Chapter 19 #2
He’s younger than the others, broad-shouldered, posture relaxed in a way that feels practiced rather than natural. His clothes are understated but expensive looking. He watches me with open interest, head tilted slightly like he’s assessing me as an investment rather than a person.
The guards force me forward another step and then stop. I remain standing while they continue to sit. Carlo exhales a slow stream of smoke from his lips, eyes flicking over me lazily.
“Elena,” he says, his voice almost fond. “You look… tired.”
Enzo chuckles softly beside him, the sound grating in its ease as if this entire situation is some private joke they’re sharing at my expense.
He leans forward then, unhurried, and taps the edge of his cigar against the ashtray on the polished table in front of him.
Ash falls neatly before he leans back again to settle against the couch behind him.
The tip of the cigar flares when he brings it back to his lips and inhales, cheeks hollowing slightly as he draws the smoke in deep. He exhales slowly, letting it curl into the air above him.
Fear claws at my throat, but I refuse to let it show. I lift my chin before straightening my spine. Regardless of whether they think this is all one big joke, I won’t give them the satisfaction of watching me break.
“What do you want?” I ask.
Carlo chuckles again. “We don’t want anything from you, ragazza. We want what you will bring to us.”
He gestures lazily toward the doors behind me, drawing another slow inhale from his cigar as if there’s all the time in the world. I turn just as both doors part again, though this time, it’s without any flourish.
The same guards from earlier march inside in tight formation, boots striking the floor in unison.
They surround a single figure at the center, their bodies forming a wall around him as they move forward.
When they part, a lone man in casual clothing stands between them and in his arms is a small bundle wrapped tightly in a blanket.
The man shifts his grip, adjusting the weight before reaching up to tug the blanket back. Familiar dark hair is the first thing I see.
“Luca,” I breathe.
I barely register the guards at my sides finally releasing my restraints.
The sudden freedom is disorienting, my arms dropping limply for half a second before pain rushes back in sharp waves.
My wrists burn as circulation floods to my fingertips, needles of sensation biting hard, but it’s distant and irrelevant.
All I can see is him.
The man lowers Luca to his feet, steadying him just long enough to be sure he won’t fall. The second Luca is free, I run. I cross the space between us in a heartbeat and drop to my knees just as he launches himself at me.
“Mama!” he cries, his voice cracking as his arms wrap tightly around my neck.
I catch him, clutching him to my chest so hard it almost hurts, burying my face in his hair as quiet sobs tear free from me. Relief crashes through me so violently that it’s hard to breathe through.
“I’ve got you. Mama’s here. You’re okay,” I whisper over and over, rocking him instinctively.
He clings to me, afraid I’ll disappear again. His small body shakes while his little fingers dig into my shoulders. I press kisses into his hair, his temple, his cheek, anywhere I can reach.
When I finally lift my head again, Enzo is watching us.
His gaze tracks the way my fingers curl instinctively into the back of Luca’s hair, the protective arc of my body as if I could shield him from harm with willpower alone. I keep my palm pressed firmly between Luca’s shoulders.
“If you think you’re going to get anything out of Dante by doing this, you’re wrong,” I say, my voice steadier than I actually feel.
Enzo lifts a single brow.
It’s such a small gesture, but it makes my stomach drop all the same as if he were to pull a gun out and cock the trigger at me. For a long moment, he says nothing. He just watches us—or rather, watches me.
There’s that same unsettling curiosity from before in his eyes, something almost fond threaded through it, but now there’s an edge beneath it. He looks at me like I’m foolish for believing what I just said.
But it is the truth, isn’t it?
Dante will not negotiate with the man who murdered his brother.
There are lines even he won’t cross, principles carved deeply enough to outlast both blackmail and bloodshed.
Matteo’s death wasn’t just a loss. It is a wound that has never healed.
If Enzo were anyone else, anyone other than the man who orchestrated that execution, maybe this would have worked.
Now that I know it’s Enzo behind all of this, the odds have shifted dangerously. Dante’s fury won’t bend like the three of these men think it will. It will burn them where they stand. Which means the chances of Luca and me getting out of this unscathed are worryingly low.
“You’ll help us end this, Elena,” Enzo says at last, his tone deceptively simple.
My stomach twists. “How?”
He considers the question, head tilting slightly, his expression turning thoughtful. “You’ll be the reason Dante leaves that villa and walks through our doors.”
My grip tightens on Luca instinctively, fingers digging into the fabric of his still-damp T-shirt as I pull in a slow breath to steady myself.
“When he does,” Enzo continues, his voice almost gentle now, “the second he steps into this room, he dies.”
Something inside me goes cold.
I don’t know why I ask the next question. The answer won’t change anything. It won’t save Dante or us. And yet curiosity tugs at me all the same, an ugly and insistent need to understand.
Maybe it’s the residue of reading my father’s ledger, of living with unanswered questions for years. Or maybe it’s something darker—a twisted instinct to know the mind of the man who dismantled the very empire he helped build.
“Why?”
“So we can finally mold the Cosenzas into what it was always meant to be,” Enzo says.
My brows knit together despite myself.
But why?
Why now?
Why not when Cesare was still alive?
The questions gnaw at me, threading through everything Enzo has said and everything he hasn’t. Why wait? Why let years pass, let the Cosenza name fracture again and again before making his move?
Why not after Matteo took over?
Matteo had been younger, less entrenched, still finding his footing in a role he never should have inherited under such circumstances. He would have been easier to steer. Easier to influence. Easier to manipulate from the shadows.
Why kill the entire line just to step through the ashes afterward?
The logic doesn’t add up if the goal was simply power adjacent to the throne.
Enzo had already been there. He’d had proximity, access, authority as Cesare’s consigliere.
His voice would have carried weight in every decision, alliance, every war declared or avoided.
A guiding hand at the Don’s right side is indispensable.
That’s the kind of influence that most men crave.
So why wasn’t it enough?
The realization unfurls slowly, dread curling tighter in my chest as the answer takes shape.
Perhaps a guiding hand was never enough for a man like Enzo Vernati. Perhaps watching another man sit at the head of the table, no matter how close Enzo stood to it, was always an insult he swallowed with a smile and stored away for later. Perhaps he didn’t want to shape the Cosenzas at all.
Perhaps he wanted to erase them and start from the ground up. To burn the name down to its foundation and rebuild something else in its place, something ruthless that only answered to him.
Carlo answers before Enzo does, nodding slowly as cigar smoke curls lazily above his head. “He’s held us back for too long. Grieving over his brother has made him stagnant.” His gaze flicks briefly over me and Luca. “He’s grown… sentimental since you’ve come back to Sicily.”
Something inside me goes utterly still.
“He won’t,” I say automatically, the words escaping before I can stop them. “He won’t come.”
“You think he won’t? I assure you, he will. Men like him are all the same,” Carlo responds. He leans back into the couch, settling in with the ease of a man watching a show he already knows the ending to. One leg hooks casually over his knee, cigar balanced between his fingers.
I hope he’s wrong.
I hope he’s wrong.
I hope desperately that Dante is the exception they’ve failed to account for.
That he’ll see this for what it is and will refuse to walk into a slaughter dressed up as a rescue.
That he’ll choose strategy over instinct and not let them use Luca and me as the blade at his throat.
That his need for vengeance will outweigh any residual feelings he still has for me.
But even as that hope flickers, something colder settles in its place.
If they’re right, if Dante comes, there will be no negotiation. They don’t want concessions. They don’t want territory or alliances or influence. They want Dante dead. The moment he steps through those doors believing he’s come to save us, it will all be over.
The trap has already been set.
All that’s left is to see whether Dante will do what they expect him to do or not.