Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince (Underworld Heirs #4)

1. Gianna

GIANNA

T he road curves beneath my tires like a ribbon of black silk, unspooling into the hills beyond the city, as night presses down softly and thickly.

My engine is a quiet creature, droning gently, folding into the fabric of my thoughts without effort.

I’ve let my window down just enough for the salt-heavy breeze from the sea to drift in.

With it comes the faint, niggling trace of cigar smoke and blooming jasmine, two scents that never quite leave Nuova Speranza no matter how the winds shift.

The bar is long behind, and yet, Dante Salvatore’s voice still echoes in my ears.

I have danced around men like him all my life, beautiful and bored, spoiled and reckless, born into power they neither earned nor respected.

There is something lazy in the way he looks at me, with the stillness of a man who has never needed to chase because the hunt always finds him.

It is almost salacious, almost insulting, the easy arrogance of someone who clearly believes he could have me if he so much as lifts a finger.

A small smile plays at my lips as I tap my fingers against the leather wheel of the Mustang.

The car is sleek, low to the ground, painted a graphite color that catches the streetlights just enough to look expensive without trying.

She’s not a toy, and certainly not the kind of car bought for show or sentiment.

She’s meant to run—fast, far, and without apology.

The engine purrs as I guide her along the dark stretch of road that hugs the coast.

I feel the vibration in my hands, the tension in the frame.

It matches the restlessness sitting low in my stomach, the curiosity

I didn’t ask for about the man I walked away from in that bar.

“Old Money” by Lana Del Rey plays low through the speakers, her voice filling the car like perfume.

Whatever Dante is—or isn’t—he belongs to a world I’ve learned to survive, not fantasize about.

Pretty faces and powerful names only matter to a point.

What lasts is leverage.

The road bends sharply, and beyond the next rise, the lights of the Rossi house come into view, softened by distance and the mist that clings low to the hills.

It is not what it once was.

Gone are the endless processions of foreign cars, the glittering banquets, the late nights when the laughter of men who thought themselves invincible curled like smoke into the high-vaulted ceilings.

What remains is quieter, pared down, but not broken.

We learned to adapt, survive, and bow our heads just enough to keep them attached to our shoulders.

The Salvatores did not burn us to the ground like they did the Lombardis.

They are not fools.

They understood that it is better to keep a name like Rossi alive and tethered to their throne to remind the rest of Nuova Speranza of what happens to those who challenge the new kings.

When my youngest brother was executed by the Don himself, there was no confusion about what it meant.

It was a clean severance, the kind of message that does not require repetition.

We were finished.

The response was surgical.

Our assets were seized, our accounts emptied, and all but a few of our trusted allies either disappeared or turned.

Properties that had carried our family’s name for generations were signed over to holding companies in the Salvatores' pocket.

Every inch of Nuova Speranza that once belonged to us was parceled out and repurposed until there was barely a trace of who we had been.

For a long time, we lived in the gray spaces.

No invitations. No alliances. No protection beyond what scraps our name could still demand from those too conservative to forsake us completely.

It should have ended there.

But survival runs deeper than pride.

And survival was the one skill I had never been allowed to forget.

I requested a meeting with Valentina Salvatore when no one else from my family dared to speak her name.

I walked into that room with no titles to offer, no army at my back, and no illusions about the balance of power.

I brought something else instead.

I brought leverage and intelligence.

Valentina did not need another desperate ally.

She needed someone who could think four moves ahead, someone who understood the language of diplomacy as well as the machinery of war.

I gave her both.

I offered her access to networks that had survived the fall, old routes and foreign connections that the Salvatores had not yet fully absorbed.

I gave her the names of men who would never kneel to Luca or Marco, but who still answered when a Rossi called.

I promised efficiency, discretion, and loyalty where it mattered most: not to her crown, but to her vision of the future.

And in return, she gave me something no one else would have.

She gave me relevance.

Under her, we rebuilt—not as an empire, but as a vessel, a critical artery in the wider body of Salvatore power.

The Rossis became specialists.

We handled negotiations that required the illusion of neutrality, acquisitions that needed a lighter, familiar hand.

We brokered deals that could not bear the direct weight of the Salvatore name.

We survived by becoming indispensable.

And I rose by making sure no one, not even the queen herself, would find it easy to replace me.

We are useful to them, now, working as we do, as operatives in the shadows.

So, we became conduits for deals that require old bloodlines and older loyalties.

Our businesses still run, our hands still dip into the streams of wealth flowing through this city, but always with an invisible leash drawn taut around our throats.

But, to his credit, Luca Salvatore is ruthless, but not unkind.

He values his assets.

I turn onto the private drive, the tires crunching over pale gravel.

Cypress trees line the path solemnly, their silhouettes needle-like against the moonless sky.

The building rises ahead, a sprawling villa of pale stone and wrought-iron balconies, its windows glowing with warm light.

Not opulent anymore, not ostentatious.

Just enough.

Just respectable enough to look like dignity, just humble enough to look like gratitude.

I kill the engine and sit for a moment, breathing in time along with the ticking of the cooling metal.

From here, the house looks almost untouched by the wars that gutted this city’s underworld.

But I know better.

The real wounds are not written on walls or gardens.

They are written in the silence that fills a home once crowded with brothers and fathers and uncles who lived too recklessly.

They are written in the empty chairs at the long dining table, in the echoing corridors where no one shouts anymore.

Heels press softly into the stone as I cross the wide drive toward the front door.

The night carries a faint chill, and rain begins to fall, steady and cold against my shoulders.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks, loud and sudden, before falling silent again.

The door swings open before I reach it.

Renato steps out with an umbrella already in hand, moving faster than I’d expect from someone his age.

His hair is more silver than I remember, his frame a little thinner, but his eyes still hold that old sharpness.

He lifts the umbrella over me, shielding me from the worst of it as we reach the steps.

Inside, he takes my damp jacket and offers a folded towel.

I press it to my neck and then to the side of my face, drying the worst of it while he stands quietly nearby.

"Thank you, Renato."

He understands dismissal better than most, and retreats wordlessly.

Left to my own devices, I look around me.

The marble floors are spotless, but the chandelier overhead is a relic that has seen better days.

My oldest brother's voice echoes faintly from his study at the end of the corridor upstairs, low and animated.

He speaks with the cadence of a man conducting business he no longer pretends is legitimate.

Rafa has learned, painfully and publicly, how to bow without kneeling, being that he is, at least in name, the head of the family.

On the way to my room upstairs, I pass by the open door of the study without pausing.

I know the kind of work he is doing tonight—negotiations for a shipment moving through the eastern port, permits greased by hands we once would have broken instead of paid.

Salvatores now oversee every major operation, every lucrative artery that bleeds wealth into this city, and if we wish to partake, we do so with their blessing stamped quietly across our ledgers.

Some days it is easier to accept.

Others, it tastes like ash on my tongue.

My room is unchanged.

High ceilings, a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the gardens, heavy velvet drapes that spill onto cool stone floors.

The bed is wide and low, layered with crisp linen and faded silk.

A vanity stands near the window, cluttered with perfume bottles and worn leather notebooks.

A pistol rests beneath it, hidden in the drawer lined with velvet that once held my mother's pearls.

I kick off my heels and move to the balcony, pushing open the doors to let the night inside.

Petrichor, created by rain falling on stone, rises to meet me, mingling with the faint sweetness of night-blooming jasmine from the gardens below.

I lean against the railing, breathing in slowly, hoping the night might cool the heat still burning low in my stomach.

Is he still there, in that corner booth, with shadows wrapping around his smile like they know him?

Did he feel it too, or was I just another moment in a life full of easy wins and passing wants?

I shake the thought away, but it clings stubbornly, like a shard of something bright and reckless in the back of my mind.

The rest of my home stretches into darkness.

The gardens are well-kept but no longer manicured within an inch of their lives.

The fountains run, but the marble is cracked in places, and no one rushes to polish every flaw.

The stables stand mostly empty now; the horses sold quietly during the first hard winter after our surrender, when appearances still mattered but coffers were stretched too thin.

And yet, we are not poor.

Not by any stretch.