Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Vittoria
The compound's living room feels too bright after the dimness of the Baganov estate.
"Alexei Baganov is dead."
The words fall into the silence like stones into still water.
Nico's expression doesn't change. He already suspected, probably. He always knows things before anyone tells him.
Bruno's jaw tightens. That's all.
I sink onto the leather sofa, exhaustion pulling at every muscle. The drive home felt endless. Dante didn't speak the entire way.
"When?" Nico asks.
"A few hours ago." I press my palms against my thighs, grounding myself.
My mind drifts back to the Baganov estate. To the moment the door opened and Vladimir appeared, half-carrying Natalia. Her face was red and swollen, tears streaming down her cheeks, her whole body shaking like a leaf in a storm.
Can you stay with her? Vladimir's voice had been rough. Just for a while.
I didn't ask questions. I just opened my arms.
Natalia collapsed into me like a puppet with cut strings. Her sobs soaked through my dress, her fingers clutching at my back with desperate strength. She didn't speak. Couldn't speak. Just cried and cried and cried.
I held her.
I stroked her hair. I didn't say it would be okay. I didn't say anything at all.
So I just held her. Let her cry. Let her shake. Let her grieve.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer. The sobs gradually quieted. The trembling eased. Her breathing slowed from ragged gasps to something steadier.
She didn't pull away. Neither did I.
After an hour—maybe more, time had lost all meaning—the door opened.
Dmitri stood in the doorway. His face was blank, completely empty, but his eyes... his eyes held something shattered.
"It's late." His voice came out hoarse. Raw. "You should go home."
Natalia stirred against me, finally lifting her head. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut from crying.
I helped her to her feet, guided her toward Karolina who appeared behind Dmitri. The sisters embraced, fresh tears spilling down both their faces.
Dmitri walked me to the door. He didn't speak. Didn't need to.
At the threshold, he stopped me. His hand cupped the back of my head, and he pressed his lips to my hair. Just that. A kiss on my head.
Then I left.
"How many guards did the compound have?"
Bruno's voice yanks me back to the present.
I turn and look at him.
The brother I grew up with is gone. This stranger wears his face.
"Are you trying to be heartless?" The question comes out quiet. Genuine. "Or were you always like this and just hid it from all of us?"
Bruno's expression flickers. Just for a second. Then the mask slams back down.
"I'm asking a strategic question—"
"That family is grieving." I stand up, my hands shaking. "Their father just died. Dmitri watched him take his last breath. His sister fell apart in my arms." My voice cracks. "Maybe you can remember what that feels like. Maybe you can stop being like this for one goddamn minute."
He doesn't say anything.
Neither does Nico.
I walk out of the living room without looking back. The stairs stretch before me, and I climb them on autopilot, my body moving while my mind stays trapped in that dim room at the Baganov estate.
Dmitri's shattered eyes. Natalia's broken sobs. The weight of grief pressing down on everything.
I reach my bedroom door and push it open. The familiar space welcomes me.
I make it three steps before my knees buckle.
A sound tears from my throat. A sound between a scream and a sob. I press my fist against my mouth, trying to hold it in, but it's too late. The dam has cracked.
Natalia's grief unlocked something I've trying to control.
Giuseppe Sartori. The man who taught me to ride a bike. Who called me his principessa. Who made me believe I was special, loved, protected.
The tears come faster now. Hot. Angry.
I loved my father. I worshipped him.
And he was a fraud.
My fist slams against the carpet. Once. Twice. The impact barely registers.
Riccardo. My big brother. My protector. The one who stepped into Papa's shoes after he died. The one who held me when I cried, who threatened any boy who looked at me wrong, who made me feel safe in a world that wanted to devour us.
Riccardo. Who had an affair with Lorenzo's fiancée. Who lied and cheated and betrayed the family he claimed to love.
I'm sobbing now. Ugly, gasping sobs that shake my whole body.
I hate them.
I hate them.
I hate my father for making me believe in fairy tales while he lived a double life. I hate Riccardo for being just like him—charming and loving on the surface, rotten underneath.
But most of all, I hate myself.
For being so blind. So stupid. So desperate to believe in the lie.
The girl I was before is dead.
I mourned my father.
I mourned my brother.
But I never mourned her. That naive, trusting girl who thought love meant something in this world.
She deserved better than to be murdered by the truth.
I curl into myself on the floor, arms wrapped around my knees, forehead pressed against the carpet. The sobs keep coming. Wave after wave of grief and rage and a new feeling.
I was sad before.
Sad is easy. Sad is soft. Sad lets you remember the good times and pretend the bad ones don't matter.
But this? This burning, churning fury that's eating me alive?
This is different.
I lift my head. My reflection stares back at me from the mirror across the room. Mascara streaked down my cheeks. Eyes red and swollen. Hair a tangled mess.
I look like a disaster.
I look like someone who's finally stopped pretending.
"Enough." The word scrapes out of my throat. "Enough."
I push myself up from the floor. My legs shake, but they hold.
I'm done being the sad princess locked in her tower. Done being the grieving sister who can't move on.
I need to get strong.
I need to survive.
I grab my phone from where I dropped it. My hands are still shaking, but my grip is steady.
Amanda's contact stares up at me.
I hit call before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the second ring. "Babe! I was just thinking about you. Dylan wants to—"
"Can you come over?" My voice sounds wrong. Hollow. Cracked.
Silence on the other end.
"Vittoria?" Amanda's tone shifts instantly. The bubbly energy vanishes. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"No." The word comes out small. Honest. "I'm not okay. I need... I need you here. Please."
"I'm already grabbing my keys." I hear movement on her end. A door slamming. "Twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen if I run every red light."
"Amanda—"
"Don't you dare tell me not to speed. I'll be there. Just... just hold on, okay? Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together."
The line goes dead.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
Amanda is coming.
And when she gets here, I'm going to tell her everything.
Dmitri
The phone cuts through the silence at 4:17 a.m.
I'm not asleep. Haven't been. My father's body lies in the room down the hall, waiting for the funeral home to collect him at dawn.
Igor's name flashes on the screen.
"Da."
"We found something. Remember the counterfeiter we handled last month? The one selling product with our eagle?"
I sit up, swinging my legs off the leather couch. "The one who mentioned the Sartori marriage."
"Same operation. Different soldier." A pause. "This one's not as strong as the last. He talked within twenty minutes."
My blood warms for the first time since watching my father's chest stop rising. "Where are you holding him?"
"Warehouse on Kedzie. The one we use for sensitive conversations."
I'm already reaching for my jacket. "I'm coming."
"Dmitri." Igor hesitates. "Your father just—"
"I know what just happened." I pull the jacket on, checking that my Glock sits properly in its holster.
Igor doesn't argue further.
The hallway stretches dark and quiet as I move through the house. Past the living room where my siblings gathered hours ago, past the kitchen where the staff left food no one touched, past the room where my father's body lies beneath a white sheet.
I don't stop. Don't look.
Yuri stands by the Mercedes, he must have heard the door.
"I'll drive tonight."
He blinks. "Sir?"
"Give me the keys."
Yuri hands them over without further question.
The engine purrs to life, and I pull out of the estate's circular driveway. The gates open automatically, and then I'm on the empty road, nothing but darkness and the glow of the dashboard.
I should feel something.
That's what Karolina would say. What the grief counselors and therapists and well-meaning relatives always say after someone dies. You should feel sad. You should feel lost. You should feel like the world has shifted on its axis.
I feel none of it.
I grieved my father while he was alive.
The grief happened in real-time. Now there's just... emptiness. And emptiness I can work with.
Business will help. It always does. Numbers and negotiations and the occasional necessary violence. These things make sense. They follow rules. They respond to action.
Vittoria will help too.
I knew this was going to happen. My father's death. The emptiness afterward. The way my mind would immediately pivot to business, to strategy, to the next problem requiring solution.
The warehouse on Kedzie sits at the edge of our territory, a squat brick building that looks abandoned from the outside. Rusted metal doors, broken windows covered with plywood, graffiti tags from gangs that no longer exist.
Inside is different.
I park the Mercedes in the back lot and kill the engine. Two of my men stand guard at the service entrance, their breath fogging in the cold air. They straighten when they see me step out.
"Boss." I nod and push through the door.
The interior is sparse. Concrete floors, exposed pipes, a single chair bolted to the ground beneath a hanging work light. Igor stands to the side, arms crossed, watching the figure slumped in that chair.
The man lifts his head at the sound of my footsteps, and I stop.
He's young. Too young. Smooth skin, wide eyes, the kind of face that still holds baby fat in the cheeks. He can't be more than eighteen.
Maybe less.
"What's your name?" My voice comes out flat.
He swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Drake."
Black American. Skinny frame swimming in an oversized hoodie. His wrists are zip-tied to the chair arms, but he's not struggling. Just sitting there, trembling like a leaf in a storm.
I circle him slowly, taking inventory. One hit to his face. Just one. A bruise blooming purple across his left cheekbone, his lip split but not badly. Igor's men barely touched him.
He broke in twenty minutes with barely a mark on him.
I don't like men who break fast. It usually means they're either lying or they have nothing worth protecting. But this one... this one isn't calculating. He's terrified. The kind of terror that comes from being completely out of your depth.
"How old are you, Drake?"
He hesitates. His eyes dart to Igor, then back to me.
"How old?" I repeat, harder this time.
"Seventeen." The word comes out cracked.
I close my eyes.
Seventeen.
A child. A fucking child sitting in my interrogation chair, zip-tied and bleeding because he got caught up in something he doesn't understand.
I've seen this before. Too many times. Young men from bad neighborhoods, desperate situations, no fathers or fathers in prison, mothers working three jobs just to keep the lights on. They see the money, the respect, the power that comes with this life, and they think it's their only way out.
They don't see the chair. They don't see the warehouse. They don't see the shallow graves.
I open my eyes and pull a metal folding chair from against the wall, positioning it in front of Marcus. I sit, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.
"Who do you work for?"
"I don't—" He shakes his head rapidly. "I don't work for nobody. Not like, not regular. I'm not in a gang or nothing."
"Then why are you selling product with my family's mark on it?"
His eyes go wider. "I didn't know it was yours, I swear. I didn't know nothing about marks or territories or any of that. Some guy just gave me the bags and told me where to go."
"What guy?"
"I don't know his name." His voice pitches higher. "I never met him before. My cousin's friend knew somebody who knew somebody. Said I could make five hundred dollars just for delivering some packages. That's it. That's all I was supposed to do."
I study his face. The trembling hasn't stopped. His pupils are dilated, his breathing shallow and fast. Classic fear response. No signs of deception that I can detect.
"Why did you need the money?"
"My mom." He swallows again. "She's sick. Can't work no more. We got bills, you know? Rent's three months behind. They're gonna kick us out." His voice breaks. "I just needed to do two deals. Just two. Get enough to cover this month, buy some time."
Two deals. Five hundred dollars. A mother who can't work.
I've heard this story a thousand times. It never gets easier.
"The man who gave you the product," I say slowly. "Did he tell you who he worked for?"
Drake nods, eager now, desperate to be helpful. "Yeah. Yeah, he said... he said he was from the Corellis. Said they were expanding, needed street-level guys. Said if I did good, maybe they'd bring me on permanent."
The Corellis.
I go still.
The Corellis are old money. Old power. They've controlled the South Side for three generations, and they didn't get there by being sloppy.
They don't hire seventeen-year-old kids off the street for drug runs.
They don't let their name get dropped to random recruits. They don't make mistakes like this.
Which means one of two things.
Either someone is using the Corelli name to throw us off the trail, and they planted this kid as bait to lead us in the wrong direction.
Or the Corellis have suddenly become incompetent enough to hire untrained children who crack under twenty minutes of light interrogation.
The second option isn't possible. Giorgio Corelli is many things, but stupid isn't one of them.
So someone is playing games.
I lean back in my chair, watching Drake's face. He believes what he's telling me. That much is clear. He genuinely thinks he was working for the Corellis because that's what he was told.
But who told him? And why?
"Igor." I don't take my eyes off Marcus. "Get him some water. And find out everything about the man who recruited him. Description, location, how the contact was made. Everything."
Igor moves toward the door, then pauses. "And the kid?"
I look at Drake. Seventeen years old. A sick mother.
"Keep him comfortable. Don't touch him again." I stand, pushing the chair back. "I need to think."