The conversation shifts to tactical assignments. Kon will coordinate with the Petrov family to counter Enzo's overtures. Drake will continue squeezing the financial networks. Massimo and Rowan will intensify surveillance on Enzo's properties. I'll prep the intelligence package for the federal contacts Rafael has been cultivating.
Part of me wants to do this the easy way. It’s clean and done. But another man will just step in. So no. We have to cut out the cancer from the root. On top of this all I don’t want to be the man who puts my wife’s father in the ground. In prison, sure. But not graveyard rot.
The meeting wraps with the efficiency of men who have done this before, chairs scraping back, jackets straightened, faces already shifting from brotherhood to battle. Drake pauses at the door long enough to catch my eye, one brow lifting in silent question. I give him a nod that says I'm fine, and he accepts it with a nod of his own that says he doesn't believe me but won't push. Not today.
After the door closes, I sit alone in that silence and think about what Drake said.
My files on the Marchetti family are extensive. Including the ones on Ilona. But those sit behind three layers of encryption on a secured server that no peripheral breach could touch. The risk is negligible. I built the architecture myself.
I drain my coffee and pull up the Rosetti casino contracts that need signing this afternoon. Ilona is preparing the fresh set in her office next to mine. I can hear the faint hum of her printerthrough the wall, a domestic sound that has no business making me feel like the luckiest bastard alive.
I push the security briefing out of my mind and turn to the work that keeps this empire running.
Some decisions look different in hindsight.
This is one of them.
Ilona
The Rosetti contracts fill the printer tray in neat, warm stacks, the scent of fresh toner sharp in my nose.
I gather them into a folder and tap the edges against my desk to straighten the pages, already mentally organizing the signing copies from the file copies. The low murmur of voices still rumbles through the wall from Luca's office, the Syndicate meeting stretching past its second hour, and the muffled cadence of conversation has become the background rhythm of my workdays.
My office is smaller than Luca's but I've made it mine in the three weeks since he cleared out the storage boxes and ordered a proper desk. A jasmine candle burns on a table close to the window. Its warm floral scent pushes back against the clinical smell of toner and recycled air.
The pregnancy book Katriana gave me props open against my keyboard, turned to a chapter about the second trimester I keeprereading during lunch breaks. A framed copy of the ultrasound from last week leans against my monitor, our daughter's profile caught in gray and white, her head tilted like she was already listening to the world outside.
I turn back to my computer to close the print queue and my fingers freeze on the mouse.
A new folder sits on my desktop. Huh. I didn't put it there.
MARCHETTI, I.
My last name. My initial. In a folder I've never seen before, on a computer I've been using every day for three weeks.
My pulse ticks up, a quick stutter beneath my ribs that I feel in my throat and the tips of my fingers. Why is my name on any file within these walls?
I double-click the folder.
The first thing I see is my own face.
The photograph is grainy, taken from a distance with a long lens, but unmistakably me. Walking across the university quad with my backpack slung over one shoulder and my hair pulled into a ponytail that hides the blue tips. Sunlight catches my profile, and the expression on my face is one I recognize from memory, the blank, pleasant mask I wore every day to keep the world from seeing the trapped animal underneath. The timestamp in the corner reads September 3rd.
My throat tightens. I click to the next image.
Me leaving my apartment building, the revolving door caught mid-spin, Gino's thick frame visible two steps behind me.
Me at the coffee shop three blocks from campus, the vanilla latte I always order visible in my hand, steam curling from the lid in a wisp of white that the photographer captured with unsettling clarity.
Me walking down Michigan Avenue with my guards flanking me like shadows I couldn't shake, my face turned toward a shop window, the wind pulling at my hair in a moment I remember because the cold bit through my jacket and I'd wished I'd grabbed a scarf. The photographer was watching me wish for warmth while he catalogued my vulnerabilities.
Photo after photo after photo. Weeks of my life laid bare in images I never posed for and never consented to, each one filed and labeled with a detached thoroughness that makes my skin crawl. But why?
The air in my office turns thin and cold. My hand trembles on the mouse as I scroll deeper, past the photographs and into the documents beneath them.
Subject Profile: Marchetti, Ilona Age: 22. Daughter of Enzo Marchetti. Primary value: leverage potential against E. Marchetti. Secondary value: access to inner family circle.
The words blur and sharpen, blur and sharpen, my vision pulsing with each heartbeat that slams against my chest. The candle’s scent suddenly feels cloying, too sweet, the warmth of it mocking the ice spreading through my veins.
