Turo
I last slept in fragments. Twenty minutes here. Forty there. The kind of rest that doesn’t rebuild anything, only pauses the collapse long enough to keep walking.
The house is quiet when I wake. Too quiet. Mancini quiet. Marble and money and men trained to move like shadows so the don never has to hear them exist.
I stare at the ceiling and wait for the familiar weight to settle back onto my chest.
It does.
Marco is in rehab.
Enzo calls it structure, the same way my father used to call bruises discipline. It should have brought me relief. A small stretch of stability. Less chaos for the council to circle like sharks.
Instead, the absence is louder. Because it is not my son I cannot stop thinking about.
It’s still her.
I sit up. The place behind my ear itches. My hand rises before I remember myself, and I catch it halfway. Force my fingers back down to the sheets.
Stillness, I tell myself. Control.
This isn’t love. It isn’t even logic. It’s hunger, shaped like conscience. Obsession, wearing a suit and pretending it’s concern.
I get out of bed and dress like I’m going to war.
Not because the day requires it.
Because I do.
* * *
The investigator’s office is in a building that smells like old paper and old secrets. No signs on the door. No receptionist. No men with guns posted outside. Discretion doesn’t announce itself. It simply exists and expects you to understand.
He’s waiting when I arrive. Mid-fifties. Clean suit. Hands that have never fired a gun but have ordered plenty of violence by phone. Eyes that don’t linger on anything long enough to be accused of staring.
He doesn’t greet me like a client. He nods like we both know why I’m here, and he won’t waste breath pretending it’s anything else.
“Mr. Mancini.”
I don’t correct him. If he has my name, he has the rest of me.
“I need to find someone,” I say, and his pen moves. “A woman.”
The pen pauses. He looks up. Not curious. Not surprised. Just… recalibrating.
I feel a flicker of shame, sharp and hot, and it irritates me more than my desire does. Because shame means I still think I’m above this.
I’m not.
“She was on a flight,” I add. “Three weeks ago.”
He waits. Letting silence do what it does best. Pressure.
I give him the flight number. The date. The city. The time. The minimal truth.
I don’t give him my reason.
I don’t say I can’t stop thinking about her.
I don’t say she looked at me like my hands could be safe.
I don’t say I let her leave, and it has haunted me every morning since.
He taps his pen once. “You have a name?”
“No.”
A pause. Another small recalculation.
“She paid cash,” I say, because I remember the way she moved. Like leaving a paper trail was a sin.
His mouth tightens faintly. “Cash is more work. Not impossible.”
“I don’t want impossible,” I say. “I want quiet.”
He nods. “Then I’ll be quiet.”
I slide a card across his desk. Numbers, access, permission. A door opened in my own system.
His eyes flick to it. “This crosses a line.”
It isn’t judgment. It’s confirmation.
I meet his gaze. “Yes.”
He watches me for one long second, then picks up the card.
“As you wish.”
* * *
The manifest takes money. The rest takes time.
Not much. That’s the grotesque part of it.
People think disappearing is a cliff you jump from and vanish into the fog.
They don’t understand the world is a grid.
Airports. Cameras. Names on receipts. Phone pings.
Credit cards. Transit systems. A thousand small fingerprints you never notice until someone chooses to read them.
I get the call two days later. I’m in my study when my phone buzzes. The room smells like leather and old whiskey and the paper rot of history. My father’s desk is still here. I kept it because power is a museum and we’re all trapped curators.
The investigator’s voice is smooth, contained. “I have three candidates,” he says.
My pulse tightens. A slow, deliberate fist around something vital. “Talk.”
“She traveled alone. One way. Minimal luggage.” A pause. “Cash purchase narrows it. Cash is rare now.”
I don’t breathe.
“Three women matched the general profile and movement patterns,” he continues. “Two don’t fit the timeline after arrival. One does.”
My hand curls around the phone. “Give me the address.”
He doesn’t immediately. I hear the shift in his breath. “You sure?”
I should say no. I should stop here. I should put the phone down and live with the ache like a man with a spine.
I don’t.
“Yes.”
He gives it to me. A building in my own city. I write the address on the back of an envelope with a pen that shakes so slightly, it infuriates me.
I’m not a boy. I’m not a romantic. I’m not a man who loses control because a woman looked at him like he could be good.
And yet, my body moves like it belongs to something smaller than legacy. Something stupidly human.
I stand. I don’t call a driver. I don’t take security.
This isn’t a Mancini matter.
This is mine.
* * *
The city is gray with winter light when I arrive. Traffic flows. People walk. Life continues in a thousand directions that have nothing to do with my hunger.
Her building is smaller than I imagined. Brick. Cheap glass. A security door with a keypad and a buzzing intercom system that looks like it breaks often. A place where nobody expects to be hunted.
My car idles at the curb. I stare at the entrance for a moment too long. My hand goes to the place behind my ear. I stop myself, too late, then drop it like it was burned.
I get out. Cold air hits my lungs. I cross the sidewalk.
Each step feels like I’m walking toward the edge of a decision that will change the shape of me.
The door is close now. The intercom panel sits at shoulder height, metallic buttons worn down by hundreds of strangers asking for access they don’t deserve.
I can hear my own breathing. Too loud. I lift my hand. Hover it over the buzzer.
One press. That’s all it would take. One press, and someone inside would answer.
And I could say her name. And I could watch the door unlock. And I could step into the hallway like I belong there, because men like me always look like we belong.
My fingers flex. The smallest tremor.
And the memory hits like a blade to the ribs.
My father, at my mother’s sister’s house. His hand on her arm. Not tight enough to bruise where people could see. His voice low, polite, lethal.
You don’t embarrass me like this.
My mother, crying soundlessly as he dragged her toward the car.
The way the neighborhood watched and did nothing, because power is a force field and everyone wants to pretend it’s not their problem.
The slam of the door when we got home. The click of the lock. The muffled sound of her begging through the wall like she was praying for air.
My stomach turns. My hand stays frozen over the buzzer. Because I understand something now with sickening clarity. If I press this button, I don’t become the man who found her. I become the man who took her.
Even if my voice is gentle. Even if my eyes are kind. Even if I tell myself it’s for her safety.
A cage doesn’t stop being a cage just because it’s lined with silk.
She left without giving me her name. She refused my card. She chose distance with her whole body and called it survival. She made that choice clearly. Deliberately. Like a line drawn in steel.
And here I am, about to step over it because my chest aches.
My fingers lower. Slowly. Like I’m forcing them down through water. I exhale. It shakes on the way out.
I step back from the door. The cold hits me again, sharper this time. I turn. Walk away.
I don’t look back.
Because if I look back, I might convince myself that I’m weak.
I sit in my car with both hands on the wheel, staring at nothing. My jaw clenches hard enough to hurt. I take my phone out. Call the investigator.
He answers immediately, like he’s been waiting. “Mr. Mancini.”
“Stop,” I say.
A pause.
“Stop searching,” I repeat. “Delete everything.”
His voice lowers. “You want me to erase the file?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not standard practice.”
“I don’t care what’s standard.”
Silence. Then, very quietly, “Understood.”
“Bill me,” I add, because money is the only language men like him trust. “I don’t want details. I don’t want backups. I don’t want copies sitting in some drawer I don’t control.”
“I’ll handle it,” he says.
I end the call. My hand rises to my ear, and this time I let it. Let my fingers press that stupid pulse point like it can physically hold me together.
I sit there for another full minute, letting the decision settle. It tastes like loss. It tastes like restraint. It tastes like the only kind of love I’m capable of right now, the kind that doesn’t take.
* * *
Back at the estate, everything is too polished. Too controlled. The house is a display of power that pretends it isn’t a prison.
I go straight to my study. Close the door. I pour whiskey. I don’t drink it. The glass sweats on the desk. The amber liquid catches the light like a small flame.
I stare at it for a long time. Then I pick it up. And I throw it against the fireplace stone.
It shatters. The sound is violent. The only outward sign of cost I allow myself. Whiskey splashes dark across the hearth like blood.
I stand there breathing, shoulders tense, hands empty, pulse uneven. My fingers go behind my ear again. I don’t stop them. I don’t correct the habit. I don’t punish myself for needing something. I stare at the mess and feel my throat tighten until it burns.
I tell myself this was the right choice. That she deserves freedom more than I deserve relief. That my wanting doesn’t give me the right to intrude. That a man who truly understands power knows when not to use it.
I tell myself all of it.
And I believe it. That’s the worst part.
I believe it, and I still feel like something inside me is bleeding.