shop that stayed open for grief and asked for lilies.White, unblemished, tall enough to be mistaken for apology.On the card, an initial and nothing else.It would take Dante twenty minutes to decide whether the letter belonged to the dead man or to me.Either answer would itch.
At one-thirty, I found Andre in the garage with a toolbox.We left the estate through the east service road.The old garage keypad at the door was the same model my father liked.I keyed in the numbers he’d taught me before he taught me to shave.The light blinked red—denied.Then green—accepted.Someone spliced the logic years back to let a ghost in.
The cars were gone.The far bay still carried the print of the Jaguar’s tires.Near the wall, a darker patch on the concrete marked where oil had bled and bled and been forgiven because men forgive machines for sins they kill each other over.
On the workbench, a cloth-covered shape waited.I lifted the edge.My father’s signet ring laid on a square of black felt, its face turned down like it didn’t want to be recognized.I touched the ring with one finger, flipped it, and saw what I expected: the Di Fiore seal scratched with a pin until the lines bled into the metal.Over the scratches, a thin smear of red—fresh enough to shine under our lights.
Beneath the ring, a note.
Bring your best.— D.
“Bold,” Andre said.
I slid the ring into my pocket, the metal heavier than the message.“He wants me in the ruins at Via del Leone, full-circle, poetic.He thinks I’ll bring an army because that’s what his father would have done.”
“You won’t.”
“No.”I turned the note over.
I left the garage with my father’s ring burning a circle into my thigh and the shape of the ambush already drawing itself behind my eyes.Street-level watchers.A sniper who didn’t deserve the title.A car he thought was invisible and wasn’t.Marco would want to flood the street with men.
We reached the estate at three-fifteen.Even the guards stood.I crossed the foyer quiet.Mia stood at the balcony off the hall, barefoot, wrapped in a shawl.She didn’t turn when I came up beside her.She didn’t need to.Keeping so many things from her was killing me, but I didn’t want anyone to use her against me.Not again.
I kissed her shoulder and put my arms around her.“The night before my father died, he asked me if I was sorry for him.For all the horrible things he did to get where he was.I told him no.”
She looked at me then.“And now?”
“I feel sorry for the boy who thought he had to become him.”I slid the ring from my pocket and set it in her palm.“I’m done with it.”
She traced the marred face with her thumb.“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said, and I meantI’m going to end this on my terms, not hisandI’m not trading you for a crown that cuts.
She turned the ring over once more and then closed her fingers around it like a vow.“Then let me stand with you.”
I smiled.“You already do.”
She had a way of truly getting me to see another side of myself.A side that no other person had ever brought forward.The truth was: My father was a treacherous man and I’d be doing the world a favor not being anything like him.The Di Fiore empire and legacy didn’t have to be successful on the backs of everyone else.And if my father screwed us other families like us… then the family legacy had been tarnished a long time ago.
“I’ve still got some things to take care of, my love.Go get some rest.”
She did just that and I went to my study, waiting on news from the debacle.Marco was handling that side of things.The longer this charade went on, the more dangerous it was for everyone involved.
Marco came in as dawn bruised the sky again.He studied the map on my desk.“You’re going alone?”
