Chapter 64
The walls in my downtown office, just floors beneath my penthouse in Marchetti Tower, are reinforced steel wrapped in Italian black walnut, built for meetings like this—quiet, deadly, and far from the reach of the legitimate world upstairs.
A floor beneath the Monarch, the public never sees this space.
Hell, most of my own men don’t know it exists.
Just my closest men and Rowan.
Rowan’s seated at the long slab of smoked glass we call a conference table.
The only light comes from the screens in front of him—six monitors humming in unison, bouncing light off the dozens of silver piercings that decorate his ears and brow.
He doesn’t acknowledge me when I enter. His focus is already pinned to whatever data he’s about to drop.
Lars stands in the corner near the liquor cabinet, arms crossed. His silence is tight. Guarded. Tells me everything I need to know before a single word is spoken.
This isn’t just a lead.
It’s a problem.
I shut the door behind me with a soft click and move to the table. “Talk.”
Rowan doesn’t glance up. He taps a few keys and drags a file to the center screen. “We found her.”
A street cam image flickers into place. Grainy but clear enough. A woman walking out of a gun shop in Austin, Texas. Baseball cap, tactical boots, braid slung over one shoulder. And eyes I recognize instantly.
Zara’s eyes.
“She doesn’t go by Isadora anymore. We couldn’t find her because she changed her name.
” The screen changes to a PDF of a passport.
“Serafina Corrigan,” Rowan continues, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“Goes by Sera. Ran quiet for years. Left Chicago when she turned eighteen from what I can tell on the passport. Since then, she’s been seen in connection with a property near the Texas-Mexico border.
High security. Private compound. No paper trail.
No business ties, an ownerless stretch of land. ”
He swipes the image away and replaces it with satellite footage—thermal overlays, heat signatures. Men training with military precision. Perimeter alarms. Firing ranges.
Lars steps forward, jaw tight. “Recognize the formation?”
I nod once. “Marchetti.”
Rowan exhales and shifts in his seat, finally glancing up at me. “Used to be. The men she’s with are part of a unit that went dark five years ago. Internal designation: Veleno.”
I pause, the name dragging old weight with it.
Veleno.
Poison.
Twelve Marchetti men, hand-selected and embedded in the south under deep cover. Their job was infiltration—blend in with Southern families, dismantle them from the inside. It worked for a while. Until it didn’t.
“They went rogue,” Lars says quietly. “Cut contact. Killed their handler. We assumed they were either dead and buried or merged with another organization.”
“And now they’re sheltering a Kavanagh?” I ask, voice cold.
Rowan shakes his head. “She’s not hiding, Enzo. She’s leading them.”
I stare at the screen. Sera, stepping into frame beside a man with tactical gear. She says something, and he moves. Obeys.
“She’s trained,” Lars says. “Likely by them. Or someone before them. That’s the part we still haven’t figured out.”
“She’s not just some runaway,” I mutter.
“No. She’s a vigilante, there’s been growing whispers in the region. A woman, deadly with a taste for both cartel and Maravilla Syndicate blood,” Rowan replies. “She’s playing a game we haven’t figured out yet.”
The Maravilla Syndicate began over a century ago, when a family of Spanish land barons carved their fortune out of the Texas plains and the blood-soaked trade routes that bled into Mexico.
What started as cattle and cotton shifted with the times—morphing into smuggling routes for the cartels, weapons pipelines for foreign buyers, and a laundering network so vast even the Feds can’t chart it.
They don’t flash power; they breathe it, their legacy is strong, passing it from father to son with the quiet promise that no deal is too dangerous if it feeds the family.
You don’t cross the Maravilla family and live long enough to explain why you tried.
I lean on the edge of the table. Zara asked me to help her find her sister.
She told me stories of childhood—forts in the basement, whispered secrets, a bond ripped apart by geography and betrayal.
And maybe all of that was true. But this woman staring back at me from the screen is no longer that person.
“She’s a Kavanagh in blood only,” I say. “Everything else looks like Marchetti muscle gone toxic.”
Lars lifts a brow. “Could be she’s in too deep. Could be she’s waiting for contact. Or it could be that she's a new enemy.”
I drag a hand across my jaw, exhaling hard. This changes everything. Zara wanted hope. A reunion. Closure. Instead, she might’ve handed me the key to another war.
The silence in my office at the Monarch stretches like wire pulled too tight.
It’s late. The club below hums with life, but up here, the world is still. No distractions. No noise to drown out the shit clawing at the inside of my skull.
Lars leans against the edge of the wet bar, holding a glass of gin he hasn’t touched. He’s waiting for me to speak. I haven’t. I’ve been standing in front of the massive screen on the far wall for ten minutes, watching that grainy photo of Serafina Kavanagh loop like a cursed reel.
Same cap. Same braid. Same defiant posture.
She has Zara’s eyes. But none of Zara’s softness.
“Are you going to tell her?” Lars finally asks.
I don’t answer right away. I drag a hand through my hair, jaw tight.
“I want to.” The words cut out of me, rough and honest. “She asked me to find her sister, Lars. She handed me something sacred—her trust. And what do I have to give her in return? A completely different image of a girl she once knew.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I finally turn to face him. Lars studies me the way only he can—as the man who’s watched my walls rise and fall since we were kids.
“She deserves the truth,” I say. “But not before we know what kind of truth we’re holding.”
Lars nods. “So you wait.”
I grit my teeth. “I hate it.”
“I know.”
I cross to the bar, pour two fingers of something aged and sharp into a glass, and let it burn its way down.
“She’s happy right now,” I say, quieter. “Recovering. Dreaming about decorating the penthouse and planning a future. And I’m supposed to walk in and drop a bomb that her sister may be leading a rogue Marchetti cell that might not give a fuck about bloodlines?”
“She asked you to find her. That doesn’t mean she’s ready for what we’ve found.”
That lands.
Because I know Zara. And I know the look she gave me when she mentioned Serafina—hopeful, cautious, like this was the one part of her past that didn’t leave a scar. And if I take that from her too soon…I could lose more than trust. I could lose peace.
Lars moves toward the screen and taps a knuckle against the image. “What if she’s not a threat? What if she’s taking out targets that we’re not aware of?”
“She could be,” I say. “But the fact that she’s commanding men who were trained, that once answered to our family, and now operate off the grid? I wonder what side she’s on. What her motive is.”
He exhales and finally takes a sip of his drink. “Then we find out what kind of game she’s playing.”
I stare at the screen for another beat, then kill the monitor with a tap of the remote. The room drops into shadow.
“We need boots on the ground,” I say.
Lars nods once. “Someone we trust. Someone who knows how to blend in. Texas is tricky—Falco’s men have been sighted in Dallas and now Sera. Could be dangerous.”
“I want both targets tracked,” I mutter. “If Anthony Falco’s alive, we will flush him and send him running back to Chicago. And if Sera is a threat, we neutralize it.”
Lars meets my eyes. “You want me to go?”
My first instinct is to keep him close, where I know he’s safe. But I trust him more than anyone. And this isn’t a task I can delegate to soldiers or associates.
“Yeah,” I answer. “I need you there. But not alone. Take two from Dante’s crew. I’ll get his recommendation. No Marchetti ink, no known players.”
He gives a short nod, all business now. “I’ll handle it.”
“And Lars?” I pause, setting the glass down. “If you find her…and she’s not what Zara remembers…”
“I’ll deal with it,” he finishes for me. “You just keep your wife safe.”
I look down at my ring for a moment, thumb grazing the band like a reflex.
“I intend to.”