I leaned back in his chair and pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to think. Who was MV? A person? An organization? The initials could be anything. Marco Valenti—but there was no Marco Valenti in Enzo's organization, not that I knew of. Massimo Valenti had been Enzo's father, but he'd died in 2015. Moretti Vincenzo was Gemma's grandfather, but he'd been dead even longer.
What had my father been paying for? Protection? Silence? Some arrangement from the 2003 war that had never been made public?
And why had he stopped?
I thought about the meeting Santo had mentioned—Vito and Enzo, alone in the back room at Il Sole, three hours of private conversation. What had they discussed? Had Vito told Enzo the payments were ending? Had Enzo disagreed with that decision?
"Final payment. It's done."
What if the payments had been keeping my father alive—and stopping them had been a death sentence?
I closed the ledger and sat with the weight of what I'd found. My father had been hiding something. Something big enough to fund for twenty years, secret enough to conceal even from his sons. Something that connected to the Valentis, or the Morettis, or both.
And now he was dead, and I was the only one who knew.
I thought about my mother, then. Maria Caruso, smiling in that photograph on the desk. Dead when I was fifteen from a cancer that had come on fast and taken her faster. I remembered how my father had grieved—the drinking, the bad decisions, the way he'd nearly lost everything because he couldn't think straight through the pain.
That was what love did. That was what attachment cost. You gave someone a piece of yourself, and when they were gone, that piece went with them. It made you weak. It made you stupid. It made you vulnerable in ways your enemies could exploit.
I had sworn, watching my father fall apart, that I would never let myself be that vulnerable. I would never love something so much that losing it could destroy me. The family, yes—I would die for my siblings, kill for them without hesitation. But that was different. That was duty. That was blood.
That’s why my marriage would be different.
My bride was Gemma Moretti, and our marriage would cement an alliance—it would be a business arrangement.
Nothing more.
I would be a good husband in the ways that mattered: protective, providing, present. But I wouldn't give her the part of myself that could be used against me. I couldn't afford to.
Whatever secret my father had been keeping, whatever had gotten him killed, I would uncover it. I would find the truth, and I would deal with whoever was responsible.
But I would do it with my head, not my heart. Calculation, not emotion. Strategy, not grief.
That was how you survived in this life.
That was how you stayed alive long enough to bury your enemies instead of having them bury you.
I tucked the hidden ledger into my jacket and left the office, switching off the lights as I went.
Tomorrow was the funeral. Tomorrow the whole city would watch the Caruso brothers perform their grief. Tomorrow I would stand over my father's grave and say goodbye to a man I thought I knew, but clearly didn't.
And when I was done, I’d switch my emotions off and act like the monster I was.
Chapter 2
Gemma
Iwaswaiting,butthenI was always waiting.
Waiting for someone else. Waiting for time to pass. Waiting for things to get worse.
I stood by Papa’s window, leather portfolio clutched against my chest like armor, and watched Tomasso Moretti finish his phone call with the unhurried patience of a man who had never waited for anything in his life.
The room hadn't changed since I was a child. Mahogany bookshelves lined with volumes no one had read since my grandfather's time. The Tiffany lamp on the corner of the desk, its dragonfly wings casting colored shadows across the leather blotter. Framed photographs everywhere—my father with senators, with business leaders, with men whose names appeared in newspapers but whose real power operated in rooms like this one, behind closed doors, spoken in the language of favors owed and blood debts unpaid.
I'd dressed carefully this morning. Navy sheath dress, modest neckline, hem at the knee. Pearl studs that had belonged to my mother. Hair pulled back in a twist that said professional, serious, worthy of being heard. I'd practiced my presentation six times in the mirror last night, timing myself, adjusting my inflection, making sure my voice stayed steady on the revenue projections.
The portfolio weighed almost nothing. Three weeks of work, months of research before that, and it all fit into a leather folder thin enough to slip under a door.
