That name is already in my pocket. That account will be settled. But not today. Today, I have to pay a visit to my father-in-law.
* * *
The safe house is a brownstone tucked into a neighborhood where nobody looks too carefully at who comes and goes, the kind of place designed to disappear in plain sight. Raffaele arranged it, which means it’s bulletproof—quiet street, multiple exits, clean sight lines, and men rotating without pattern so no one can predict a weakness. No one gets in or out without me knowing.
I step inside without announcing myself, closing the door behind me with quiet finality, the soft click echoing just enough to mark my arrival. Marco Marino is already standing when I enter, his chair pushed back a few inches behind him. He doesn’t startle, doesn’t reach for anything, doesn’t even glancetoward the windows or doors. He just watches me, hands loose at his sides, like he decided long ago that if this moment came, he wouldn’t meet it running.
For a moment, we simply look at each other.
Forty years of history sit between us, my father’s war, his disappearance, the quiet life he built out of something that should have ended in blood. I take my time crossing the room, my steps steady against the hardwood. Marco doesn’t move. His shoulders stay square, his chin level. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away.
“If you’re here to finish what your father started,” he says finally, his voice calm and even, “no need to drag it out.”
I study him for a second longer, letting the weight of that sit between us. Then, instead of answering, I pull out the chair at the table and sit.
The scrape of wood against the floor cuts through the quiet, controlled and intentional, the kind of sound that shifts the direction of a room without raising a voice.
Marco’s eyes flick briefly to the chair, then back to my face. A second passes. Then he exhales through his nose and sits across from me, his movements slower now, more measured, as if recalibrating the terms of this encounter.
We settle on opposite ends of the table. Opposite ends of a story that should have buried him years ago.
I spent years hating this man, inheriting my father’s hatred and sharpening it into something that felt like my own. Marco Marino was an abstraction before he was anything else. A debt, a betrayal, a wound passed down through blood. Then he became a name. Then a face in surveillance files. Then something far more inconvenient, my fiancée’s father.
“You lived a quiet life,” I say, breaking the silence, my fingers resting loosely against the arm of the chair.
Marco’s mouth shifts slightly, not quite a smile. “And yet, you found me.”
His eyes don’t leave mine.
I tilt my head just slightly. “But let’s not pretend you’re a civilian.”
His gaze sharpens, a subtle tightening at the corners of his eyes, but he doesn’t interrupt. He leans back a fraction of an inch instead, folding one arm loosely across his stomach, the other resting against the table.
“You never really left La Cosa Nostra,” I continue, my tone even. “You just got better at hiding it. You kept your hands in the books. The Russos didn’t move money without you. How do you think Matteo came across your name?”
“I—” he starts, his hand lifting slightly from the table.
I raise mine just enough to stop him.
Not forceful.
Final.
“You ran for love,” I add, quieter now, my gaze steady on his. “I can respect that. But you never got out.”
Marco’s hand lowers slowly. He exhales, his shoulders easing just slightly, accepting the truth without arguing it.
“Does she know?” he asks.
“No.”
“I figured you had your reasons,” I say, my voice even, controlled. “You can explain them to her yourself.”
His jaw tightens, just for a second, the muscle shifting beneath his skin before he nods once.
The silence that follows shifts, settling into something heavier. I hold his gaze, and he holds mine, neither of us looking away, both of us understanding that this moment is no longer about what was.
It’s about what comes next.
