Another pause. Longer this time.
"Baby brother." His tone shifts. Calm. Certain. The way he says everything. "You and I both know I'm the true Don of this family."
Matteo's jaw tightens.
My hand closes harder around the phone.
Dante is the eldest and by standard, he should have been the don. But he's not, I am. Our father's rejection didn't break him, it refined him into something harder and colder and more patient than any of us. He disappeared and spent fifteen years becoming exactly what Father said he could never be, and he has been waiting, in his particular way, for the day to strike.
Today was apparently that day.
"Dante." I keep the name separate from everything else. "Don't make me kill you, brother."
The words land in the air between us and stay there.
Silence on the line.
And then, very simply, very quietly, in the voice of a man who is already three steps ahead and has been since before the conversation started:
"Catch me if you can."
The line goes dead.
I stand in the cleared waiting room of a hospital on what was supposed to be my honeymoon, my brother's voice still in my ear, and for a long moment I say nothing.
Then I turn to Raffaele who walked in just at the end of it. "I want him found."
Raffaele meets my gaze. "I know."
"Official. Every channel. Every contact. His face goes to every family on the eastern seaboard within the hour."
"Sal—" Matteo warns.
"He shot a man at my wedding, Matteo." The control in my voice is absolute because it has to be. Because if I let go of it now, not even I know what comes out. "He drew blood. I don't care what his reason is. I don't care what he thinks he knows about who the true Don is." I hold my brother's gaze. "Find him."
Matteo nods once.
Marco Marino will survive. The doctors have confirmed it. He will be on his feet soon enough.
I allow myself a few seconds to feel the relief of that.
Then I go back to Valentina.
She is sitting in the chair beside her father's bed when I open the door.
Marco is propped up against the pillows, color returned to his face, looking far more irritated than a man who took a bullet a day ago has any right to be. Sofia sits on one side of the bed. Their mother sits on his hospital bed, like she can anchor him there by sheer will.
Valentina looks up when we walk in, all four of us.
My eyes find hers, but I don't speak. There's too much in the room. Relief. Anger. The wreckage of a day that was supposed to be something else entirely.
We sort through it with a look, the way we're starting to understand each other without words. She studies my face, finds whatever she's looking for, and gives a small nod.
"Shadow?"
"Yes."
"Well, you can't kill him. He's your brother."
