"Have you told Leone?"
"Not yet." He puts the knife back on the counter. "I'm telling you."
"Why me?"
Carmelo looks at me and for a second his eyes have something behind them that I don't recognize on him, not warmth exactly, but proximity. The closest he gets to trust.
"Because you talked to Ferrara. Because the man asked you to keep an ear out. And because if the girl is alive and connected to the pipeline we destroyed, then finding her is unfinished business. Leone has enough shit to do." He picks up his sandwich, takes a bite, and chews. "I don't like unfinished business."
I sit with that for a minute. The apple in my hand untouched, while he keeps chewing.
Goddamn the man chews for hours, just fucking swallow already.The noise almost sets me off, but I try bring my focus back to the fact he’s communicating like an adult for once.
"I'll keep it between us for now," I say. "But if anything surfaces, anything at all, we bring it to Leone."
"Agreed."
That's the end of the conversation. Carmelo finishes his sandwich, wipes the counter, picks up his knife, clips it on his belt, and leaves the kitchen without another word. His boots on the corridor floor are loud as he goes.
I eat the apple and think about Graziella Ferrara. Eight years old when she vanished. She'd be in her twenties now, if she's alive. A woman with a different name and a different life, carrying a history she might not even remember, connected to a pipeline we dismantled and a father who asked a stranger in a parking garage to keep an ear out.
Carmelo's right. Unfinished business.
But that's for later. Right now I have a compound to help stabilize, a Castillo situation to monitor, a bullet wound to heal, and a woman behind a bar who's expecting me for dinner.
The Harrison response comes two days later.
Not a letter. A phone call to Leone's secure line, from a man who doesn't identify himself, and the conversation lasts less than ninety seconds.
Leone gathers us in the war room afterward.
"The Harrisons received Aurelio's letter," Leone says. "Their response was brief. The Replication Initiative, the new Westpoint, the construction project on the eastern seaboard, all of it falls under Silent jurisdiction. The Harrison family holds a majority on the Custodian Board, and they will handle it internally. Their exact words were: don't move on it at all, we will deal with it as Silent Custodians."
"So we just sit here and trust them?" I ask.
"We trust Aurelio's judgment. He built this relationship, how, we don’t know, but he did. He vouched for the Harrisons in the folder, and his last instruction to me was to send that letter and honor the arrangement." Leone's voice is even, but there's a firmness underneath that says this isn't up for debate. "The Replication Initiative is not our fight. The Harrisons have the authority and the resources to dismantle it. Our fight is here.”
"And Matteo?"
"If the Harrisons are restructuring the Silent from within, then Matteo's handlers are going to lose their backing. That changes his position. It changes what he can offer the Castillos as a mediator and it changes whether he's a threat or an opportunity."
"You think he's an opportunity?"
"I think he's Aurelio's son. I think he has a blood claim to this family that he may or may not know about. And I think the people who positioned him are about to lose their power base, which means he is going to need somewhere to land." Leone pauses. "When that happens, I want to be the one holding out the hand. Not the Castillos. Not the Silent. Us."
"And if he doesn't want the hand?"
"Then we deal with it, but we offer first. Aurelio would have wanted that."
I look at Claudio. He's against the wall, arms crossed, face giving nothing, but I can feel his displeasure. Leone's right and Claudio knows it and the knowing bothers him because Claudio would rather eliminate the unknown than extend a hand to it.
"There's something else," Leone says. "The Castillo situation. Alexandra has been monitoring Marco's communications through the channels we maintained from the alliance. There's been discussion within the Castillo organization about a more permanent resolution to the territorial dispute. The word marriage has appeared in three separate conversations over the last week."
"Marriage," Dahlia repeats. "Between who?"
"The conversations reference a Castillo heir, Antonia. Marco's daughter." Leone lets that sit. "And a Bonaccorso representative. The name they're using is Billone."
“So… they know who he is then. Right… that is just great.” I sigh and roll my eyes. It was the one card we had, that they didn’t. It means we are going to have to claim Matteo before he does something rash.
