18. Giovanni
— ? —
Giovanni
I was already awake. Had been awake since I’d walked back across the square from the theater, my body still buzzing with the memory of Kylie in my arms, my mind already cataloging all the ways the evening could be used against me.
In our world, pleasure was leverage. Happiness was vulnerability. And whatever had happened on that balcony, whatever it meant, whatever it might become, was exactly the kind of thing that could get us both killed.
“Boss.” Dante’s voice was tight. “We have a situation.”
I listened.
Then I made calls.
Declan Jordan answered on the fourth ring.
“Ferraro.” His voice was careful. Neutral. The tone of a man who hadn’t decided yet whether he was talking to an ally or an enemy. “I wondered when you’d call.”
“She came to you.”
“She came to a bar we own. Started talking to people who talk to other people.” A pause. “You know how it works.”
I did know. The same way I knew that Bianca Russo had chosen the Irish specifically because they had the most reason to want me dead. Just as surely, I knew that whatever story she was telling, whatever version of events she’d crafted, would be designed to do maximum damage.
“What’s she saying?”
“That depends.” Declan’s voice shifted. Harder now. Less neutral. “On whether you want the official version or the real one.”
“The real one.”
“She says your father killed Patrick. Had him killed, anyway - contracted it out to someone who owed Salvatore favors. She says you knew. For three years, maybe more. Married my niece anyway, kept her in the dark about it all.” Another pause.
“She says you’re not the reformer you’re pretending to be.
That you’re exactly what Salvatore raised you to become. ”
The words landed like blows.
Not because they were lies.
Because they weren’t.
“She’s right,” I said. “About most of it.”
Silence on the line.
“My father ordered the hit on Patrick Jordan.” I kept it toneless. Flat. The voice of a man delivering intelligence, not confessing sins. “I found out a year after my marriage. I didn’t tell Kylie because I convinced myself I was protecting her. I was wrong. About all of it.”
“And now?”
“Now she knows everything. The file, the evidence, all of it. She left me because of it. She was right to leave.”
More silence.
Then Declan made a sound that might have been a laugh.
“You’re either the best liar I’ve ever met,” he said, “or you’re actually telling the truth. I can’t tell which is more dangerous.”
“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to give me time to deal with Bianca before she starts a war that gets people killed.”
“People like my niece, you mean.”
“Yes.”
The silence stretched.
“You’ve got a week,” Declan said finally. “After that, I can’t control what the other families decide. The old grudges run deep, Ferraro. Your father spent decades making enemies on both sides of the Irish line. If Bianca keeps talking-”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” His voice sharpened. “Because here’s what I understand: my niece has a baby. My brother’s grandson. And if your mess puts either of them in danger-”
“It won’t.”
“Make sure of that.” The line went dead.
***
The text arrived at noon.
Blocked number. Unknown sender. A photograph of the Marlowe Theater taken from the square, the marquee bright against the night sky.
She was always temporary. Ask her how fireproof her little project is.
I stared at the message.
Then I made more calls.
***
“Perimeter doubled,” Dante confirmed. “We’ve got men on every approach. A car on the street, two in the square, one inside the theater at night.”
“Not enough.” Nothing about it was, not with a match already lit somewhere north of here.
“Giovanni-”
“Put someone inside. Around the clock. I don’t care what it costs.”
“The architect - Kylie - she’s not going to like that.” Dante said it carefully, the way he said everything he expected to get thrown back at him.
“I’ll handle Kylie.”
A pause. Then, carefully: “Boss, are you sure you want to be the one who tells her? After everything-”
“I’m not hiding things from her again.” There was more edge in it than I meant. “That’s over. Whatever happens next, she knows everything. No protective editing. No decisions made for her. She gets the truth, and she decides what to do with it.”
The truth. After three years of lies by omission, after a marriage built on secrets I’d told myself were necessary, the truth felt like the most dangerous weapon I could offer.
I’d learned the hard way that it was the only one worth carrying.
***
She listened.
I told her everything. The threat, the text, Bianca’s play with the Irish, Declan’s warning. Sat in her living room with Nico sleeping in the next room and laid out every piece of information I had, holding nothing back.
Her face didn’t change while I talked. That careful blankness she’d learned somewhere in the last year, the one that made her impossible to read, that reminded me uncomfortably of myself.
“She’s trying to get you killed,” Kylie said when I finished. “By starting a war with my family.”
“Yes.” I didn’t soften it. She’d asked for no more protective editing, and I meant to give her exactly that.
“Using my father’s murder as the match.”
“Yes.”
“And you think she’ll go after the theater if the Irish don’t move fast enough.”
“I think she’ll go after whatever hurts me most.” I met her eyes. “And she knows what that is.”
Kylie was quiet.
Then she stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the square where I’d set up my life across from her theater and laid siege to my own heart.
“What are you asking for?”
“I want to be inside. At night. Between the perimeter and wherever you and Nico are sleeping.” I stayed seated. Kept my voice level. “I’m asking for the inside line, Kylie. I’m asking you to let me be the last thing between you and anyone who tries to get through.”
“You want to sleep on my couch.”
“I want to protect my family.”
The word just sat there.
She turned to look at me. Her expression changed, not softening, exactly, but edging toward it.
“The couch has a broken spring,” she said. “I’ve asked the landlord three times to fix it.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to try to fix it, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to want to.” I stood up. Crossed to where she was standing by the window. “I’ll resist. If you want me to resist.”
“I want you to resist.” She held my gaze. “To sleep on that broken spring and feel it digging into your back and remember that you’re here on my terms. Not yours.”
“Understood.”
“And I want the gun locked in a safe while Nico’s in the house. Not just in your truck - in a safe, where he can’t possibly-”
“Done.” I didn’t hesitate. “I’ll have one delivered by tonight.”
She studied me.
“For Nico,” she said finally. “This is for Nico.”
“For Nico,” I echoed, and meant it.
We both knew it wasn’t only for Nico.
We both pretended anyway.
***
The couch was exactly as bad as she’d promised.
I lay awake at 2 a.m., feeling the broken spring dig into my lower back, listening to the sounds of the house settling around me. The hum of the refrigerator. The creak of old floorboards. The soft, distant breathing of my son in the next room.
I’d slept in worse places. War zones, hideouts, the back seats of cars during operations that went sideways. I’d trained myself to sleep anywhere, anytime, for exactly as long as I needed and not a second more.
But this was different.
This was her house. Her couch. Her rules.
And lying here in the dark, with a gun in the safe by the door and threats circling outside, I understood something I’d been too stupid to see for six years:
This was the closest to home I’d ever been.
At 3 a.m., I got up.
The gun needed cleaning. I’d done it yesterday, but the ritual helped, the methodical disassembly, the careful attention to each component, the familiar weight of the pieces in my hands. I spread a cloth on the kitchen table and worked by the light of a single lamp, keeping my movements quiet.
The letter I’d started in my head during the evening, the one I’d write to Kylie and never send, took shape on paper. I kept a pad in my pocket now, Dr. Okafor’s suggestion made habit. Say the true thing within a day of feeling it. Even if you only say it to paper.
I’m terrified, I wrote. Not of the threat. I know how to handle threats. I’m terrified of what happens after. Of getting this right and still losing you. Of being the man you need and finding out it’s not enough.
I’m terrified of the moment you realize I’m not doing this to earn you back. I’m doing it because this is who I am now. Who I want to be. And if you never take me back, if we never become anything more than co-parents and careful neighbors, I’ll still be here. Still showing up. Still trying.
I’m terrified that’s not enough.
I’m terrified that it is.
I heard her on the stairs before I saw her.
Soft footsteps. The whisper of fabric. The particular rhythm of someone trying not to wake a sleeping house.
I looked up.
Kylie stood on the bottom step in an old t-shirt and sleep shorts, her hair loose around her shoulders, a glass of water in her hand.
She was looking at me, at the gun pieces spread across her kitchen table, at the letter I was writing, at the man who was supposed to be sleeping on her broken couch.
At my hands. These hands, the ones that had learned the swaddle tutorial, that had traced patterns on her skin in the theater, and were now wrapped around the barrel of a weapon designed to kill.
Neither of us said anything.
Neither of us pretended it was anything other than what it was.