“Why?”
“So we can finally mold the Cosenzas into what it was always meant to be,” Enzo says.
My brows knit together despite myself.
But why?
Why now?
Why not when Cesare was still alive?
The questions gnaw at me, threading through everything Enzo has said and everything he hasn’t. Why wait? Why let years pass, let the Cosenza name fracture again and again before making his move?
Why not after Matteo took over?
Matteo had been younger, less entrenched, still finding his footing in a role he never should have inherited under such circumstances. He would have been easier to steer. Easier to influence. Easier to manipulate from the shadows.
Why kill the entire line just to step through the ashes afterward?
The logic doesn’t add up if the goal was simply power adjacent to the throne. Enzo had already been there. He’d had proximity, access, authority as Cesare’s consigliere. His voice would have carried weight in every decision, alliance, every war declared or avoided. A guiding hand at the Don’s right side is indispensable.
That’s the kind of influence that most men crave.
So why wasn’t it enough?
The realization unfurls slowly, dread curling tighter in my chest as the answer takes shape.
Perhaps a guiding hand was never enough for a man like Enzo Vernati. Perhaps watching another man sit at the head of the table, no matter how close Enzo stood to it, was always an insult he swallowed with a smile and stored away for later. Perhaps he didn’t want to shape the Cosenzas at all.
Perhaps he wanted to erase them and start from the ground up. To burn the name down to its foundation and rebuild something else in its place, something ruthless that only answered to him.
Carlo answers before Enzo does, nodding slowly as cigar smoke curls lazily above his head. “He’s held us back for too long. Grieving over his brother has made him stagnant.” His gaze flicks briefly over me and Luca. “He’s grown… sentimental since you’ve come back to Sicily.”
Something inside me goes utterly still.
“He won’t,” I say automatically, the words escaping before I can stop them. “He won’t come.”
“You think he won’t? I assure you, he will. Men like him are all the same,” Carlo responds. He leans back into the couch, settling in with the ease of a man watching a show he already knows the ending to. One leg hooks casually over his knee, cigar balanced between his fingers.
I hope he’s wrong.
I hope he’s wrong.
I hope desperately that Dante is the exception they’ve failed to account for. That he’ll see this for what it is and will refuse to walk into a slaughter dressed up as a rescue. That he’ll choose strategy over instinct and not let them use Luca and me as theblade at his throat. That his need for vengeance will outweigh any residual feelings he still has for me.
But even as that hope flickers, something colder settles in its place.
If they’re right, if Dante comes, there will be no negotiation. They don’t want concessions. They don’t want territory or alliances or influence. They want Dante dead. The moment he steps through those doors believing he’s come to save us, it will all be over.
The trap has already been set.
All that’s left is to see whether Dante will do what they expect him to do or not.
20
DANTE
Romano’s report is… brutal.
