My fingers hover over the keyboard. Not because I want answers. Because I’m afraid there are already ones looking for me.
Today cracked something open. The canceled client. The math that didn’t work. Nico asking questions I’m not ready to answer. The way stability always feels real right up until the second it doesn’t.
And Marco is the one variable I never fully erase. You don’t stop checking the dark just because the monster hasn’t moved in a while.
So I don’t search for him. Not at first. I tell myself I’m just making sure he’s still… gone. Still spiraling somewhere far away from me. Still too busy destroying his own life to come looking for mine.
That’s the lie.
The truth is simpler. I need to know if the past has started moving again.
I type his name. Just his first name at first. Then his last.
Marco Mancini.
The page refreshes. A headline jumps out at me like a slap.
MANCINI DON’S SON SPIRALS AS SUCCESSION CRISIS LOOMS.
My pulse goes loud. Too loud. I click before I can talk myself out of it.
The article opens.
And the first thing I see is not Marco.
It’s his father.
The photo is large. Prominent. Centered the way power always is.
Older now. Harder at the edges. Silver threading his hair at the temples. The lines at his mouth deeper, earned.
But his eyes… God.
His eyes are exactly the same.
Quiet. Contained. Watchful in a way that isn’t absence but control.
I know him instantly.
The air leaves my lungs. I don’t remember leaning forward, but suddenly I’m inches from the screen, like proximity might change what I’m seeing.
The caption beneath the photo is calm. Factual. Merciless.
TURO MANCINI.
My vision blurs.
Turo. Mancini.
The don.
Marco’s father.
The man from the plane. The man who held my face like it mattered. The man whose stillness felt like safety instead of threat. The man I let inside my body because for one night, my instincts didn’t scream.
My hands go numb. I scroll. Further down the page, another photo loads.
And there he is. Marco. Bloated. Mean. Familiar in the way nightmares are familiar. His eyes bright with the same violence I spent years mapping and surviving. The same mouth. The same cruelty. Only now it’s framed as inheritance.
