“Full sweep,” I tell Matteo. “Twice.”
He nods. “We’ll run it like a venue.”
The word hits strange. Lucia’s word. Lucia’s lens. But Matteo says it without realizing what it means to me now. How my world has started absorbing hers in small ways.
“Limited personnel,” Gianni says. “You go in with a small team. Too many men looks like we expect trouble.”
“Too few looks like we don’t,” Luca counters.
I hold up a hand. Silence.
“Twenty,” I decide.
Luca looks satisfied again. Gianni looks uneasy. Matteo looks relieved. He prefers overkill to apology.
“Body armor,” Matteo adds.
I stare at him. “I said twenty,” I repeat.
He nods, chastened, and no one says the obvious: body armor is an admission. But it’s also survival. In this life, survival is the only apology you get.
I sign off on the plan with clipped instructions, then leave the war room. The corridor outside smells like lemon polish and cold stone. My house is designed for soft movement. For secrets. The farther I get from the war room, the heavier the air feels. Not because the house changes, but because I do.
At the family wing entrance, security shifts, nods to me. The door opens to quiet. Domestic quiet. The kind that would havedisgusted my father. The kind Marco would use as a stage for cruelty.
The kind I didn’t understand I could want until it belonged to them.
Lucia looks up from where she’s standing near the dining room, a hand on Nico’s shoulder as he concentrates on lining up something. Cars, crackers, napkins, it doesn’t matter. Order is his refuge. Lucia’s eyes meet mine instantly, sharp and searching. She reads me like a book. It’s both unsettling and, God help me, comforting.
“Meeting?” she asks.
I nod once. Nico’s head lifts at the sound of our voices. He’s wearing a little scowl like concentration is serious business. His fingers hover near his ear. He touches it. Quick. Anxious.
“Papa,” he says. “You go somewhere?”
The word still hits me like a bullet.Papa. My throat works once. I move closer, keeping my steps calm, controlled. I lower myself slightly so I’m not towering over him. I’m learning.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I have to go talk to some men.”
His brows knit. “Bad men?”
Lucia’s hand tightens on his shoulder a little. She doesn’t correct him. She doesn’t lie too hard. She’s learned, like I have, that children can smell bullshit better than adults.
“Some of them,” I admit.
Nico looks at me, then at Lucia. He reads faces like he’s trying to map danger before it moves. It makes something inside me go sharp with anger. Not at him. At the world that’s teaching him this.
“How long?” Nico asks.
I glance at Lucia. Her mouth is neutral, but her eyes are not. There’s fear there, contained. Not for herself. For Nico. For what happens if I don’t come back.
I return my gaze to my son. “I’ll be back,” I say.
Nico’s fingers go to his ear again. “Promise?”
The word tastes like a vow carved into my ribs. I kneel fully this time. Look him in the eye.
“Promise,” I say.
