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With her laptop, we search for the version of “Bruno Caruso” I never met. I know the trainer, the mentor, and the man who brought pasta to the gym. But we’re looking for the criminal who used his athletic medical credentials to engineer a trafficking pipeline and hid these facts from me for years.

As we begin digging into that, I notice how Lucia processes information faster than I do. She works in a precise and systematic way, ruthlessly discarding the irrelevant, just as she does in the ER.

We quickly strip away the dead ends, discarding Bruno’s early boxing contacts, gym affiliations that predate the trafficking timeline, and medical licenses that lead nowhere. That leaves us with a narrow corridor of names, dates, and shell companies, all converging on the same eighteen-month window.

Eventually, she points to a date in Matteo’s notes. “Here.”

The notebook entry references the same shipment date and address Nico flagged this morning.

Her brother wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone silenced him because he got close enough to start piecing together secrets.

And my former coach and father figure seems to be the one behind it all.

Not many people know the extent of my relationship with Bruno Caruso.

Still, I want to tell Lucia.

I keep my eyes on the desk, tracing a scratch in the wood with my thumb. “He wasn’t just my trainer.”

Lucia shifts closer, waiting, her forearms resting on her knees.

“Bruno was there when I didn’t have anyone.” My jaw tightens. “He looked at me like I was anything but fragile. He took me into that gym where he used to work with my dad, tossed me gloves, and said, ‘Show me what you’ve got, Santori.’”

I breathe out a chuckle as I continue. “He decided I was worth his time. Do you understand what that does to a kid?”

Lucia’s fingers curl against her palm. “It makes him loyal.”

I nod once. “And grateful. He trained me for ten years. Ten. Under his guidance, I fought in and won competitions. He told me I was the real deal and that I could be great. And when a man like him, the one who shapes the first version of yourself you actually respect, says that, you take it as gospel.”

A sudden silence settles. I look at her and find her composure has cracked. Her lower lip catches between her teeth, and her eyes shine bright with unshed tears. Her knuckles are white as she clutches a forgotten pen. This emotion doesn’t stem from pity, which I would have shut down immediately, but from recognition or perhaps understanding. She lost Matteo just as I lost my father.

She trusted the system to find justice as I trusted Bruno to build my future. And we both learned that the people you believe in most are the ones best positioned to destroy you.

That look on her face sends gratitude blooming in my chest.

“The doping scandal…it’s not what you think.” My hand flattens on the desk. “I never took food, drink, or pills from anybody else. He handed me the performance enhancers himself…said they were for recovery. I never questioned him.”

Lucia’s eyes darken. “And when the news came out?”

“I couldn’t make sense of it. I’d never touched anything that didn’t come from Bruno’s own hands, so how could I have failed a test?” My jaw tenses. “By the time I understood I hadn’t made a mistake, that I’d been set up, it was too late. Bruno’s training had become popular by then, so he had other boys with potential, and I was the disgraced athlete. All of a sudden, I had no endorsements and no future.”

Her breath catches.

“I didn’t see it then. A rising champion is visible. But a fallen one? He can disappear and be repurposed.” I force myself to look at her. “It took me years to piece the truth together. The timing of the scandal, the way he kept tabs on me after, the job offers that came through people connected to him… He dismantled me, planning to remold me into a useful tool. He only failed because I met Enzo and Nico first and joined this famiglia.”

When I finish, my fist presses hard against the desk, the tendons standing out under my skin.

Lucia reaches for me without hesitation, her warm and steady palm settling over my knuckles.

Fifteen seconds pass in the quiet.

“He’s going to pay for both of the people he ruined.”

Her quiet, certain words strike a place inside my chest I didn’t know was still exposed.

I wonder if she feels the same heavy buzz around me that I feel around her. Right now, her eyes are softer than I’ve ever seen them. Those emerald green irises glitter intensely, compelling me to close the distance and lean in.

Nothing in her expression suggests she would stop me. I’m pulled toward her with a gravity I don’t entirely trust myself with.