Something deep inside me gives way quietly first—then everything after it caves in.
My head jerks once, sharp and unthinking. As if shaking hard enough might dislodge the word lodged in my skull.
“No,” I say.
Not disbelief.
Command.
Miguel doesn’t soften. Doesn’t flinch.
He just keeps cutting.
“Your father said Romeo met with men behind his back,” he continues. “Men he introduced as allies but spoke about as enemies. That he asked questions a son doesn’t ask unless he’s planning to replace the man answering them.”
My throat tightens.
Romeo.
Always laughing.
Always slipping away.
“Shipments vanished not long after Giovanni gave him more control,” Miguel adds. “Nights he disappeared were the same nights money bled out of the books. The same nights routes went dark.”
My thoughts become a crime scene.
Romeo not answering his phone.Romeo leaving dinners early.Romeo showing up with dust on his shoes and reasons already rehearsed.
His voice in the crypt.
If you open that vault, you’ll wish you never did.
Miguel doesn’t give me time to recover.
“Your father said Romeo asked about places he never mentioned out loud,” he continues. “About meetings never written. About locations a son should have never known existed.”
My lungs burn.
I see Romeo beside me in the tunnels.
His eyes tracking Pia like a locked scope.
That flash of emotion I couldn’t name.
Not jealousy.
Recognition.
“He disappeared the night Giovanni died,” Miguel adds.
I go still.
“He knew where your father would be,” Miguel finishes quietly.
“And he didn’t stop it.”
A sound tears out of me that almost resembles laughter.
