Page 2 of The Cost of Silence

Rain taps against the windows like fingertips drumming a rhythm only nature can hear, tracing thin rivers down the glass. The air smells of wood polish and the faint ghost of my father’s cigars.

I sit in his chair for the first time since I was a boy. The leather creaks under my weight, soft and supple from years of Mancini men sitting here, deciding, ruling, thinking. The desk gleams with order, papers squared at the edges, pens aligned, a half-empty tumbler of water where he left it the morning we drove him to the hospital.

Matteo stands by the window, his collar unbuttoned, his hands in his pockets. His signature grin is gone, replaced by that hollow look of someone waiting for orders that’ll never come. Adi leans against the bookshelf, jacket over one arm, tie loosened but still perfect, his control holding by a thread.

No one speaks. All of us feel adrift, but the responsibility settles on my shoulders like a lead weight. The rain fills the silence, steady and relentless, almost comforting.

My gaze drifts to the photograph at the corner of the desk, my mother on the Ohio porch, sunlight turning her hair gold, Eddie’s guitar slung over his shoulder, Lucas mid-laugh. My father behind the camera. I can almost hear the chuckle caught in the still frame. It was his favorite picture. He said it captured in one moment everything he’d always wanted for those he loved.

I reach out and brush a speck of dust from the glass. A slight smudge sits over my mother’s face as if my father had run his fingers over the image time and again. In that moment, I want to hide this picture away so the smudge is never wiped off, so the physical reminder of his love for his family isn’t erased. That thumbprint is proof love leaves marks deeper than loss ever could. The surface trembles under my touch, but I think it’s my hand that shakes.

“Feels wrong, doesn’t it?” Matteo says quietly. “Him not walking through that door and asking for an update.”

We’ve built the legacy he wished for on the night our mother was laid to rest. ISM Holdings is everything she would have wanted, and I know our father is proud of what we’ve built, but it’s far from over. I won’t stop until the legacy we envisioned in those months after she died comes to fruition, and I know my brothers won’t either.

I never wanted power. I wanted the people it was supposed to protect.

We started out by converting the docks where drugs had entered the city, turning them into luxury homes. Each person on our payroll benefited in such a way that going straight seemed the better option. The mafia isn’t what it was when our father was young. The docks became condos, the deals becamecontracts, and ISM became the line between what’s clean and what’s necessary.

Were we squeaky clean at ISM? No. But we didn’t break the law so much as bend it over backward sometimes, and always as a last resort. Our mother’s favorite saying was that you’d get more flies with honey than vinegar, but sometimes vinegar was necessary. Especially in the security and protection arm of the business.

Adi’s voice is softer. “He left us a map. We just need to follow it.”

My throat tightens. “No,” I say. “We have to finish it.”

I look at them, my brothers. We’ve stood side by side since we were kids, half-drowned in rain and ambition. We’ve bled for ISM. We’ve all made sacrifices, some bigger than others, but every one of us is committed to our vision. In their faces, I see the same exhaustion I carry, the weight of a promise made in this very room. But I also see determination.

“He asked us to keep it clean,” I tell them. “To protect what he was trying to do. To build something we can be proud of, that we can leave to our families one day.” I look to Adi, the only one of us with a child. “Legacy, a name remembered, a life that leaves a mark. That doesn’t change.”

Adi straightens, calm returning. “Then we keep it moving. The contracts, the clients, the name.”

Matteo huffs out a laugh. “Guess that makes you the old man now.”

I look around the room, the smoke-stained walls, the storm painting shadows across the floor. “No,” I say quietly. “Just the one who has to make sure it means something.”

Lightning flashes, bleaching everything white. For a heartbeat, it’s exactly the same as a decade ago, the same desk, same storm, same three men in the wake of loss. Only the chair has changed.

I set the photograph upright, re-square the papers, let my palm rest on the worn edge of the wood. The dent where I rode my tricycle into the leg as a four-year-old is still there, aged and worn from years of use.

Outside, thunder rolls again, low and patient, as if the world hasn’t yet noticed it’s lost a good man, a great man. To some, he was a crook, but to those who knew him, he was an innovator, a change-maker, a loving father.

Matteo heads for the door, mumbling about calls to make. Adi lingers a second, his hand brushing the back of the chair. “You okay, Nico? I know we all loved him, but I also know you’ll hide your grief to protect us.”

Adi is rarely emotional; the only person who gets the soft side of him is his three-year-old daughter, Letty. I’m touched he asked, but neither of us is big on talking about feelings, so I let him off the hook. “Yeah, I will be. It’s part of life, right? Losing a parent, it’s the way it’s meant to be.”

Adi looks down at his polished shoes, and I see him swallow the lump in his throat. He knows loss better than anyone, having lost his wife three years ago. But like me, he buries his grief.

He looks up, his expression clear of emotion, and nods. “Yeah, I guess it is.” His knuckles tap the desk before he turns and leaves.

When they’re gone, the silence hums, rain on glass, the clock’s soft tick, the faint trace of cigar smoke that refuses to fade.

He left me to lead men into a clean life, men who’d rather burn the world than bury it. I hope like hell I’m worthy of the bones we stand on.

I draw a slow breath. “I’ll keep it clean, Papà.”

Then I switch off the lamp and leave the study dark, unaware that in less than 24 hours after my father was buried, the worldwould drag the Mancini name back into the mud he spent a lifetime washing away.

2.Isabella