“Yes.”
A pause. Then: “You should have security with you.”
“No.”
It comes out sharper than I intend. Enzo goes quiet.
I soften my tone, just barely. “You handle Marco. Handle the rumors. Lock down the council chatter.”
“Yes, Turo,” Enzo says. Loyal. Efficient. The voice of the man who has stood at my side for thirty years. Before I hang up, he adds, almost gently, “You can’t outrun legacy.”
I end the call. Because if I listen to that sentence too long, it will crawl under my skin and make a home there.
* * *
The airport is bright and loud and clean in a way violence never is. The lights don’t flicker here. The floors don’t stain. People move with carry-on bags and stupid optimism, complaining about delays like they’ve never had to decide if they’ll see the morning.
My men are not with me. My name is not spoken. In the airport, I am just another man in a suit with a tired face and a passport. It feels like stepping out of my own skin.
At the ticket counter, I pay for business class without blinking. A few hours of quiet. A few hours of not being looked at like a weapon. I move through security with a calm that has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with control.
When I reach the gate, the clock tells me I’m early. My body sags with fatigue. I sit, opening a book in Italian that I’ve carried for months and never finished. A habit from a life I barely remember. Reading for pleasure. Reading because no one can demand anything of you while your eyes are on a page.
The words blur. I turn one page. Then another. I don’t absorb anything.
My hand lifts, almost without permission, to my ear. The spot behind it pulses with stress like a heartbeat. My father used to see that gesture and call it weakness. He used to strike my knuckles with a ring until my fingers bled and I learned not to fidget. He never taught me calm. He taught me stillness.
I catch myself. My hand freezes in midair. Slowly, I force it down to my lap. I breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. My chest aches with the effort of pretending I am not a man split in two: one part don, one part child still hearing footsteps in a hallway.
Marco’s face flashes in my mind. Bloated, wild-eyed, desperate. My son, who was raised in a different house with a different father, and still became… this.
I did everything differently.
I did everything wrong.
I wonder, not for the first time, if violence is genetic. If control is inherited. If a man like me can ever create anything that isn’t broken.
The boarding announcement crackles over the speakers. People stand. Shuffle forward. I remain seated until the line thins. Habit. Discipline. Power is not rushing.
When I board, the cabin is quiet, dimly lit, designed to feel like luxury instead of confinement.
I find my seat and sit. Leather creaks softly under me. I place the book on my lap. My fingers twitch again toward my ear. I catch them. Force them still.
The plane isn’t full yet. The aisle is empty. The seat beside mine remains unoccupied. For a moment, in the hush before the world fills back in, I let my head rest against the headrest and close my eyes.
Just a few hours,I tell myself.Just a few hours where no one needs me to be the don. Just a few hours where the weight of legacy can sit somewhere else.
Yet I feel the familiar ache in my bones. Old, deep, relentless. Like the city itself is a hand around my throat, reminding me that no matter how high I fly, I will land back in the same war.
