My brother.My mother.Our extended family… cousins scattered across Italy, each tied to the business in their own way.All of them depended on me leading them into a secure future.
Which brought me to the one threat I couldn’t ignore.
Neve Trimboli.The last Trimboli still alive.A loose thread I’d left dangling fifteen years ago, and one that could unravel everything if someone discovered she existed.I’d spared her.I’d buried the truth.And I’d convinced myself she’d disappear into some quiet life and she’d never be an issue again.But I couldn’t help the anxiety I felt whenever I thought she was out there, a strike against my name that could illustrate my one moment of weakness and ensure my fall from grace.
And that didn’t sit well with me.
Her existence was a risk.A weakness.A mistake I couldn’t afford.I’d make sure she wasn’t a threat, that she wasn’t affiliated with any of our enemies, and then I was getting back on that jet and heading straight back to Genoa.As though I’d never been here.
I gripped the wheel tighter and drove to the other side of the city, thinking of all the ways I’d fucked that up fifteen years ago.Allowing Trimboli to live had meant fifteen years in which I’d known nothing about her.Hell, I didn’t even know if she’d spoken with anyone about what happened to her family.I hadn’t even considered that.And did she even remember anything from that night?How much had she even seen, hiding in that pantry?
I pulled up to the return address on one of her postcards.It was a small house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, built from old stone and tucked behind a neat little garden that someone clearly took care of.
I didn’t know what I’d expected to get from coming there.It wasn’t like I was going to walk in and kill her in her own home.
Not the way you did with the rest of her family…
That thought triggered the voice I hated… the small, persistent one in the back of my head that questioned everything I was.I called it reason, or conscience, depending on how much I wanted to lie to myself.Either way, it was there now.And it was the last thing I needed.
I stayed low in the driver’s seat, the Volvo angled just enough that I could see the house without being obvious.The engine ticked as it cooled, blending into the quiet of the cul-de-sac.From there, nothing moved.No curtains shifted.No silhouettes fell across the windows.
I didn’t even know if she lived there.For all I knew, she may have moved on and was staying somewhere else; with a boyfriend or a roommate, or crashing on a friend’s couch.I knew nothing about her life.Nothing about who she trusted or where she slept.
But I waited anyway.It was the only lead I had, and I wasn’t dragging a team of men into it.They’d start asking questions I wasn’t willing to answer.Questions about who she was.Why she mattered.Why I was suddenly willing to cross borders alone for a woman none of them had ever heard of.
No.This had to be handled quietly.By me.With as little attention as possible.The fewer eyes on her, the better.
The street stayed quiet for hours.A stray cat drifted across the road.A delivery truck slowed at the house next door, dropped a package, and moved on.A scooter buzzed past, the rider not even glancing in my direction.
I took it all in with the same cold patience I used to bring to surveillance jobs, back when I still handled them myself.I didn’t anymore.I had men for that.Men who would be insulted if they knew I was out here doing that alone.
But this job wasn’t for them.
I kept my eyes trained on the front door long enough that my vision almost blurred.My hands stayed steady on the wheel.My breathing stayed even.Eventually, the boredom settled in—the dull kind that crept up when you’d been waiting too long and couldn’t afford to blink.
Movement finally came at midday.The front door opened.
A young woman stepped out and closed the door behind her with practiced ease.She walked down the stone path toward the small gate.There was no hesitation in her stride.That was the first thing I noticed about her—that she was comfortable there.
She wrecked every picture I’d been carrying around in my head.
The seven-year-old I remembered had been small and mousy with wide eyes.This woman—this stranger—was grown now, maybe twenty-two, and nothing about her fit the neat, polished idea of pretty that people like to sell.
She was tall in a way that made her look unsure what to do with all that height.Her hips were narrow, her waist too fine, like she’d been built from delicate lines instead of curves.There was a thinness to her that didn’t feel intentional, more like the world had taken a little too much and never given it back.Her shoulders curved forward as if she was always bracing for something, folding herself inward without even realizing it.
Her face didn’t line up the way beauty magazines would want it to.Her eyes sat just a touch too far apart, giving her a wide, searching look.Her nose leaned slightly to one side, crooked enough to tell a story—one that probably hurt when it happened and never quite healed right.
And her hair—God.Long, brown, wild.It spilled around her face like it refused to be tamed, catching the light, brushing her cheeks, doing whatever the hell it wanted.Nothing about it looked styled or planned.It just existed, loud and soft all at once.
She kept trying to shrink herself, shoulders tucked, chin lowered, like she hoped the world might forget she was there.
It didn’t work.
Because even standing like that—crooked, delicate, undone—she drew the eye.Not in a clean, perfect way.In a way that made it impossible to look away.Like a crack in glass that catches the light and suddenly becomes the only thing you see.
She walked past a patch of flowers by the gate and smiled at them, as though the garden greeted her first.She bent slightly, touched a leaf, whispered something under her breath.
She was talking to the plants.