The idea makes my stomach lurch.
I hate the thought of her vanishing again under new names to a new country to start a new life without me in it. I hate knowing I might never see Luca grow up or hear Elena say my name like she used to—half anger, half hunger, and all mine.
But if keeping her here means watching her fade into a shell of herself, forcing her to live in a cage she’ll never forgive me for building around her… then letting her go might be the only way I can still protect her.
I pull my phone from my pocket with a soft sigh. Notifications crowd the top bar with updates from Romano, security briefings from Bianchi, and Leo checking in, asking how Elena and Luca are holding up.
I swipe them away. None of them matter right now.
My thumb hovers over a contact I haven’t touched in over a year.
Nicolo Baresi.
For a long moment, I simply stare at the name. The last time I called him, a senator who had been outed for working for me had vanished within forty-eight hours, shipped to another country, never to be seen or heard from again. The time before that, one of my trusted contacts had used him to disappear his mistressout of the city before his wife came banging down his door looking for more alimony.
Nicolo isn’t the type to ask questions. He gets his job done regardless of the circumstances. He erases people without having to kill them. Some would suggest that’s much more impressive than what I do.
I press the call button and hold it up to my ear. He answers on the fourth ring.
His voice is smooth, cultured in an ambiguous way so as to not pin him down to one discernible nation. His tone is faintly amused when he addresses me. “Dante. I’m surprised to hear from you… and so late at night. To what do I owe the occasion?”
I don’t answer immediately. Instead, I lean back against the cold hospital wall and run my tongue along the back of my teeth, buying myself a few seconds to think. Somewhere down the hall, a nurse laughs softly, unaware that a single word from me could alter three lives forever.
Once I say the word, there’s no undoing this. As soon as I hand over Elena and Luca’s information, Nicolo will erase them completely from existence. He will make them disappear so thoroughly, it will be as though they were never here at all. New identities. New continent. New language if necessary. Every record scrubbed, every connection severed. The Cosenza name will vanish from their orbit like it never existed at all.
They will no longer be tied to anyone, me included.
If I ever tried to trace them, I would find nothing but dead ends. That is the cost of a guarantee in Nicolo’s world. I will never be able to find them again.
It is his expertise.
One I have relied on before without hesitation.
“You’ve been busy,” Nicolo continues lightly when I remain silent. “Word travels. Palermo seemed… eventful.”
I sigh. Nothing stays contained for long in our world. I’m not surprised he’s heard about my syndicate taking down a former family consigliere and another Don.
“I need a problem removed,” I say finally, my voice flat.
“I assumed as much. Is this a political inconvenience or something more personal?”
My jaw tightens. Images flash unbidden in my mind of Elena on the floor, blood spilling between her fingers as she clutches her open wound and Luca screaming. The sound of the gunshot that almost ended everything haunts me.
“Personal,” I answer.
“Then I assume you want this done thoroughly.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t ask me to elaborate. “Where are you?”
“Private wing at St. Catherine’s. Room 412.”
“On my way.”
I end the call and scratch my head back against the wall. My reflection stares back at me in the window across the way. Dark circles and hollow eyes are all that I see. I look like a man who’s already lost everything.
By the time Nicolo arrives, the sky outside is turning the bruised gray of false dawn. He’s dressed like he’s going to a funeral—black coat, black gloves, black pants and shoes. He has the same defined features that I remember, the same steady gaze he’s had since we were boys running errands for my father.
