Chapter 12
Turo
I last slept in fragments.Twenty minutes here. Forty there. The kind of rest that doesn’t rebuild anything, only pauses the collapse long enough to keep walking.
The house is quiet when I wake. Too quiet. Mancini quiet. Marble and money and men trained to move like shadows so the don never has to hear them exist.
I stare at the ceiling and wait for the familiar weight to settle back onto my chest.
It does.
Marco is in rehab.
Enzo calls itstructure, the same way my father used to call bruisesdiscipline. It should have brought me relief. A small stretch of stability. Less chaos for the council to circle like sharks.
Instead, the absence is louder. Because it is not my son I cannot stop thinking about.
It’s stillher.
I sit up. The place behind my ear itches. My hand rises before I remember myself, and I catch it halfway. Force my fingers back down to the sheets.
Stillness, I tell myself.Control.
This isn’t love. It isn’t even logic. It’s hunger, shaped like conscience. Obsession, wearing a suit and pretending it’s concern.
I get out of bed and dress like I’m going to war.
Not because the day requires it.
Because I do.
* * *
The investigator’s office is in a building that smells like old paper and old secrets. No signs on the door. No receptionist. No men with guns posted outside. Discretion doesn’t announce itself. It simply exists and expects you to understand.
He’s waiting when I arrive. Mid-fifties. Clean suit. Hands that have never fired a gun but have ordered plenty of violence by phone. Eyes that don’t linger on anything long enough to be accused of staring.
He doesn’t greet me like a client. He nods like we both know why I’m here, and he won’t waste breath pretending it’s anything else.
“Mr. Mancini.”
I don’t correct him. If he has my name, he has the rest of me.
“I need to find someone,” I say, and his pen moves. “A woman.”
The pen pauses. He looks up. Not curious. Not surprised. Just… recalibrating.
I feel a flicker of shame, sharp and hot, and it irritates me more than my desire does. Because shame means I still think I’m above this.
I’m not.
“She was on a flight,” I add. “Three weeks ago.”
He waits. Letting silence do what it does best. Pressure.
I give him the flight number. The date. The city. The time. The minimal truth.
I don’t give him my reason.
