“But your father did.”
The word father doesn’t land.
It fractures.
I see him hunched over ledgers. Coffee gone cold. Fingers shaking like he was forever afraid the numbers would bite back. He loved my mother like oxygen.
And she—
My vision blurs.
“Giovanni decided he didn’t need him anymore,” Carlo says. “So he erased him. And your mother?”
He smiles.
“Collateral.”
Something seals my throat shut.
“You’re lying,” I say again. Thinner now. A shrapnel word. A prayer.
Carlo leans in close enough that I could bite him if I were free.
“Then why do you think you lived?” he asks quietly. “Giovanni doesn’t leave witnesses unless they’re useful.”
Cold pours into my veins.
Not a shiver.
An infection.
“And now,” Carlo continues, straightening, “his son has a weakness for pretty little tragedies like you.”
I shut my eyes.
Not him.Not Santino.
I won’t be the reason he breaks.
Not after everything inside him has already cracked and bled.
This wasn’t supposed to touch him.I was supposed to disappear clean.Instead—
I’ve become the blade.
“I can’t let him come,” I whisper.
Carlo chuckles.
“Sweetheart,” he says, spreading his hands, “men like him always come.”
I open my eyes.
The truth in that hurts worse than any lie.
Santino doesn’t measure danger.He doesn’t calculate the cost.He doesn’t hesitate.
He comes.
