Page 141 of The Cost of Silence

“Kill?” He glances back over his shoulder. “Only if they insist on standing in the way. I would’ve taken them under my wing, you know. Taught them how to be what they were born to be. But they’re so attached to this illusion of legitimacy, it’s almost sweet.”

“Is that what you told my father?” I ask. “Before you put a bullet in him?”

He turns fully, eyes sharpening. “Your father was a liability. He asked questions no one wanted asked. He thought the ink in his pen made him untouchable. He was wrong.”

My hands are shaking now. I curl them into fists. “You’re wrong about Nico,” I say. “He didn’t choose you. He chose me. He chose this. He chose to keep building what Enzo tried to build, not what you wish he had.”

Domenico sighs, like I’m a slow student. “And where is he now, hmm? He left you. Again. He walked out of this door and left you standing in the middle of the target I painted on your chest.”

“He went to see the man who took a bullet for me,” I say. “Because that man asked for him. Because he needed him. That’s who Nico is.”

“And that’s why you’re so easy to use,” he says softly. “You believe in people. It’s charming. It’s also why you walked straight into my trap. Again.”

He lifts a hand.

I don’t see the men until they step out from the kitchen doorway and the hall, two, three, faces unfamiliar, movements smooth and professional. They’ve been here the whole time, waiting. One of them has a gun leveled at me, casual, like he’s pointing a TV remote.

My stomach drops.

“You see,” Domenico says, moving back to stand in front of me, close enough that I can see the flecks of darker brown in his irises, “the problem with loving someone like Nico is that you think his enemies will play by his rules. They won’t. They’ll play by mine. And I always play to win.”

He leans in slightly, his voice lowering, intimate and poisonous. “You’re grieving the wrong man, Isabella,” he murmurs. “Your father was a curiosity. A footnote. The one who truly betrayed you is the one warming your bed. The one who knew the shape of this story and decided you were better off in the dark. Remember that when you’re waiting to see if he comes for you.”

I want to scream at him, to claw his eyes out, to tell him he’s wrong about everything, but my throat has gone tight and my limbs feel leaden. The barrel of the gun hasn’t wavered.

Domenico straightens, satisfied with whatever he sees on my face. “Bag her,” he says to the men. “We’re done here.”

I move to run, but a hard backhand across my cheeks stops me dead. The world narrows to the rough fabric of a hood yanked over my head, the bite of tape at my wrists, the hard grip on my arms as my own legs forget how to move. Blood drips from my nose and mouth and I fight the tears.

Somewhere under the fear and the rising tide of old grief he’s just dug his fingers into, a quieter voice curls in my chest.

He’s lying.

Or at least not telling the whole truth.

I hold onto that as they drag me out of the home that finally felt like mine, as darkness closes in, as my heart hammers the rhythm of one stubborn thought:

Nico will come. And even if he doesn’t know all of it yet, I do.

I know who I chose.

And I know who I didn’t.

37.Nico

Adi’s voicecomes through the line raw. “She’s gone.”

The words hit like a fist. I stop dead in the corridor outside the operating room, the sounds of the hospital, machines, voices, the distant wail of someone else’s grief, going muffled around the edges. “What do you mean, gone?” My own voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s too even. Too thin.

“Domenico was here,” he says. “At the penthouse.”

For a heartbeat, my heart forgets its job. “Is she…”

“I don’t know,” he cuts in. “I came back and the guards in the hall were down. Not dead, thank God, but out cold. No sign of forced entry. Inside… there’s blood, but not much, not like before. Cameras are offline. She’s not here. Neither is he.”

I press my palm to the wall because the floor does a slow, dangerous tilt. “When?” I ask.

“Fifteen minutes, maybe less,” he says. “I was only gone an hour. Marta called about her mother being sick, so I had to go to Letty.”