22. Gianna
GIANNA
T he first thing I notice when I wake is that I am alone in bed.
The second is the smell of coffee, faint and rich, drifting in from beyond the bedroom.
The curtains have been drawn halfway, letting in a pale wash of early sun, and somewhere down the corridor, I can hear the low scrape of a chair moving against the floor.
I dress without hurry.
Nothing elaborate.
Just one of the cotton dresses Dante likes, paired with flats and a thin cardigan.
It is cool enough that I could justify a coat, but I leave it behind.
My chest is already tight enough.
He is seated on the sofa when I step into the main room of the suite.
The coffee table has been set with two cups, a small platter of figs, bread still warm in its cloth wrap, and two silver-domed trays I do not open.
Dante is not eating.
He sits forward, hands clasped loosely, gaze low but not unfocused.
He looks up when I enter.
"I didn’t want to wake you," he says.
His voice is quiet.
There is no edge to it, but it is not soft either.
"The girls are getting breakfast downstairs."
I move toward the table.
I sit.
I pour my own coffee.
He waits until I’ve taken a sip before speaking again.
"There’s more you need to know."
I set the cup down and nod.
He tells me everything.
The cloth found in the warehouse.
The trail that led to Silvano.
The photo from Salerno.
The scarred man beside him, one of Arditi’s old signal runners.
The hidden backchannel tied to Operation Umber.
The reactivation of trade routes that should have stayed shut.
The fragment of our childhood password embedded in a clearance string no one should have known unless they had grown up in the rooms I once called home.
And Rafa.
He tells me that there is no solid proof.
That Luca is still tracing communications, still reviewing encrypted logs.
That Valentina has the original documents locked in her office, away from prying eyes.
But then he says the thing that makes the room grow quiet.
"If it were anyone else," he says, watching my face, "I would have already put a bullet in him. But he is your brother. So I am waiting. Until I am sure."
The realization that this, in Mafia terms, is love, settles somewhere behind my ribs.
I cannot speak for a moment.
I only nod, and this time it takes more effort.
The girls come in a few minutes later, half-dressed and loud in the way only children can be when they have no sense of the rooms they’re entering.
Arietta climbs into my lap, chattering about the activities that will be going on at school today.
Alessia reaches for a fig and stretches out on the carpet like a queen without subjects.
"What plans do you have for the day?" Dante asks as he pushes off from the chair.
I gesture at the kids.
"I'll take them to school, then see if I'm needed here."
He nods appreciatively and touches my cheek before kissing the girls goodbye.
Once he's gone, I finish getting the girls ready and take them in my car.
The girls are in the back, arguing gently about who forgot the library book.
I smile when appropriate, but it does not reach my heart.
Halfway through the route, I notice a car.
Black.
Modest.
The kind that blends in until it is seen too many times.
It follows us for four turns.
Drops back.
Picks up again.
I glance once at the mirror, but choose not to alarm the girls or change the route.
I keep my voice calm when I tell them to double-check their bags and kiss the top of each head.
I smile when Arietta asks if she can buy chocolate milk with her lunch.
And I let them go.
Because fear is already eating too much of me, and I will not let it take them, too.
I want them to know what normal feels like. I want them to believe they belong in a world that does not move with shadows at their heels.
I wait outside until the school doors close behind them.
Only then do I exhale, the way one might after leaving a room filled with smoke.
The black car does not pull away.
It remains parked across the street, engine running, windows dark.
The driver inside does not move.
Neither do I.
I do not go home after I drop the girls off.
The black car stays parked across the street for nearly twenty minutes, engine humming quietly under the low thrum of morning traffic.
I remain where I am, halfway between the school’s front gate and the outer edge of the pickup zone, pretending to study something on my phone.
I watch the car through the reflection in the glass.
The driver never steps out.
I wait until the first bell rings.
Only then do I shift the car into gear and pull away, my hands steady on the wheel, though the skin between my shoulders refuses to loosen.
I circle the neighborhood twice.
When I’m satisfied that I am no longer being followed, I stop at a small deli four blocks down.
I order a sandwich I barely taste, eat it in the car, and check the time.
It isn't in me to return home.
I would rather sit on this side of the city, surrounded by strangers and noise, than re-enter that house with ash tucked behind my teeth.
The hours stretch.
I read nothing.
I write nothing.
I watch the school fence as if it might open early, though it never does.
When the gates finally part, the girls emerge in a wave of plaid skirts and bright backpacks.
They run to me with the kind of joy that cuts me in places no blade ever could.
I fold them into my arms and drive us home, and for the rest of that day, nothing happens.
But the next morning, there is another car, following the same patterns of movement.
I spot it just as I make the last turn into the school lane.
Different model.
Same color.
Same posture.
A vehicle parked not quite like the others, facing the wrong direction, positioned just far enough back to be noticed only by someone looking for it.
I do not speak to the girls on the way in.
My throat is too tight.
This time, I stay in the car.
The engine runs.
The vents blow soft warmth against my ankles.
A man steps out just as the late bell rings.
He wears a navy coat, clean trousers.
He pulls a cigarette from his pocket but never lights it.
He leans against the hood like a man with no obligations, no appointments, no fear of being watched.
Once again, I stay in place until my girls come out.
Then I change tracks on the way home, taking a left I am not supposed to.
The vehicle follows until I turn off onto the estate’s back road.
That is when it disappears.
The guard at the southern entrance waves me through with a brisk nod.
My mind can't register anything beyond the haze of panic, thick and cloying and snaking all the way up my spine and into my brain.
Would Rafa stoop so low as to target my girls?
I drop the girls with their nanny and make my way to the west wing, my shoes loud on the polished floor.
When I reach the study, the door is already open.
Luca stands near the monitors, arms crossed.
His expression is carved from something older than marble.
Valentina sits on the edge of the desk, her spine straight, her jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscles ticking along her cheek.
I enter without knocking.
Something tells me I'm about to find out a whole lot of stuff that was better off being buried or dead.
"Tell me," I say.
Luca points to the screen.
It flickers once, then stabilizes.
A security feed from the south wing hallway.
The timestamp in the corner tells me everything I need to know.
It’s from 13:07. Today. Just before lunch.
A figure steps into the frame, dressed in maintenance gear.
Moves to a floor vent.
Kneels.
Adjusts something.
Leaves.
Fifteen seconds.
No hesitation.
No clear view of the face.
Valentina switches the feed.
Another angle.
This time I see the hand.
Gloved. Pale. Precise.
It slips something beneath the small console table that sits just outside the playroom.
I know that table.
I chose it for its height, for its smooth edges, for the way it matched the soft cream walls.
I had repainted last spring so my daughters would not feel like they were growing up in a fortress.
The object is small.
Black.
No branding.
A bug.
The sound that leaves me is not words.
It is not grief.
It is not fear.
It is rage.
A raw, wild thing that rises through my throat and tears itself loose, filling the room like the shatter of glass against tile.
My hands find the edge of the desk and I shove it in anger.
"They went for them," I say.
Valentina does not deny it.
Luca moves closer, but slowly, as if I might break everything in the room if he moves too quickly.
"Who else knows?" I ask.
"No one," Luca says. "Yet."
For a long while, there’s nothing that I can say.
"Get me Rafa," I say finally, turning to Luca.
He’s by the window, jaw set, eyes like stone. "No."
It’s not a question.
Not a negotiation.
It’s the kind of no that ends conversations, in most cases.
Not this time, though.
My eyes blaze as I step forward.
"This is my family. My blood. You don’t get to decide who I speak to."
"He’s not safe," Luca replies stubbornly. "You think we haven’t been tracking him? You think we don’t know what he’s doing?"
"Do you?" I ask.
"He’s been ghosting checkpoints, rerouting his location pings through old Rossi relays, lying about where he’s staying.
Two of his old contacts from Milan have dropped out of sight in the last month.
One of them had ties to Arditi. The other handled coastal manifests.
" He exhales. "He’s not where he says he is, and he’s not doing what he claims."
I already knew that.
But hearing it aloud is something else entirely.
"He’s gone dark, Gianna," Luca finishes. "And we both know what that means."
I nod once, though it feels like a crack running straight through my sternum.
"Then let me be the one to find out why."
Luca moves to the desk and presses both hands to the polished surface, his shoulders wide, the light catching against the gold of his signet ring.
"You still think there’s a chance he’s not behind this."
I meet his eyes. "I think I have to hear it from him."
There is a long pause.
He doesn’t argue, but I can feel the protest burning behind his eyes.
"There’s no one else it could be," I say quietly, before he can offer another theory I already know is hollow. "I know that. I’ve known it longer than I’ve wanted to."
My voice cracks there.
Just slightly.
"I’m not asking your permission," I continue. "I’m telling you what I’m going to do."
Luca doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t stop me either.
That’s all I need.
My mind is a whirl of questions soaked in rage as I leave them and stride out, dialing my brother’s cell phone on the way to my suite, not the one I know he won’t pick up, but another number that he kept reserved in case I ever ran into trouble and needed an out.
My fingers are shaking, I try to hide it by curling my palm into a fist, grounding myself in the ridges of my own skin.
My knuckles are scraped from when I shoved the desk in rage earlier, a shallow sting that barely registers now.
There’s something about the blood rising under the nail that steadies me.
Something about pain that feels earned.
The digits are memorized, though I’ve never dared use them.
I remember sitting by the small fountain in my father’s garden one morning ages ago, one sandal missing, Rafa beside me with his knees scraped and his lip split from a fight he refused to explain.
He had handed me a lemon drop, still in its crinkly gold wrapper, and said, "You’ll hate it at first, but keep it in your mouth. Let it sting." I had stared at him like he was mad, then laughed when I realized he meant it.
He had always been like that.
A riddle wrapped in loyalty.
Rough edges and silver promises.
I would have followed him into a war if he had asked.
Once, I almost did.
The lemon drop had tasted like childhood and rust.
I can still feel the echo of it on the back of my tongue.
I wonder if he’s in a safe house right now, crouched by the edge of some forgotten vineyard, dirt under his nails and a loaded gun by his knee.
Or maybe he’s in a hotel suite, shirt pressed, whiskey poured, playing the game like he was born to win it.
I don’t know who he is anymore.
The line rings once.
Then again.
Each second unspools memory.
The way he used to hold my hand at night when storms came through the valley.
The way he took the blame when I crashed the Vespa into the old trellis at the south wall.
The way he whispered "I’ll handle it" when the Rossis started offering me like bait to every southern heir with a title and a grudge.
In our world, daughters were chips.
But Rafa always made me feel like I was something more.
Until one day, he became one of them.
The line clicks.
His voice comes through, older and more worn than I imagined.
But it still hits the same chord inside me.
"Sorella."
My throat closes around the word.
All I want, in this breathless second, is to ask if he remembers the fountain.
The lemon drop.
The hand-holding during storms.
"You’ll want to hear what I have to say," he continues, quiet, clipped.
There’s a pause.
"Before your husband does."