Page 149 of The Cost of Silence

I don’t want to run screaming into the open and hand them the satisfaction of shoving me back into the flames.

I duck low and follow the hedge line, keeping to the shadows.

The air is cold, biting at my hair and sweat-soaked skin. Every breath tastes like smoke and determination.

This isnothow I thought today would go when I got up this morning.

But as my feet crunch on gravel and my heart knocks against my ribs, something settles under the panic, unexpected and solid.

I’m not abandoned.

I’m not back in that alley, watching someone die and doing nothing.

I made it out of that room on my own. If I never see Domenico again, he doesn’t get to tell the story of how I died.

And Nico. I picture his face, the way it looked the first time he said I was his, like he’d set something on fire inside himself and decided to watch it burn.

If he kept any part of what happened to my father from me, I know in my bones it wasn’t to manipulate me into this position. It was to spare me a fresh wound. To keep me from tipping into that old grief and drowning there.

He doesn’t get everything right. He’s not supposed to. But the man I’ve come to know, the one who lets his niece fall asleep on his chest, who still checks locks out of habit because his father taught him to, wouldn’t stand by while his uncle took credit for mercy he doesn’t own.

I believe that.

I hold onto it like a rope.

A sound cuts through the crackle of fire behind me, a low growl of an engine on the other side of the property. Tires on gravel. A car door slamming, hard.

I stop, heart thudding.

Then I hear it: my name ripped out of someone’s throat, raw and frantic.

“Isabella!”

It’s Nico.

Every part of me snaps toward the sound.

I run.

39.Nico

The estate looks smallerthan it did when I was a kid.

That’s the first thought that hits me as I bring the car up the long drive, taking the turns faster than my father ever would have allowed. The old trees lining the lane are bare now, their branches like black veins against the winter sky. The main house rises out of the grayness, all stone and memories.

Beyond it, where the garden slopes down toward the water, smoke is rising.

My stomach drops. “Fuck,” I breathe, and hit the gas.

Matteo’s voice is in my ear, tinny through the headset. He and Adi are on their way to the docks, their car peeling off in the opposite direction fifteen minutes ago when the pieces clicked.

“The bell,” I’d said, pacing my office while Adi pulled up maps and Matteo rifled through old photos. “On the call. When Domenico rang, there was a church bell in the background. Two low chimes, then one high. I know that pattern.”

“It could be anywhere in the city,” Adi had argued, but even as he spoke, his fingers were flying over the keyboard.

“Not like that,” I’d insisted. “That bell. Santa Lucia. Next to the old estate. Papà used to time our curfew with it. ‘When Santa Lucia sings three, my boys are home’.”

Matteo’s eyes had narrowed. “You think he’s keeping her at the gardener’s cottage?”