Beautiful Evidence (The Roma Syndicate #3)

1. Alessia

ALESSIA

T here isn’t an intake sheet, no signature logged—just a body zipped into a black vinyl bag, reeking of disinfectant.

It’s not the first time an untagged body has shown up and probably won’t be the last. I don’t hesitate or dwell.

Instead, I wash my hands, prepare my instruments, and focus on the task ahead.

This is the job—methodical, controlled, and free of sentiment.

Every motion is part of the procedure and I signed up for it.

The gurney waits in my suite by the time I push through the morgue doors. Light pulses from the overheads, flickering slightly. My badge shifts against my chest as I walk, a soft tap with every stride. I use it to swipe myself into the secure area.

The air snaps cold against my skin, saturated with bleach and citrus solvent, but beneath the surface, the scents of blood and decay curl through. Death never scrubs clean. It clings.

A morgue tech I don’t recognize is peeling off her gloves.

She looks up at me and tosses them into the waste bin as I walk closer, then nods toward the gurney.

"There’s no paperwork, and the body was transferred from Monteverde.

He arrived without ID, without personal effects.

He’s being logged as a John Doe, and they need him processed before noon. "

Whoever "they" are, it isn’t the police or any hospital. It’s the other kind of authority—the kind with teeth, with deep pockets, with the power to make problems disappear before the questions even begin. Men like my father.

I glance at the bag and already feel the nausea coil in my gut.

Recognition lands before the zipper opens to reveal a face—Matteo Vescari.

A foot soldier for the Bianchi Family—a runner.

I saw him once, smoking outside a warehouse while my father negotiated leverage behind closed doors.

He looked bored then. Now, he looks like an omen.

"Thanks," I grunt at the tech and force a plastic smile as she ducks out through the swinging double doors and I'm left alone.

I sigh hard and stare down at the half-open bag. I left that life behind a long time ago, and still it finds ways to come back and haunt me. It isn't the first time I've had to autopsy a victim like this, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with it.

His face is destroyed, bottom lip split open. Blood is crusted along one ear. His eyelids are swollen and purpled. Ligature marks circle his wrists, the skin beneath broken and red. His forearms are cut with defensive wounds. One finger bends the wrong direction, snapped through the knuckle.

It's not going to be easy to document all of these injuries, and I'm sure I'll find more as I process the body. Men like this ooze secrets as the work unfolds. I wonder what secrets Matteo has to share with me.

The overhead camera blinks red. I glance at it briefly and remind myself that everything I do here is on record. It’s meant to protect us—me, the facility, the bodies. There’s no privacy in this line of work, and maybe that’s for the best.

I tie my hair back, pull on my gloves, and take a long breath to steady myself before I begin. My tools are laid out in perfect rows, each one gleaming under the light—scalpel, forceps, bone saw—all sterilized and ready.

I unzip the bag slowly and lift the edges down around the sides of the gurney.

His skin is cold, pale, mottled with early signs of lividity.

I check his pockets—empty, as expected. I swab for trace and log any external debris before beginning the external exam by removing his clothing.

When I scrape under his fingernails, I collect dried blood—small, dark flakes that fall into the tray in an irregular scatter.

It’s not his. The DNA will belong to someone else.

After finishing the preliminary notes, I wash the body down. I’ve done it a hundred times. The water is lukewarm, the cloth smooth against skin that no longer reacts. As I wash him down, the cloth drags over something unexpected. I stop and adjust the light, narrowing my focus.

There, on the surface of his abdomen, is a mark carved into the skin.

It's shallow, clean, placed with intention. It doesn’t look like the work of frenzy or an accident.

The depth is measured—just enough to leave a message without causing fatal blood loss.

It’s intentional, a symbol I recognize instantly, carved like a calling card.

The carving forms a circle, bisected by a vertical line, with a jagged arc cutting across them both. I freeze in place as my breath tightens, every nerve pulling taut with recognition.

My lungs pull tight. I’ve seen this before, a memory buried so deep it shouldn’t have surfaced, but it does. I was twelve when I saw my father carve that same mark into a man’s chest and leave him to rot in the countryside. He thought I was asleep. He never knew I'd watched.

No one has used that symbol in over a decade, at least not to my knowledge. It belonged to a part of the syndicate long thought dead, a piece of the past meant to stay buried.

Why bring it back now?

I document the wound. My hands tremble slightly as I photograph the angles and measure the depth.

The cuts weren’t rushed. They were slow, meticulous, meant to be understood.

This doesn’t read like revenge for betrayal.

It feels older, more personal—like a reminder sent to settle a score long left open, a warning etched into skin to keep the past alive.

Shaken, I switch to his hands to let myself relax a little.

The wrists are torn where restraints were tightened past what is cruel.

The bruises arc in neat crescents, left by ropes or zip ties.

It doesn’t look like the calculated restraint of professionals.

These marks feel personal—driven by rage, sharpened by impulse, left by someone who wanted him to suffer before he died.

My voice comes out in a whisper as I connect to this man's humanity and anchor myself in the reality that he was once a living breathing person.

"Who were you fighting, Matteo?" I shake my head and realize I can't procrastinate any more.

I have to return to the real work, so I dive into his chest cavity.

My scalpel slices through tissue and sinew. I use the bone saw and chest retractor to hold him open, and then I start my internal investigation.

His heart shows signs of rupture, the surrounding bruising consistent with a sharp, concentrated blow.

In his stomach, I find remnants of pasta and tomato sauce, broken down just enough to suggest a recent meal.

There’s alcohol in his system—cheap red wine—but no trace of sedatives or other drugs.

Whatever happened to him, he was fully conscious when it occurred.

I stitch the incision closed, though I know it’s only for show.

The thread pulls tight. His chest puckers slightly beneath each loop.

The overhead light hisses, the hum as thick as static.

I sterilize the table and disinfect the work space, working methodically to eliminate every trace of the procedure.

I gather his clothes into an evidence bag and seal it, then label the blood sample and place it with the others for refrigeration.

I don’t generate a report, and I don’t enter his name.

I have to think carefully about how to handle this first.

I sit with the file open for a long time, the name staring back at me—placeholder text, nothing real yet. I don’t input anything and I don’t finalize the record. Instead, I close the file without saving and lock the sample drawer myself.

Matteo Vescari won’t show up in any system. His name won’t trigger a search. Officially, he never passed through my lab—yet.

Before I can leave the suite, the door creaks open behind me.

I turn to find Dr. Luca Bernardi in the doorway, his coat still half-buttoned and a fresh espresso in one hand.

He doesn’t step inside. The dark circles beneath his eyes suggest another sleepless night. He doesn’t ask what I’m working on.

"Get that one wrapped up quickly," he says, his tone clipped but casual enough to sound like a suggestion. It isn’t.

"They want it logged and done. No deep dives and second-guessing.

Just process what you have and move on." He's being colder than normal, but maybe he understands who this man is too.

I don't question him, but maybe I should.

His gaze flicks to the covered drawer behind me, then back to my face. "And don’t ask questions." He’s gone before I can respond, and the door swings shut behind him.

I strip off my gloves, toss them into the bin, and make my way out of the exam suite.

My legs are stiff from standing too long, and I flex my fingers a few times to get the blood flowing again.

The hallway is quiet, the morgue still in that early stretch of silence before the rest of the world wakes up.

I pass through the final set of double doors and head for the office that barely feels like mine—just a room with my name on it and a plain desk.

An envelope waits on my chair, out of place in the sterile order of the room.

There’s no postage, no seal—just my name, scrawled out by hand.

I glance around to see if someone nearby is moving or if maybe I can see who left it, but there isn't a soul in this place but me yet.

I get a dose of goosebumps as I bend to pick it up.

The paper crinkles faintly as I open the flap and slide out a single photograph.

It was taken yesterday.

I’m outside the café on Via Natale del Grande. My coat is crooked at the collar. My hair hangs damp from the rain. Beside me, unmistakable in his hulking frame and crooked posture, is my father. I never even saw him there. I never knew he was there.

I turn the photo over, already certain the back will be blank. It doesn’t need to say anything. The photo itself carries the message, sharp as a blade pressed to my neck. The warning is in the image itself, in the fact that it exists at all. The meaning settles like ash in my throat, choking me.

They know…

I carry it to the sink, grab the lighter I use for lighting candles in my office to help me forget the scent of decaying flesh, and light it up. The flame licks at the edge of the photo. The paper curls fast, edges blackening, image disappearing. First my face, then his. Then nothing but ash.

Now trembling, I wash my hands again because the heat of the water might pull me back into my body.

The shock runs over my skin and makes me nauseous.

Someone has been watching me. Someone powerful and dangerous, and they sent Mateo here for a reason.

Something tells me this is going to get messy fast. I shake myself loose but I can't snap out of it.

The pressure in my chest doesn’t lift. The weight settles deeper.

I have no idea what's coming next. Only that something is.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and let it happen.