Chapter 22
Turo
The house is tooquiet after breakfast. Not peaceful. Not calm. Quiet like a gun with the safety on. I walk the place as if I’m inspecting it for breaches, because that’s what my body knows how to do when my mind is full of things it can’t compartmentalize. Two guards at the corridor. One at the stairwell. Cameras feeding into a bank of screens downstairs. Everything in place.
And still my skin won’t settle.
Lucia keeps close to Nico. Always within arm’s reach. Always positioned between him and a door, a hallway, a man. Her eyes never stop moving. They don’t linger. They calculate.
It should annoy me. It doesn’t. It makes something in my chest tighten with a kind of respect that tastes like regret.
I’m in my storage room because it’s where I can put my hands on paper and pretend I’m still only a don. The desk is a battlefield of documents: custody filings, security reports, lists of names I trust, and lists of names I’m not sure about anymore.
I tell myself I’m here for strategy.
Then I hear small footsteps.
I lift my eyes.
Nico stands in the doorway holding two toy cars, one in each fist. He’s too small for the threshold to look like anything but enormous behind him, yet he fills it. The air shifts around him.
He doesn’t look at me first. He looks at my desk. Assessing. Then he walks in like he owns the room. Like he’s always belonged here.
My breath catches on something sharp and stupid. I don’t move. I don’t want to scare him. I don’t want to do the thing grown men do around children. Loom, rush, fill space with eagerness. I remember being small and watched, the way a father’s attention can feel like a spotlight or a threat. So I stay still.
Nico climbs onto the chair across from my desk with quiet determination. He sets the cars down carefully. Then he starts lining them up. Not randomly. Precisely. One car. Space. One car. Space. Straight line across the polished wood like he’s laying out troops. His brow furrows in concentration. His mouth presses into a small, serious line.
And then, without thinking, his hand lifts to his ear. A brief touch. A tiny scratch. That gesture, so familiar that it hits me like a punch to the chest.
My fingers twitch under the desk, wanting to mirror him, wanting to stop him, wanting to do something,anything, except sit here and feel what I’m feeling.
Nico’s hand drops back to the desk. No fear. No shame. Just a small body regulating itself the only way it knows how.
My throat tightens.
He places the cars again, adjusts them by millimeters, nods once as if satisfied with the universe. Then he looks up at me.
“Do you like cars?”
His voice is small, but he doesn’t soften it for adult ears. He says it the way men in my world ask questions: direct, expecting a real answer.
I stare at him for half a beat too long. My mind tries to answer with the truth I’ve always used:I don’t have time for toys. I don’t play. I don’t like anything that isn’t useful.
But he’s watching me. And I realize, with a strange clarity, that usefulness is not what he’s asking about. He’s asking if I can meet him here. In this simple thing. In this quiet line of plastic cars on a desk that has been used for decisions that end lives.
“I do now,” I say. The words are completely honest. They land in my chest like a door unlocking.
Nico’s expression remains serious, but his shoulders loosen a fraction. He pushes one car forward exactly an inch.
“This one goes first,” he says. “He’s the boss.”
I nod slowly, like I’m receiving instructions for a major operation. “And the others listen?”
“Yes.” Nico pushes the second car forward to match. “If they don’t listen, they crash.”
That makes my mouth twitch, almost a smile. He watches my face like he’s hunting for a reaction.
“Crashing is bad,” he adds, solemn.
