Which meant no backup. No team. No protection.
Just Cesare walking into a trap with no way out.
I looked up at him. "You can't go alone. It's suicide."
"I don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice."
"Not when it's my brother's life." His tone was final, determined. "I go alone. I get Piero back. Whatever it costs."
And I realized: tomorrow, I could lose both the father of my child and his brother. I could lose the life and protection I’d walked into willingly, the only thing I had now that everything else was gone.
Everything we'd survived—it all came down to tomorrow morning at Pier 76.
CHAPTER 16
Cesare
Iwoke at 5:30 a.m.—three and a half hours before the meeting with Viktor.
Paola lay beside me, staring at the ceiling. Neither of us had slept more than an hour or two. The darkness pressed against the windows, city lights bleeding through the gaps in the curtains.
"You're really going alone?" Her voice cut through the silence.
"I have to. If Viktor sees the team, he kills Piero immediately."
"And if you go alone, he might kill you both."
The truth settled between us like a third presence in the bed. This could be a suicide mission. We both knew it.
I sat up, ran my hands through my hair. Five weeks and five days of marriage. Five weeks of building something real fromthe wreckage of deception and forced vows. And now this—walking into Viktor's trap with nothing but fake documents and desperate hope.
"I need you to promise me something." I turned to look at her.
"Another promise?"
"If I don't come back—"
"Don't." Her voice fractured. "Don't say that."
"If I don't come back," I continued, firm but not cruel, "you take the money in the safe. The passports. You disappear. You raise our child somewhere far from this world."
Tears streamed down her face, catching the dim light. "Cesare—"
"Promise me, Paola. Our child doesn't grow up in this life. In this violence. You get out. You survive."
She grabbed my face, forced me to meet her eyes. "We're all getting out. Together. You, me, Piero, and this baby. Stop planning your funeral."
I kissed her. Hard. Desperate. Memorizing the taste of her lips, the warmth of her skin against mine.
When we broke apart, dawn had started to creep across the skyline.
Time to move.
6:30 a.m. The team assembled in the penthouse's main room.
Giulio, Rocco, and four of our best operators. Plus Paola, who'd refused every attempt to make her stay behind.
