Chapter 31
Lucia
There arerooms that are meant to make you feel small. They don’t need bars or locks or chains. They don’t need Marco’s hand around your wrist, or a slammed door, or a voice rising until your skin starts bracing on instinct.
They just need silence. They just need emptiness.
The room they bring me to is one of those. No art. No softness. No warmth. Minimal furniture arranged with the kind of deliberate neutrality that pretends nothing irreversible happens here. A table. A few chairs. Pale walls that give nothing back. Even the light feels sterile, as if brightness could wash blood clean.
There are four men inside already. Older. Harder. The kind of men who look like power has lived in their bones for decades. They stand in positions that aren’t casual. Not quite corners. Not quite a line. A shape that sayswitnesswithout using the word.
I recognize Gianni. Matteo. Luca. And one I don’t know by name, but I know the type: the old guard. A man who’s watched don after don make decisions that change the map of the world, and who has survived by never being surprised.
Turo is at the front of the room.
He isn’t pacing. He isn’t restless. He isn’t angry in the way Marco was. Wild and uncontained, looking for somewhere to throw his shame. Turo is still. It’s a kind of stillness that isn’t peace. It’s a weapon.
His suit jacket is off. Sleeves rolled up. The white of his shirt makes the darkness in him more obvious. His hands are empty, open at his sides. His face is unreadable.
But I’ve learned what to look for. His eyes. There’s grief in them. Not soft grief. The hard, quiet kind you swallow because the world doesn’t care you’re bleeding.
I take my place beside him without him asking. I don’t know if I’m allowed here. But I’m here. And he doesn’t tell me to leave.
The door opens behind us. Footsteps. Enzo is escorted in. Two guards, one on either side, hands light but ready. Enzo isn’t restrained. He’s dressed perfectly. Expensive suit, silver at his temples, that familiar warmth arranged on his face like a well-worn coat.
For a second, he looks confused. Just a flicker. His gaze moves over the room. The men. The arrangement. The way no one offers him a chair. The way Turo doesn’t move toward him.
Understanding settles in. It’s almost… gentle. As if he’s finally reached the end of a conversation he’s been having in his own head for years.
Then his gaze lands on me. And his mouth curves. Not in kindness. In recognition.
“Ah,” he says softly. “You figured it out.”
The words hit like a slap. Not because they’re cruel. Because there is no denial in them. No outrage. No performance. No pleading. He says it like the conclusion of math. He says it like he’s been waiting for it.
Turo’s expression doesn’t change. But I see the smallest tightening at his jaw, the way his throat works once like swallowing glass.
Enzo’s eyes flick back to him. “Well,” Enzo says, almost conversationally. “This is… dramatic.”
No one laughs. The room is quiet enough that I can hear my own heartbeat, steady and loud in my ears. I keep my face neutral. I have done this before. Not this exact version, but the shape of it, standing in a room where men decide what happens to you, where words are a weapon and your only safety is not showing where it lands.
But this time, the danger isn’t aimed at me. And that makes it worse. Because I can’t absorb it and call it mine. Because it’s pointed at Turo. At Nico. At the fragile, impossible family we’re building in the teeth of all this.
Turo speaks. His voice is calm. Too calm. It’s the voice he used when he told his men to leave the war room. The voice he used when he told me to run to Nico. The voice of a man who has already decided.
“You orchestrated the custody filing.”
Enzo’s brows lift slightly. “I facilitated it.”
“Don’t soften it,” Matteo snaps from the side.
Enzo doesn’t even look at him. His focus stays on Turo, because this is the only audience he cares about.
Turo continues, each word measured. “You accessed Lucia’s number through Marco’s legal file.”
Enzo nods once.
“You overrode security systems during the breach.”
