Chapter 10 Francesco
FRANCESCO
The old wine factory creaks under the weight of winter. Frigid air seeps in through the broken stained glass windows above, turning my breath visible.
Everything about this place smells like mold, copper, and old secrets. No one comes here anymore. That’s why I turned it into my personal torture house.
The walls are stone, the floors are concrete, and the ceiling arches like an old cathedral, stained with decades of cobwebs and dust. Long-abandoned bottling machines rust in the corners like decaying skeletons. Wine barrels line one side, all empty.
I shut the thick stone door behind me with a heavy thud. The sound echoes through the empty, hollow space. Well, empty except for the iron chair in the center of the room, groaning under the weight of the man tied to it.
His arms are duct-taped to the metal, and his legs are zip-tied around the legs of the chair. The light from the industrial lamp above his head makes him fully visible. His face is pale, and although the room is freezing, sweat pours down his temples, soaking the collar of his cheap button-up.
He’s shaking already. That saves me time.
I pull off my coat and hang it across a metal chair beside me. I welcome the cold bite against my skin. It keeps me sharp and alert.
Across the room, a single monitor blinks on the wall, playing surveillance footage on loop. The grainy, black-and-white resolution is crap, but not enough to hide the truth. I watch it for a moment, sliding my hands into my pockets.
The footage shows him slipping through the east wing hallway of the abandoned Romano vineyard estate. That hallway hasn’t seen guests in over a decade.
For most, the estate is just another forgotten piece of history. But for Society members, the east wing is sacred. It serves as a storage corridor for sensitive archives.
He moves fast, his head down and hood up, moving like he knows exactly where he’s going. He pauses at the server room door, punches in the access code that only a high-ranking Society handler would know, and slips inside like he owns the place.
Another angle catches him crouched low in the archive corridor, tampering with something just out of frame. Then a brief cut, and he’s walking out again, hands empty. Except they’re not. Zoomed in, there’s a flash drive the size of a lighter between his fingers.
“You know what I hate more than betrayal?” My voice comes out low as I step toward him, my shoes crunching on broken glass and debris on the floor. “Stupidity.”
He flinches at the sound of my voice but says nothing. He just breathes harder through his nose, eyes darting around the room like he’s looking for an escape that doesn’t exist.
He should have known better. I handle all the audits and internal records for La Mano Nera. Nothing moves without crossing my desk first. If he thought he could cover his tracks under my watch, then he deserves everything that’s about to come next.
I throw a folder onto the metal table next to him. It lands with a sharp slap. The contents spill slightly, revealing a faded passport photo of Adriano Ricci, a decades-old Queens address, and a file transfer log from two weeks ago.
“You didn’t just steal money,” I say, my voice flatter now. “You stole from a classified server even my father doesn’t know exists, a server reserved for a select few members of La Mano Nera.”
He trembles. “I-I didn’t know what I was looking at,” he stammers. “I wasn’t trying to sell any information, I swear.”
“You accessed a red-level archive.”
“It was an accident!” His voice cracks. “There was this old account tied to a message Adriano wrote years ago. I thought it was just a payroll dump. But when I decrypted it…”
He trails off, his chest rising and falling like he just ran a marathon.
I fold my arms. “Go on.”
“There was laundered money. And notes. Adriano had pulled funds from one of your fronts. He wanted to send it somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out where. There was also something else. A sealed letter. He sent it two years ago to a contact in my syndicate before he disappeared.”
My brow lifts slightly. “Your syndicate is an enemy to my family. Why would Adriano send a sealed letter to someone in your syndicate when he worked for us?”
“I know,” he says quickly. “It doesn’t make sense. I think he was trying to play both sides. According to the letter, he offered them information or evidence. Stuff that could hurt your family. It was in exchange for something.”
“What?”
“Sanctuary. For his daughter.”
My stomach tightens, but I try not to let it show on my face.
He watches me for a second, still panting, but a bit calmer now that he’s talking. He thinks cooperation might save him. It won’t.
“I think he knew he was being hunted. He said if anything ever happened to him, they would come for her,” he says, his voice steadier now. “He said that even if she doesn’t know anything, the danger would find her anyway. So he built a failsafe… some kind of dead man’s switch.”
My jaw clenches. “What kind of failsafe?”
“There’s a journal. I don’t know where it is. It can only be found if she dies. He made it so that her death would be the trigger to release it.”
I grab a picture from the folder. It’s a still image from a corner store in South Boston.
A security cam shot, timestamped and dusty.
A picture of Lia from three years ago. She’s seventeen in it, laughing.
Head thrown back. She’s not in a maid’s uniform; she’s not in my chains.
She’s just a girl buying snacks. She looks happy. Unburdened. Free.
Before everything happened. Before I came into her life and destroyed it.
“He knew she’d end up here,” I mutter. “As my prisoner.”
And if someone out there finds out what she is, what she represents…
“There’s a landmine buried somewhere against your family,” the traitor says, his voice low. “And she’s the trigger.”
I slam the picture against the table and pull out my gun. My finger itches on the trigger. “Who else knows?”
“No one!” His body starts trembling again. “I burned the letter after I took the money. I didn’t tell anyone. I swear on my mother’s grave! Please…”
He keeps begging, voice rising into a frantic pitch, and I let him. For a few seconds, I watch him spiral. Then I raise my pistol and aim just above his head.
His eyes stretch wide, a flash of panic blooming across his face.
Pop!
The gunshot cracks through the silence. The bullet embeds into the stone behind him, and dust showers down on him like ash. He lets out a sharp scream and slumps in the chair, gasping and sobbing like the coward he is.
“You’re not dying tonight,” I say quietly. “You’ll vanish from the face of the earth. Get a new passport. A clean identity. If I ever hear your name again, even a whisper, I’ll find you in your sleep, and I won’t miss.”
He exhales as relief crumples his features. His body sags in the chair as he breathes hard.
I let the silence stretch. I let him believe it’s over.
“Thank—”
I swiftly move behind him, pulling the silk cord from my coat pocket before the word finishes leaving his mouth.
“Wait… What are you—”
He doesn’t get to finish.
I loop the black silk cord around his neck.
It’s La Mano Nera’s favorite execution tool.
Way stronger than it looks, it is mostly used for quick, clean kills, designed to snap the neck without breaking the skin.
I jerk it up and out in one sharp motion, and a cartilage pops.
His body twitches, he gurgles once, and then he stills.
I release him from his constraints and gently lower his body to the floor like I’m tucking a child into bed.
Sangius Quartus himself taught me that kill during my first winter under the Society. The kill that makes a man part of the shadows. The moment a man stops being a boy. The moment he becomes a weapon. A force.
I pocket the cord again and wipe my hands clean, as if I can wipe off the life I just took.
I scan the room, checking for anything out of place. When I’m done calling for Nico to head over and cover my tracks, I grab the folder and the USB drive from the monitor and slip them into my coat pocket before sliding it on.
Outside, the air is colder than before. The factory looms behind me, and I walk toward my car in heavy steps, breath clouding the night air. When I return to the estate, no one sees the change in my eyes.
I’m good at hiding the monster inside. The one that’s currently spiraling.
Adriano had a plan I didn’t know about. Lia isn’t just some frightened girl caught in the wrong web. She’s a ticking bomb. Her father made sure that if anything happened to her, his secrets wouldn’t stay buried.
Secrets we do not want getting back to the Elders.
This is deeper than her paying dues for her father’s crimes. It is deeper than revenge.
She’s already marked.
I loosen my tie as I walk down the hallway, overhearing my aunts in a nearby room talking about the engagement ceremony. Silvia’s voice drifts through the walls as she speaks softly, something about a dress fitting.
But none of it matters right now.
There’s only one thing I need to do. I need to find that journal. Because if I don’t, and the Elders get to it first…
…I might be forced to kill her.