Not because I care abouttheircomfort.
Definitely not.
He steps out, buttoning his jacket. His smile is warm, his eyes are cold as he steps toward me. The combination that's been making people bleed since before I was born.
"Elio."
"Cicero"
He takes in the gates, me standing in front of them, the fact that he's not being invited inside. There's a calculation runningbehind his eyes the way it always does, fast and quiet, trying to figure out what I'm hiding.
So many things, Father.
But something is different today. The patronizing edge, the one he's worn since I was seventeen, the one that says I'm still the boy playing at being a man, is gone. What's there instead is something I recognize because I do it myself when the variables change.
Reassessment.
My father is looking at me like a chess piece that just made a move he didn't anticipate, and he hasn't decided yet whether to be proud or worried. Knowing Cicero, he'll settle on both.
"The Syndicate is impressed," he says, adjusting his cufflink in that way he has that's never casual, never accidental, always a performance dressed up as a habit. "Your little operation dismantled a significant pipeline. Ferrante's people are scrambling. The Calabrians are asking questions they weren't asking six weeks ago."
"Is that so."
"The families are talking about you differently, Elio. Not as my heir. As your own man." He pauses for effect. "The Rossi arrangement can wait. Donato and I have discussed it. There are more pressing considerations on the table."
So the marriage to Gabriella is shelved. Not because my father suddenly developed a conscience or a respect for my preferences. He's never had either. But a son who takes down trafficking rings is worth more to the Syndicate unmarried and operational than locked into a political alliance that was brokered when I was a lesser asset. The math changed. Cicero is revising the portfolio.
A woman died in my guest wing this morning, and my father showed up to tell me my stock went up. That's the kind of day this is.
"I'll keep you informed," I tell him, because anything else I might say to this man would end with one of us needing medical attention.
He studies me for a long moment, searching for the soft place, the crack, the spot where pressure makes me fold.
He won't find it. Not today. Not ever again.
I'm almost ready.
With a nod, Cicero gets back into his car, and I watch as the Mercedes disappears behind the cypress trees, because you don't turn your back on Cicero Marchetti. Not even when he's leaving. Especially not when he's leaving.
By the time I go to Violet, I've run out of excuses not to.
I've made calls. Signed off on the arrangements for Elena's body. Reviewed the security logs from last night, which showed nothing useful. Finished the whiskey I said I wouldn't drink. None of it helped, and none of it changed the fact that the woman I can't lose is somewhere in this house, unaware that her friend took her own life.
She's in the kitchen. Morning light on her face, auburn hair pulled back, loose strands catching the gold. She looks up when she hears me and smiles, and that smile is the last undamaged thing in my entire day, and I am about to take a hammer to it.
Control.
I sit down across from her. I don't touch her first, because if I touch her she'll read the bad news off my body before I get the words out, and she deserves to hear them.
"Elena died." I don't soften the message, because wrapping it in cotton would be a lie, and I don't lie to this woman. Not about things that matter. "She took her own life last night."
Her face freezes. Everything stops at once, her hand halfway to her mouth, toast slipping out of her fingers and falling to the floor.
Then it breaks.
Her mouth first, corners pulling down, lips pressing white. Then her eyes, the green-gray filling and spilling over. And then the sound, low and terrible, starting somewhere in her chest and ripping its way out through her throat, and it's not a scream. It's worse than a scream. It's grief that doesn't have a target. No one to blame. No one I can put in a room and take apart until she feels better. Just a woman gone, and another woman left behind, and nothing I can do about either.
Cazzo.
