A tall man in a charcoal suit waited on the gravel path, standing perfectly still, the careful distance and the faint earpiece marking him as one of Dmitri’s discreet operatives.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm, though it quavered slightly.
He cleared his throat. “Vanya.”
My chest collapsed. The words themselves felt like a punch, sudden and brutal. “What about my son?” I asked, voice tight, heart hammering against my ribs.
He hesitated—a single heartbeat that stretched into eternity, enough for panic to flood my veins like ice water.
I screamed, raw and desperate. “What about my son?”
“He was taken,” the man said, forcing his voice to remain steady, though I could hear the weight of it. “By the Orlovs, the Morozovs, and the Ferraros. All three families.”
The world seemed to tilt. My knees nearly buckled beneath me, but I caught myself on the rough gravel. “Taken? When? Where?” My words were sharp, urgent, but barely coherent, as if my fear had stripped grammar from my brain.
“They moved him an hour ago,” the man replied carefully. “He’s alive, but... heavily guarded. They know he’s your son.”
The world tilted.
“The three families ganged up to kidnap my child?” My voice sounded distant even to me, like it belonged to someone else. “Why? Where is Dmitri?”
“With them,” the man replied. His tone stayed professional, but there was no mistaking the gravity beneath it. “He’s defending himself at the council. They’ve accused him of breaking the treaty with the Albanians. They sent me to bring you in as well.”
I stared at him, the words refusing to settle.
Dmitri had sworn there were no traces. No signature. No way to trace the fire back to him. He’d been meticulous. A perfect frame job on the Morozovs. Clean. Elegant. Untouchable.
Yet here we were.
My chest tightened as the implications unraveled one by one. If the council had called him in, then someone had seen through it. Or worse—someone had wanted to use it. The Albanians were only the excuse. Power was the prize. Dmitri had moved too fast. Burned too much. And now they were circling.
I followed the man to his waiting sedan—black, tinted, no plates visible, the kind of car designed to exist everywhere and nowhere at once.
The door closed with a soft, final thud that echoed too loudly in my head.
The drive felt endless.
The lake glittered deceptively calm beside the road, sunlight skimming its surface as though nothing in the world was wrong.
My pulse hammered in my throat, each curve of the narrow lakeside road ticking down like a silent countdown.
Had Dmitri known this was coming? Had he gone ahead with the fire anyway, accepting the consequences? Or had something gone catastrophically wrong that even he hadn’t anticipated?
We pulled up to the Basilica di Sant’Abbondio.
The ancient Romanesque cathedral rose above us, stone weathered smooth by centuries of faith, blood, and secrets.
Twin bell towers loomed against the pale sky like silent sentinels. I’d been here before.
The man opened my door. “The meeting is inside.”
I stepped out, legs unsteady, the gravel crunching beneath my shoes sounding far too loud.
The cathedral doors loomed ahead—dark wood carved with saints and martyrs frozen in agony and devotion. I could already hear the low murmur of voices beyond them, the sound of men who believed themselves untouchable.
I didn’t know what questions awaited me inside. What accusations. What carefully rehearsed lies.
But I knew one thing with absolute clarity.