Chapter 27 Enrico
ENRICO
It had only been two days since the kidnapping, but I’d doubled the perimeter.
Mia slept late the first morning, restless the next.
Today she drifted through the house barefoot, wearing one of my shirts.
The bruises on her skin were fading to yellow, reminders of hands that would never touch her again.
She lingered near the windows, staring out as if the world might owe her an explanation.
She’d be furious if she knew I’d stood in the doorway both nights.
Counting each rise and fall of her chest. Making sure she was still here. Still mine.
The fact that another man touched her… left marks on her…
because they were trying to get to me and her father, well it killed me.
But I’d get my revenge on anyone connected.
Yet, we still hadn’t gotten an answer on who was behind the kidnapping.
The guys at the docks were just lackeys.
I needed the boss. I promised with every ounce of my being that I’d make him bow before me before I slit his throat and watched him bleed out.
Marco kept coming by with updates. He had barely slept since the kidnapping, trying to get answers.
The first day he brought photos, phone logs, and a map of the routes.
The second day, he brought burner phones and fake names.
When he left, I sat staring at the folder he’d given me, thumb tracing its edge.
Fifteen years ago, my father and I would’ve started a war before the ink dried. And that thought made me sick.
When I was a teenager, my father took me to a dockyard and taught a man about power.
The man had stolen. My father offered him a choice—his life or his voice.
He chose wrong. Afterward, my father poured me a drink.
“If you love something,” he said, “make sure it fears losing you. That’s the only kind of love a ruler can afford. ”
I didn’t understand then. I do now. But understanding doesn’t make it right. Because Mia studied me and didn’t flinch. She didn’t fear me. She should—but she didn’t. And I think that what saved me.
A soft knock pulled me from my thoughts. “Come in.”
Mia stepped inside wearing one of my shirts again, her hair damp from a shower. The sight of her bruises—the faint line of stitches on her shoulder—tightened something in my chest. She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, studying me.
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I did. Got bored.” She crossed to the window, staring at the rain. Her reflection in the glass—bare legs and tousled hair.
“How do you feel?”
“Scared.” A pause. “And scared that if I tell you that, you’ll make it worse.”
I stood. “I will make it worse.”
She turned, eyes sharp. “Because you have to?”
“Because they touched you,” I said. “Because they touched what’s mine.”
Her jaw tightened. “You mean your wife. Not your property.”
“Mia—”
“Don’t,” she snapped. “Two days ago, you killed men without blinking. And then you held me like I was glass. I don’t know which version of you I’m married to.
Should I be scared of you or everyone else?
Should I feel safe around you or not? It’s like a rollercoaster and I don’t have any clue which way is up anymore. ”
“I’m trying to be the husband you’re teaching me to be.”
Her shoulders slumped. “You’re going after them.”
“Yes. My first priority is you.” I rounded the desk, stopping in front of her. “You want the truth? Every man involved will talk or bleed. But I’ll do it clean. No bodies in the street. No messages on walls. Quiet. Controlled.”
Her eyes softened, but her mouth didn’t. “You talk like violence is an art.”
“I’m the artist they fear, my love.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy but not hostile. Finally, she stepped forward and laid her hand over mine. Her fingers were warm, delicate. I turned my hand and held hers. “Be careful.”
“I will, my love.”
She smiled—small, tired, real—and squeezed my hand before pulling away. At the door, she hesitated. “Your father,” she whispered. “What would he have done?”
“Made an example,” I said. “A bloody one.”
She nodded and left. The door closed.
My men came that evening. Marco, Luca, and Alessio—my trinity of chaos and loyalty. They took their seats without ceremony.
Marco slid a phone across the desk. “We squeezed one. He gave us a gym. Cash payments. Local muscle. Eastern names. He said they have something to do with it.”
“Follow the money. It will lead us to whoever is responsible.”
“The men we caught?” Luca asked. “What do you want done?”
“Alive,” I said. “Separate cells. Fed, cleaned, and made comfortable—until I need them uncomfortable.”
That earned a dark chuckle from Alessio.
We mapped it all—the gym, the shell companies, the money trails. Forty-eight hours. That’s all I’d need.
Mia stood in the doorway. My men rose immediately.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t send them away.”
She crossed the room, calm but alert, and took the empty chair beside me. Her presence changed everything.
“How much did you hear?” I asked.
“Enough to know what you’re planning.” Her eyes went straight to Marco.
“Then you know why it has to be done.”
“I know you think it has to be done,” she said. “I just don’t want to lose you to it.”
“You won’t.”
Her eyes flicked to my men. “He says that, but you’ve all seen what vengeance does to him, haven’t you?”
Marco shifted in his chair. No one answered. They didn’t need to.
“Ten minutes,” I said to them. “Then we move.”
They stood, silent as ghosts, and left us alone.
I met her eyes. “My father said love is leverage. That to own what you love, you have to make it fear losing you.”
“And you believed him.”
“I did. Until you.”
Something shifted between us then—small, fragile, dangerous. “Then promise me one thing.”
“If I can.”
“Come back. Whole. Don’t let this turn you into him.”
I brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I promise. I won’t become my father.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I married you, not his ghost.”
Later that night, after she’d gone upstairs, I made the calls. By the time I hung up, the house was still again. The rain slowed. Smoke curled from the cigar in my hand, the smell rich and bitter.
I was battling two sides of myself—me, the man I was made to be, and for her, the one I was trying to become. My father’s voice still lingered in my head, but quieter now. His lessons had built my empire.
But Mia had built something stronger. Not a kingdom. A reason.
I buttoned my coat in the mirror; the fabric falling into place with the obedient weight of something that knew who it belonged to. The house exhaled around me—the last shuffle of guards taking posts, the low murmur of an engine warming in the drive.
In the hall, I paused at the base of the stairs and glanced up. The landing light washed everything in soft gold. For a heartbeat I expected her there, barefoot and stubborn, ready to argue me back into bed or into a different version of myself.
She didn’t come. Good. Better to leave before I chose her over war and paid the kind of price men like me only pay once. I stepped out into the night. The rain thinned to a fine mist.
“Route’s clear,” Luca said, opening the rear door.
“Make it stay that way,” I answered, sliding in.
I glanced back through the open triangle of door and frame, past the portico columns and the thinning veil of rain.
She stood at the study window, one hand braced on the sill, the other cradling her sore shoulder through my shirt.
No dramatic silhouette, no hand pressed grief—just Mia watching me go, steady as a lighthouse that would never beg the storm to be kind.
I lifted my hand—half wave, half vow. She didn’t wave back.
She nodded once, the smallest coronation I’d ever been given. Go. Come back the same man.
The car door shut with a clean thud and then eased forward; the gates obeyed. Gravel hissed under the tires and then gave way to a smooth road.
“Alessio?” I said, eyes on the dark ahead.
“In position,” came the reply over the speaker.
“Make them spill everything.”
“Understood.”