27. Enzo
ENZO
E arly next morning, I shut the bedroom door behind me with a quiet finality, and I leave without turning back.
Aria is still asleep, tangled in sheets that hold the warmth of everything we did not say. I do not kiss her forehead or trace her collarbone with my fingertips. I do not whisper a promise into her skin. I have no right to make one. Not until this is finished.
Shadows remain wrapped around the estate when I pass through the gates, the last remnants of moonlight caught in the wrought iron. A car waits at the bottom of the drive, engine idling, headlights dimmed.
The driver says nothing. He knows better. We do not speak during the ride. The world outside the window is quiet, a still-life of olive groves and early mist, the kind of silence that feels like a held breath before a storm. My phone stays in my pocket.
Luca has given me the location, the contact, the target.
Everything else is instinct.
Notes of caffeine and perfume linger all over the airport. It's too bright in some places, too dim in others. Security waves me through a side gate, no pat-down, no passport.
The Salvatore seal does not ask. It commands.
A woman in a dark skirt hands me a boarding slip with no name on it. She looks at me once, her eyes sharp behind lashes that are too long, and then she disappears into the crowd like she was never there.
The jet waits at the end of the private tarmac, a sleek black thing with windows like closed eyes. The pilot nods when he sees me, as if I've come back from the dead instead of heading toward another death.
I sink into the expensive stillness that only money knows how to buy, buckling myself into the leather seat. I carry nothing that matters.
This mission mandates light travel, so I have brought with me only one change of clothes. Two weapons. And a picture of my wife and son to remind me of what lies at the end of this.
We lift off smoothly, but halfway through the flight, turbulence catches us, not harsh enough to knock my drink over, but potent enough that the seatbelt signs flash back on.
I don't mind it.
The sky was never meant to be gentle.
I rest my head back and close my eyes, letting the shuddering motion lull me into that strange space between sleep and readiness, where the body rests and the mind sharpens.
Corsica appears beneath us like an old photograph, sun-washed and jagged.
From the sky, the island is a fist of stone rising from blue.
Rocky cliffs dive into waves that do not break so much as hiss.
The pilot loops once before descending, and I catch a glimpse of the coastline—terracotta roofs, narrow roads carved into hillsides, vineyards etched into the land like scripture.
It is beautiful. Wild. The kind of place where history never dies, it just burrows deeper into the stone.
We land on a private airstrip ten kilometers from Bastia, near the eastern shoreline.
The car is waiting, matte black and low to the ground.
No insignia, but I recognize the driver by the tattoo on his hand, a faint trace of the Salvatore cross inked into his knuckles.
He does not open the door for me. He knows I don't need him to.
The drive winds through the countryside. Cypress trees lean against the hills like sentinels. Towns blur past, quiet and sleepy, all shuttered cafés and worn statues of men who once thought they ruled the world.
Corsica wears its silence differently than Italy.
Less like a secret, more like a dare. The driver says nothing, only glances at me once through the rearview mirror, his expression unreadable.
We arrive an hour later at the edge of a coastal cliff, where a hotel rises from the rock like it belongs there. It is discreet, three stories high, all clean stone and dark glass.
The sign is in French, elegant and plain, nothing about it screams luxury, but everything about it is curated for privacy. A woman greets me at the reception desk with a key already in hand, no forms, no smile. Just a nod and a whispered, "Room 305."
The room is what I expect. Minimalist. Soft linens, stone floors, a balcony that opens to the sea.
There is a minibar I will not touch, a closet I will not use, a shower that smells faintly of lavender.
I stand for a moment in the middle of it all, breathing in the silence, letting it press into me like armor. I do not unpack. I do not sit.
Instead, I walk to the balcony, open the doors, and let the salt air find me. Below, waves gnaw at the cliff. Above, the sky is the kind of pale blue that makes you think of innocence, of beginnings. But there is no innocence in Corsica. Not for me.
The next morning, I head to a cafe. I've already sent word, and know that I will not be drinking coffee alone.
The cafe sits tucked beneath the overhang of an aging civic building on the southern edge of Ajaccio, all copper chairs and imported ash wood tables, the kind of place that politicians pretend to frequent for the charm, but only ever show up to when they need something cleaned, hidden, or erased.
I sit with my back to the wall, the jacket of my suit open, one leg crossed over the other, watching the man I came for fidget across from me like a schoolboy caught cheating.
Marcello Fontane sits across from me, former chief of port regulation, current liaison to the Corsican infrastructure board, and a man with enough offshore accounts to keep five mistresses and two families fed in Paris.
I don't look at his hands. I already know they're sweating.
I don't look at the menu either. I didn't come to eat.
"You're nervous," I say, finally lifting my gaze from the curved edge of the sugar spoon beside my espresso. "That's a problem."
He tries to laugh, but it gets stuck in his throat and comes out like a cough. "I'm not nervous, Enzo. Just surprised. You don't usually operate off-continent."
I smile, but there's no warmth in it. "Luca doesn't usually send me unless something's worth finishing."
His face flattens. I see the moment the memory of what the Salvatores do to traitors hits him full in the chest. I don't have to raise my voice. I never do.
"Cesare Gotti," I say quietly.
He flinches like I struck him.
"I don't know anything," he says, too quickly.
"No," I agree, leaning forward just enough that he can smell the steel in my calm, "you don't want to know anything. There's a difference."
Marcello glances around the café. The few patrons at the other tables are absorbed in their croissants and low conversation.
None of them are watching us.
But one is listening.
I made sure of that.
A man in a gray scarf, seated at the far window, whose job is to report directly to me if Marcello even breathes in the wrong direction once I leave.
I set the espresso cup down with a soft click.
"You owe Luca," I remind him. "Your position. Your son's hospital bill last year. Your wife's boutique that no one shops at but still pulls quarterly earnings like a downtown Paris storefront. None of that happens without the Salvatores. And Luca has been very patient."
Marcello swallows hard. "If I talk, I lose everything."
"If you don't," I say, letting my tone darken by degrees, "you lose more than that."
He lowers his voice. "Cesare doesn't stay in one place. He uses proxies, switch points, private estates leased under shell names."
"I know that," I say. "I'm asking what you know."
His eyes dart down to the table, then back up to me. "He has a safehouse in the hills above Capo di Muro. Old monastery grounds. Renovated. It isn't public. No permits filed. But food deliveries go there every two days. Imported wine, fish, marble fruits. Always the same time."
"And the men?"
Marcello hesitates.
"How many?"
"Seven or eight posted full-time. At least two snipers.
Two more roam. No women. No children. He likes quiet.
Spends most of his time in the gardens or reading near the southern windows, and smokes a cigar on the southern wall every evening, precisely at sunset.
He doesn't drive. Has a man for that. Goes down to the marina once a week, private boat. "
I absorb it all without blinking. The shape of the place begins to form in my mind.
High windows. Long sightlines. No innocent lives in the crossfire.
Cesare Gotti is not hiding in a slum or a fortress.
He is cloaking himself in luxury. That means he's confident, which is good for me.
Confident men make far more mistakes than careful ones.
Marcello shifts again. I rise, brushing the folds of my coat straight with one practiced motion. "That will be all."
He reaches for his coffee, but his hand is shaking too much to grip the handle. I walk out of the café into the bright Corsican morning, the sky stretched wide and gold over the bay, the gulls crying in the distance like something from a painting. I head back to my hotel.