Chapter Fifteen – Cassian
The fire’s nearly out.
A single log crumbles in the hearth. Ash folds inward. Smoke coils along the stone lip of the fireplace, too tired to rise. I sit with my hands open, empty.
Across the room, Lorenzo paces. The polished floor creaks under his boots. He’s on his third call in ten minutes—voice low, clipped. Every few steps, he checks the window, as if she might walk through it.
She won’t. He knows it. I know it.
The wind outside howls against the glass.
Then the front door bursts open.
Allegra stumbles into the living room, hair tangled, eyes too wide. She isn’t wearing a coat. Her blouse is soaked at the collar with sweat. She smells like rain and desperation.
Lorenzo turns to her, phone still in hand.
She breathing too fast. “He’s coming for her. Fausto—he’s going to take her. I just heard—I came straight here—” She stops, reading the room. Her face slackens.
Lorenzo lowers the phone. “You’re late.”
She shakes her head violently. “No. No. There’s still time—we can find her—we have to—”
Her gaze snaps to me.
I remain in the armchair, elbows on my knees. The sleeves of my shirt are rolled, forearms bare. Dried blood rings the creases of my knuckles. Not hers. Not mine.
“Why are you just sitting?” Allegra’s voice rises. “We need to find her. Now!”
I lift my head.
The mantle clock ticks behind her. She starts forward. Lorenzo steps between us.
“Let him think.”
“Think?” Allegra’s voice is shrill. “She could be dead already!”
The door opens again.
My uncle Dante enters, his gaze sweeps through us and he nods in satisfaction.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” he says. “Finally.”
Allegra flinches like she’s been slapped.
Dante walks to the center of the room. He’s talking before he even stops moving.
“It’s time to stop this foolishness. We have work to do.”
He turns to me.
“You’ve played nursemaid long enough. You let a memory blind you.”
The veins in my jaw tighten. My teeth ache from clenching.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You helped him take her.”
His mouth curls.
She steps back. Her fingers flex like they want to form fists but don't know how. “You let her be taken. You knew Fausto was coming.”
He smiles with his teeth. “Of course I did.”
“She was a transaction. You of all people should understand that. And in exchange, Fausto’s giving us something more useful. Half the Fontanesi estate. Port rights. Oil interests.”
He steps closer. My fists are already clenched.
Dante’s smile widens. “Did I tell you? Your wife also was a mistake. I fixed that too. Fausto and I agreed. She made you soft. Love makes men predictable.”
Lorenzo speaks my name behind me. No louder than a breath.
Dante laughs. “You wouldn’t hurt your uncle, would you?”
My hand grabs his coat lapel and drives him backward into the wall. The sound is thunder. A picture frame falls and shatters. His skull hits plaster. I don’t wait.
The first punch connects with his cheekbone. I feel the skin split. He chokes, then sneers.
The second hits his nose. Cartilage caves. Blood fountains. He reaches for my wrist—too late.
The third breaks something. I don’t know what. Doesn’t matter. His teeth rattle against the stone.
My elbow crashes into his temple. His knees buckle. I lift him and slam him down again. The wall behind him takes on the shape of his skull.
He’s not laughing now.
He slides down the wall like meat.
When I step back, the floor is streaked red. His hand twitches.
My chest rises once.
Behind me, Allegra doesn’t move. I hear her voice after a long moment. “I’m going to find her.”
Lorenzo exhales. “I’ll help.”
****
Three days after Elaria was taken, I decide it’s time to see Giovanna.
The garden is quiet in the way old places are—like it’s learned how to hush itself. The trees have stilled. No birds sing. Only the breath of wind threading between stone and grass, soft enough to miss if you’re not listening.
I follow the path out of habit. My boots trace the old gravel as if they remember the way better than I do.
The mausoleum waits at the edge. Pale marble dulled by weather and years. The Fontanesi name is carved deep into its arch, but time has dimmed its pride. Rain’s left its trace in long, tired streaks. Even the light seems reluctant to touch the stone.
Two graves lie in the grass before the threshold. Perfectly aligned. Identical headstones.
Giovanna Lucia Fontanesi
1987 – 2011
I crouch.
The flowers crinkle in my hand—white lilies, same as she used to pluck from the villa’s courtyard, the ones she pressed between book pages like secrets. I place them just beneath her name. The stems brush my knuckles. Damp soil seeps through the knees of my trousers.
I sit. The grass is wet
It bleeds through the fabric, through skin, into the bones.
I lean forward until my forehead rests against the gravestone.
The marble is cold. And something inside me loosens.
My lungs give in first. Then the tendons in my back. My jaw stays locked. Behind my eyes—
The flicker of memory.
Her voice, quiet. A murmur half-stolen by sleep.
"I took you from her. Shame. You would’ve loved her."
She’d been curled against me, her breath warm beneath my collarbone. Fingers tracing the hem of my shirt. My hand had stilled on her hip.
"It’s you I’ve always wanted," I said.
Her smile hadn’t quite reached her mouth. But her thumb had pressed lightly against the hollow of my throat, as if to still something.
"If one day I’m not here," she whispered, "I hope you both find your way to each other."
The room had been dim. Her eyes are darker still.
The chill of the stone creeps up my spine. I don’t move. The moss clings to my trousers. My hand curls into the earth beside me.
They gave me a living daughter. And I returned a corpse. How could I face them? I couldn’t even attend her burial. Nor could I come visiting. I was too ashamed of my own weakness.
Now the other daughter is missing. And I sit here. With ghosts and lilies.
Because I don’t know where else to go.
We searched everywhere. Fausto’s estate was empty. I mean completely empty. The security system’s down, the cellar’s cleared, his staff’s gone. Not a single trace. It’s like he vanished on purpose.
We checked every port contact. Every airline manifest we had ties to. There’s no record of her. Of him. Of anyone connected
It was three days of searching that yielded nothing.
I rise, knees stiff. The joints protest but I ignore them. My hand brushes the side of the headstone once more, not with ceremony—just contact.
The car waits just outside the iron gate. Lorenzo is inside. When I get in, he shifts into gear, he glances over. “Do you want some coffee?”
****
The café is tucked between a laundromat and a shuttered bookstore on the south end of Fitzroy.
Lorenzo orders two long blacks. No milk. No sugar. He carries them to a small table near the window, nodding toward the seat across from him.
I take it. The ceramic is hot in my hands.
Lorenzo watches me for a moment, then looks down at his cup. “I never apologized to you.”
He doesn’t need to clarify.
“Giovanna,” he says. “If I’d done my job, she’d still be here.”
I found him slumped against the corridor wall, breath shallow. The liquor stank on him, but the empty glass I found later had a film on the rim. Now I know he had been drugged. Or at least—set up to fail.
Lorenzo drinks. His hands are steady, but his shoulders carry the tremor he won’t voice.
It wasn’t his fault.
It was Dante.
As if hearing it from my thoughts, Lorenzo leans back and exhales. “Dante’s in the hospital. His face is pretty messed up.” He lifts his hand and taps the bridge of his nose lightly. “Might need work done. Nose is gone. Jaw’s worse. He can’t speak, which is ironic. You cracked him good.”
My fingers tighten slightly around the cup. The steam fogs the rim.
“This means war, Cassian.”
I sip. Let the bitterness settle behind my teeth.
Lorenzo lowers his voice. “They want a meeting with you. The families. They don’t know it was you that put him in the hospital—yet. But it’s only a matter of time. And if they sense division?”
That’s how families survive. By eliminating rot. By purging weakness. They’ll call it justice.
Lorenzo sighs and adjusts in his chair. His eyes settle back on me. “I couldn’t protect Giovanna,” he says. “But I can do that for her sister.”
His mouth tugs to one side, like the words are heavier than he thought.
“I’m not a fan of whatever’s happening between you two,” he adds. “But what’s right is right. I’ll cover you for now. Handle the heat. But you need to keep your house in order. If there’s doubt in your ranks, they’ll smell it.”
He sips once more, then sets his cup down.
“Let’s find her.”
The phone on the table buzzes. Lorenzo checks the screen, eyes flicking left to right.
He lifts it to his ear. Listens. Then:
“We’re on our way.”
He ends the call.
Meets my eyes.
“Allegra found something.”
****
When we enter the house, Allegra is already waiting. She's standing at the edge of the great room, near the long table where reports and maps had been left in our failed attempts to triangulate a trail.
She doesn’t look up when we step in. Her attention is fixed on something in her hands—aged leather, worn at the edges.
A journal.
She turns toward us and holds it up with both hands. Her eyes are rimmed red. Not from tears, but from the absence of sleep.
She stops in front of me and looks down at the book. Her fingers stroke the spine once.
“I found this in her room. She kept it hidden. It’s her father’s. After he died, I helped her get it back.”
She hands it to me.
The leather is cracked beneath my palm. The binding creaks when I open it.
Inside—no inscription. No message. Just ink.
A map, hand-drawn. No names I recognize. Lines curve and split along a jagged coast, dotted with notes in symbols I don’t understand. Some locations are marked with stars. Others with slashes. Small town names—“Portsea,” “Rosebud,” “Queenscliff”—stand out, faded, surrounded by curls of script and lines that overlap like tangled thread.
Allegra steps closer and points to one mark—near the edge of the coast, just at the curl of a bay.
“This is a dock,” she says. “I don’t know what kind, but it’s isolated. I think it’s private. Not commercial.”
Her finger taps the spot again, firmer.
“Oreste knew this place. And Fausto is his brother. He’d know it too. If he was looking for somewhere quiet—somewhere off-grid—this would be it.”
The map doesn’t give an exact location, but it gives direction. The lines around the coast converge here. There’s a note in shorthand next to it. I don’t know what it says.
Lorenzo crosses his arms and looks over my shoulder.
“We’ve covered land,” he mutters. “Maybe it’s time we start with the sea.”
The map bends slightly in my grip as I press my thumb along the page.
I lower the journal.
Lorenzo sees the look and nods before I have to say anything.
“I’ll get the men ready.”
He turns for the door.
The knock comes before he reaches it.
Lorenzo pauses, hand on the handle. He opens it.
She stands in the doorway.
Elaria.
The hall behind her brightens with morning light, but it doesn’t reach her face.
Her skin is pale. Not the kind of pale that comes from winter. This is something deeper. She’s lost weight—noticeable in her wrists, in the shape of her collarbone. Her clothes hang loose, sleeves folded at the cuffs. Someone else’s shirt.
The side of her face is swollen. A bruise along her cheekbone purples beneath the skin, raw around the eye. Her lip is split at the corner.
She leans slightly to one side. Her legs don’t track evenly. The skin above her socks—just at the ankle—shows a blistered patch, the skin taut, reddened, shiny at the edges.
Her hands hang by her sides. They don’t tremble. But her knuckles are scraped, dried blood still clinging to the edge of one nail.
Her eyes lift. They meet mine. And she steps inside