Turo
Two days after you kill a man like Enzo, the city breathes differently. It’s subtle at first. Not in the streets. Not in the papers. Not in the legitimate places where people pretend this world doesn’t exist.
It’s in the pauses. The half-second longer a call rings before it’s answered. The way certain men stop dropping by “just to check in.” The way messages start arriving, wrapped in politeness so tight it squeaks.
Enzo was my oldest friend. He was also a weight on the scales. The moment he fell, the balance shifted.
And every bastard with a map and an appetite felt it.
My phone doesn’t stop. Capos report movement in the docks. A Rossi runner, spotted where he shouldn’t be. A lawyer, asking too many questions about “new custodial arrangements.” A banker, whose voice is too smooth, too eager, offering to “ensure liquidity” like he’s doing me a favor.
Predators circle when they smell blood. They don’t always care whose it is.
The war room looks the same. No windows. No softness. Screens lit with feeds and grids and numbers that never sleep. Men moving around me like muscle memory.
But I’m not the same.
There’s an absence in the air where Enzo’s presence used to be.
For thirty years, I could feel him even when he wasn’t in the room.
A quiet competence at my shoulder. A steady hand on the wheel.
The man who would lean in and whisper the angle I missed, the complication I’d overlooked, the knife coming from behind.
Now there’s only the echo. And the knowledge that he was steering me toward a cliff the whole time.
Matteo is at the table with a folder. Luca’s jaw is tight. Gianni’s eyes are narrowed at the main screen as if he can bully it into showing him what he wants.
“We’re getting chatter,” Matteo says. “Rossi chatter.”
“Of course we are,” Luca mutters. “They’ve been waiting for us to look weak for years.”
Gianni’s gaze cuts to me. “Do we look weak?”
No one does. Not to my men. Not in this room. But this isn’t about what we look like to the people who love us. This is about what we look like to the people who want to put a knife in our ribs and take our chair.
“We executed a traitor,” Matteo says carefully. “Word travels.”
“It travels in the way they want it to,” I reply.
I keep my hands flat on the table. Stillness. Authority. Inside, something tight hums beneath my skin. Not rage. Not panic.
A countdown. We don’t get to mourn in this life. Not properly. We bury grief under logistics and call it discipline.
Gianni clears his throat. “We received a formal request.”
He slides a paper across the table. Formal. Clean. Polite enough to pass for diplomacy if you didn’t know how to read the smell of it.
A sit-down. A “peace meeting.” Neutral territory. Territorial boundaries.
Mutual respect. The language of civilized men who would shoot you in the mouth the moment you leaned forward to shake their hand.
I read it once. Then again. For the pleasure of recognizing the pattern.
Rossi is moving openly now. They smell the internal chaos. They smell the missing man at my shoulder. They smell the fact that my heir has appeared like a miracle, and miracles always have a price.
Luca scoffs. “Peace negotiations.” He spits the words like they’re dirty. “They think we’re distracted.”
“They know we’re distracted,” Matteo corrects. “We are.”
The room shifts. A silence like a held breath. Because saying it aloud is dangerous. It makes it real.
Gianni leans forward. “Could be legitimate.”
Luca laughs, harsh and humorless. “Gianni.”
Gianni’s eyes flash. “If we treat every sit-down as an ambush, we look paranoid. Weak.”
Matteo’s jaw tightens. “If we treat an ambush like a sit-down, we die.”
My men look to me. They always do when the math starts getting bloody. This is the problem with power: everyone assumes you have certainty. No one asks how often you decide with incomplete information and call it leadership.
I tap the paper once. “They smell blood.”
Luca nods, vindicated.
“But,” I continue, “they only move like this if they think they can win something bigger than territory.”
Matteo’s eyes narrow. “You.”
“Or your son,” Gianni says.
The room goes colder. My jaw tightens, and I feel the familiar twitch behind my ear. The tell that used to get me beaten. It tries to rise. My fingers flex as if they want to go there.
I keep my hand down. Fear is a weapon. Grief is a weapon. Rage is a weapon. But so is restraint.
“They won’t touch him,” Luca says, too quick. Too sure.
I turn my gaze on Gianni. He swallows. Corrects himself without me speaking.
“They’ll try,” he admits.
Yes. They will. Because the moment Nico exists, he becomes leverage in every man’s head who thinks in angles. And because people have already tried. Enzo. Marco. Rivals. The list keeps growing.
I don’t let myself look at the family wing cameras.
Not here. Not with my men watching my face for cracks.
But I know, down the hall, Lucia is moving quietly through routine.
Nico is learning how to pretend loud noises are just drills.
How to line up his cars like order can protect him. He’s learning fear.
Unacceptable.
“Do we attend?” Matteo asks.
It’s the wrong question. The real question is: can we afford not to? If I refuse, Rossi gets to whisper that Mancini won’t sit because Mancini can’t. That the don is nervous. That the house is divided. That my friend’s death wasn’t “discipline”; it was fracture.
In our world, perception is a knife. And the moment you look like you’re bleeding, everyone wants to see how deep it goes.
I slide the paper back across the table. “We attend,” I say.
Luca exhales, satisfied. Matteo doesn’t look satisfied. He looks like a man calculating the angle of a bullet. Gianni nods once, slow.
“But we attend,” I add, “on our terms.”
That’s when the room shifts into motion. Men lean in. Maps are pulled up. Screens change.
We plan like it’s war.
Because it is.
* * *
The funeral home is Rossi’s suggestion. Neutral ground. Controlled environment. Public enough to imply “respect.” Private enough to hide bodies.
It’s almost funny. A place designed for death, hosting men who bring it with them.
“Full sweep,” I tell Matteo. “Twice.”
He nods. “We’ll run it like a venue.”
The word hits strange. Lucia’s word. Lucia’s lens. But Matteo says it without realizing what it means to me now. How my world has started absorbing hers in small ways.
“Limited personnel,” Gianni says. “You go in with a small team. Too many men looks like we expect trouble.”
“Too few looks like we don’t,” Luca counters.
I hold up a hand. Silence.
“Twenty,” I decide.
Luca looks satisfied again. Gianni looks uneasy. Matteo looks relieved. He prefers overkill to apology.
“Body armor,” Matteo adds.
I stare at him. “I said twenty,” I repeat.
He nods, chastened, and no one says the obvious: body armor is an admission. But it’s also survival. In this life, survival is the only apology you get.
I sign off on the plan with clipped instructions, then leave the war room.
The corridor outside smells like lemon polish and cold stone.
My house is designed for soft movement. For secrets.
The farther I get from the war room, the heavier the air feels.
Not because the house changes, but because I do.
At the family wing entrance, security shifts, nods to me. The door opens to quiet. Domestic quiet. The kind that would have disgusted my father. The kind Marco would use as a stage for cruelty.
The kind I didn’t understand I could want until it belonged to them.
Lucia looks up from where she’s standing near the dining room, a hand on Nico’s shoulder as he concentrates on lining up something.
Cars, crackers, napkins, it doesn’t matter.
Order is his refuge. Lucia’s eyes meet mine instantly, sharp and searching.
She reads me like a book. It’s both unsettling and, God help me, comforting.
“Meeting?” she asks.
I nod once. Nico’s head lifts at the sound of our voices. He’s wearing a little scowl like concentration is serious business. His fingers hover near his ear. He touches it. Quick. Anxious.
“Papa,” he says. “You go somewhere?”
The word still hits me like a bullet. Papa. My throat works once. I move closer, keeping my steps calm, controlled. I lower myself slightly so I’m not towering over him. I’m learning.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I have to go talk to some men.”
His brows knit. “Bad men?”
Lucia’s hand tightens on his shoulder a little. She doesn’t correct him. She doesn’t lie too hard. She’s learned, like I have, that children can smell bullshit better than adults.
“Some of them,” I admit.
Nico looks at me, then at Lucia. He reads faces like he’s trying to map danger before it moves. It makes something inside me go sharp with anger. Not at him. At the world that’s teaching him this.
“How long?” Nico asks.
I glance at Lucia. Her mouth is neutral, but her eyes are not. There’s fear there, contained. Not for herself. For Nico. For what happens if I don’t come back.
I return my gaze to my son. “I’ll be back,” I say.
Nico’s fingers go to his ear again. “Promise?”
The word tastes like a vow carved into my ribs. I kneel fully this time. Look him in the eye.
“Promise,” I say.
His little shoulders loosen a fraction, like the promise becomes a weight he can hand to me so he doesn’t have to carry it alone. He leans forward suddenly, arms wrapping around my neck with surprising strength for someone so small. His face presses into the side of my throat.
My body freezes for a heartbeat. Not because I don’t want his embrace. Because I do. Too much.
My hand hovers, then settles on his back. Lucia watches me. I feel it. I don’t look away. I don’t soften. I just let her see.
Nico holds on longer than usual. He can feel the tension. Children always can.
“Come back,” he whispers, voice muffled against my skin.
My throat tightens. “I will,” I say into his hair. “I always come back.”
It’s not true. Not in this world.
But it’s what he needs to hear.
And I will bleed to make it true.