A red slash cuts across the top corner.Sharp. Violent. Giovanni’s private code.
Critical risk.
My pulse kicks—hard enough I feel it in my teeth.
I drag the ledger closer, knuckles whitening around the edges as I flip to the marked section.
POTENTIAL TRAITORS
The heading punches straight through my ribs.
He catalogued them.Every threat.Every whisper.Every fucking shadow that dared move out of step with his empire.
My father didn’t keep lists like this unless the paranoia was already eating him alive.
I scan the names.
Some are familiar—weak links, opportunists, men who served him out of fear instead of loyalty.But others twist hot and ugly in my gut:
Priests I grew up around.Consiglieres who swore blood oaths.Runners who took bullets without complaint.Drivers who spent decades guarding the family’s secrets.
He didn’t trust any of them.
But it’s the next entry that freezes my breath.
It stretches across two lines, underlined twice—ink pressed so deep Giovanni nearly tore through the page.
RIVAS — internal threat
My stomach drops.
“No.” The word barely makes a sound.
But the ledger doesn’t change.The ink doesn’t soften.The dagger Giovanni buried in these pages doesn’t pull itself free.
A Rivas betrayed him.
Pia was right.Her father was framed.
Giovanni didn’t execute a thief.He buried a scapegoat.
I press the heel of my hand to my brow, fighting the sudden rush of heat behind my eyes. The room tilts. The shelves warp at the edges of my vision, tall shadows leaning in like they want to watch me shatter.
Which Rivas did this?
Romeo?Dante?Me?
A sick flash of memory hits—Romeo’s warnings, his silence, the way he watched Pia like she carried a fuse he was terrified I’d light.
And Dante… loyal to a fault, but Giovanni always said even the quiet ones carry knives behind their backs.
My throat closes on a curse.
I flip the page—desperate for clarity, for sense, for anything other than this widening chasm beneath my feet—
—and find Giovanni’s handwriting.
Not the clean, elegant script he used on church paperwork.
