Chapter 35 Matteo
MATTEO
The phone rings before dawn, a sound too sharp, too deliberate to belong to anything good.
I haven’t slept in days. Not in any way that matters.
I stayed at the hospital with Daniele until the nurses began giving us the looks that meant there was nothing left to do but wait, pacing antiseptic corridors while machines did the work my body could not, keeping my wife alive by inches and numbers on a screen.
I only left when Daniele finally folded into a chair, exhaustion breaking through his stubbornness, and I understood that someone had to stay standing.
I told myself I would go home, scrub the smell of disinfectant from my skin, change my clothes, close my eyes for an hour at most, then come straight back to her.
I should never have left.
I reach for the phone without thinking, already braced for impact, because no call at this hour comes without teeth.
“Yeah,” I answer. My voice sounds like it doesn’t belong to me.
Valerio doesn’t speak.
That is the first fracture. He is not a man who wastes silence. Every pause from him is intentional, weighed, chosen. When he holds back, it is because what follows will not fit easily into words.
Then he says my name.
“Matteo.”
The air locks in my chest.
“What happened?” I ask.
There is a sound on the other end. Not quite a breath. More like the moment before one breaks.
“It’s Beatrice.”
The room narrows. “What about her?”
I already know. Death moves the same way every time. Quiet. Relentless. You feel it before it arrives.
“She’s gone,” he says. “Cardiac arrest.”
The world drops out from under me.
For a second there is nothing. No walls. No floor. Just the echo of those words crashing through my body until they lodge somewhere deep and unmovable.
“No.” The sound tears out of me. “No. That’s not possible.”
I’m shaking my head even though he can’t see me. “No, Valerio. The doctor said she was stabilizing. I paid for the best specialists. I made sure of it. You told me she was out of danger.”
Silence.
I’m already moving, keys clenched in my fist, blood roaring in my ears. “I’m coming. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Matteo,” Valerio says, and this time there is no restraint left in his voice. “Wait.”
Something in it stops me cold. Not authority. Not command. Something heavier. Something final.
“There’s more.”
The floor tilts.
“Her father signed the cremation order.”
The words land without sound, without movement, like a bullet that doesn’t hurt until you realize where it struck.
“I’m sorry,” Valerio says. “You don’t get to say goodbye.”
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t blunt the impact. Nothing does. The pain moves inward, carving, stripping me down to something raw and hollow.
“No,” I say, because denial is the only thing keeping me upright. “No. I’ll stop it. I’ll get there. I’ll—”
“It’s done,” he cuts in. “The hospital pushed it through immediately.”
“You’re lying,” I say, the word low and vicious. “Her father can’t do that.”
“I wish I was,” Valerio replies. “I stepped out for minutes. I had to meet the cardiologist you flew in. When I came back, she was gone. There was nothing left to stop.”
I press my hand to the wall to keep from collapsing.
Minutes.
That is all it took to erase her from the world. No body. No proof she ever lay there breathing under those lights.
I stand in the quiet, the phone heavy in my hand, while something inside me fractures beyond repair. The silence swells until it roars, my pulse hammering hard enough to hurt, and I know with a terrible clarity that this moment has just divided my life into before and after.
And nothing will ever be whole again.
No goodbye.
No last touch.
Just fire and ash.
Grief claws up my throat, but beneath it something darker coils tight and deliberate. Something old. Something I buried the day I brought her into my home and promised her safety.
This was no accident.
No body means no autopsy. No autopsy means no answers. Just a file. A cause of death typed neatly onto paper that can be forged as easily as it can be stamped.
Someone wanted her silenced.
Someone orchestrated her final moments and wiped the evidence clean.
And now there is nothing left to prove it.
Valerio speaks carefully, like every word is a blade he doesn’t want to turn the wrong way. “The hospital filed it as natural causes. Cardiac arrest. Complications after surgery. Everything is clean on paper.”
“Clean papers don’t allow people to cremate a woman within hours.”
Valerio exhales slowly. “Her father signed the authorization.”
“And the hospital rushed it,” I say, voice low, already certain. “They didn’t wait. They didn’t question it. They burned her before anyone could ask the wrong questions.”
“There’s no autopsy,” Valerio confirms. “No body. Just a file and a death certificate.”
“Then the file is a lie,” I say.
Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy.
“There’s a liaison,” Valerio continues. “Carlo Venturi. Mid-level. Small man. Big reach. He processed everything. Death certificate. Cremation order. Pushed it through like it was urgent.”
My mouth curves, slow and cold. “Because it was.”
Valerio hesitates. “Venturi has connections. Quiet ones. He’s been seen at Giacomo’s tables.”
That does it.
Something shifts in me, not anger but ownership, the kind that settles deep and deadly. “They didn’t just take her from me,” I says softly. “They erased her.”
Valerio says carefully, “We don’t have proof.”
My voice drops, steady and lethal. “I don’t need proof. I need names.”
I’m already done with the conversation. “And I just got one.”
By mid-afternoon, I walk into La Grana.
Broad daylight. Full house. Neutral ground where powerful men pretend they are civilized.
The room goes quiet the moment I step inside.
Chairs still. Conversations die mid-sentence. Every head turns. They don’t need to ask why I’m here. They can see it in my face. Rage this contained doesn’t belong to anything ordinary.
Carlo Venturi sits at the back.
When our eyes meet, the blood drains from his face so fast it’s almost impressive. His hand twitches toward the table as if it might steady him.
“I didn’t—”
“You did.”
My voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to.
I gesture once. “Stand.”
He does, too quickly, knocking his chair back. The sound echoes through the room. He’s already sweating. Already breaking.
“I—I was just doing my job,” he stammers. “The paperwork, the signatures, I didn’t know—”
I don’t let him finish.
I draw my gun and fire.
The sound cracks through the restaurant, sharp and final. Carlo screams as the bullet tears through his kneecap and he collapses in a heap, hands clawing at the marble floor as blood spreads beneath him.
No one moves.
No one breathes.
I cross the room, grip his collar, and drag him to the center where everyone can see him. His screams turn wet and incoherent as I force him onto his knees, his weight dead in my hands.
“She was still warm when you erased her,” I say quietly. “You had no right.”
I pull the knife from my jacket. Slender. Silver. The one Beatrice gave me years ago, when she still believed I could leave this life behind.
I carve the letter deep into his face, slow and precise, from cheek to jaw. He howls until his voice breaks, until there is nothing left but breath and terror. The mark bleeds freely, impossible to hide, impossible to forget.
I lean in and whisper something meant only for him.
Something he will carry longer than the pain.
Then I let him fall.
I turn and walk out without rushing, without looking back, untouched by the chaos behind me. Carlo is alive. That is intentional.
A warning breathes louder than a corpse ever could.
The city notices.
By nightfall, everyone knows. The syndicates. The brokers. The men who thought I had softened, who thought grief would make me careless instead of lethal. Conversations stop when my name surfaces. Allies lower their voices. Enemies disappear before dawn.
Some call it vengeance. Others call it a message.
They’re both wrong.
It’s a correction.
I loved her. I lost her.
And grief has stripped me down to the most dangerous thing I have ever been.
You can survive a man’s hatred.
You do not survive his grief.
I don’t knock.
The door to her father’s apartment gives under my hand, the lock rattling as I push inside, bringing the cold with me.
My blood is still hot, still wired from what I did hours ago, my hands carrying the faint stink of gunpowder and antiseptic that no amount of scrubbing seems to remove.
I haven’t finished peeling this apart. I’m only just beginning, and I want answers while the city is still shaking.
He stands in the hallway like a man already half gone. Pale. Unsteady. His eyes struggle to focus when he sees me, like he’s trying to place a nightmare he hasn’t slept off yet.
I don’t give him time.
“You signed the cremation order,” I say. “You didn’t even wait for me to get there.”
The words hit him wrong. I see it immediately. His eyes widen, not in guilt but confusion.
“What?” he says. “No. I didn’t sign anything like that. They gave me papers, yes, but I thought they were hospital forms. I didn’t know.”
I step closer. The space between us disappears.
“You’re telling me you signed away your own daughter’s body without reading what they put in front of you.”
His breath stutters. His voice cracks open. “She was dead,” he says, and the word still sounds foreign in his mouth. “She was dead and I wasn’t thinking. The doctor said it was routine. Policy. They rushed me. Told me it had to be done immediately. Something about health protocols. Safety.”
He shakes his head, hands trembling. “They kept talking. I just wanted it to stop.”
I stop moving.
Something in him doesn’t fit the shape of a liar. The confusion is too real. The devastation too unguarded. This man didn’t sell his daughter out. He was her last soft target.
Understanding settles in slow and poisonous.
They didn’t need betrayal.
They needed a signature.
“They used you,” I say, my voice colder now, heavier. “You were just another stamp. Another pawn to move the paperwork along.”
His knees give out. He collapses into a chair like his body can no longer pretend to hold itself together.
“She was all I had left,” he whispers.
The room goes quiet.
I say nothing.
The man I was ends here.