CHAPTER 2
NICO
The bomb had been built to accuse my family.
I knew that before Adrian placed the first piece of metal inside the evidence bag. The copper contact was old, the casing hand-cut, the trigger designed by someone who had learned from Orsini work and improved nothing.
A signature copied by a man who believed violence was a language with only one accent.
Rainwater ran beneath the ruined sedan and carried ash across the cemetery road.
“Elena’s driver is alive,” Adrian said. “Broken arm. Possible concussion.”
I looked toward the ambulance where a paramedic wrapped Elena’s hand.
She had refused to sit inside.
Of course she had.
She stood beneath the open rear door with Sofia beside her, one shoulder rigid beneath the wet black dress. Her hair had begun to escape the pins at the base of her neck. A dark strand clung to her cheek. She had not noticed it.
I had.
I had noticed too much about Elena Bellandi for too long.
“How did they get access to the car?” I asked.
“Garage logs show no entry after six this morning. Driver says he checked the exterior, not underneath.”
“Who assigned the car?”
“Bellandi transportation office.”
“Who knew the plate?”
“Half their security staff. Funeral planner. Drivers. Family.”
The list was large enough to be useless and small enough to be personal.
Adrian crouched near the rear wheel. He was three years younger than me, leaner, and less patient with anything that could not be solved by applying force to the correct person. Rain had darkened his brown hair until it looked almost black.
He lifted a small fragment with tweezers.
“This is ours.”
“No.”
He glanced up.
“It belonged to us,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
The stamped edge was barely visible beneath the soot, but I recognized the production mark. It came from a lot my father had ordered destroyed after the attack that killed my mother.
We had watched part of that inventory melted down.
Apparently not all of it.
Adrian’s expression hardened. “Only four people had access to those records.”
“Six.”
“Two are dead.”
“Death does not make their paperwork disappear.”
He sealed the fragment. “Carlo will call this proof.”
“Carlo wants proof.”
“He wants permission.”
Adrian was right.
Across the road, Carlo Bellandi stood with Vittorio at his side. Carlo’s face had gone pale beneath the gray of his beard, but grief and shock had not weakened him. They had narrowed him. He kept one hand on Sofia’s shoulder while watching Elena speak to the paramedic.
Vittorio watched everyone else.
He was a broad man in his late fifties, carefully dressed, silver beginning at his temples. His concern looked convincing because some part of it probably was. Men did not need to be without love to be dangerous. They only needed to believe their love entitled them to decide who paid for it.
Elena pulled her hand away from the paramedic before he finished securing the bandage.
The man said something.
She answered with the courteous expression she used when she had already decided not to obey.
I had seen that expression at the Bellandi Grand during charity dinners and contract negotiations. She would listen, thank a person, and proceed as if their objection had been filed under information rather than instruction.
Marco had laughed the first time I mentioned it.
She gets that from our mother, he had said. Everyone thinks Elena is being polite right up until they realize they’ve lost.
The memory arrived with the sound of Marco choking on blood.
I stood.
“Where are you going?” Adrian asked.
“To speak with her.”
“You’ve done enough of that today.”
“She needs to know the device used Orsini components.”
“She needs a doctor.”
“She needs both.”
Adrian rose and blocked my path for half a second. He would not have done it if anyone else were close enough to see.
“You promised Marco you’d keep her alive,” he said. “You didn’t promise to let her hate you at point-blank range.”
“I don’t need protection from Elena.”
“No. You need protection from yourself around Elena.”
I looked at him.
He stepped aside.
The walk across the road gave every Bellandi man time to see me coming. Two shifted closer to their weapons. Another moved between me and Carlo.
Elena noticed before they did.
Her eyes settled on the evidence bag in my hand.
“What is it?”
Her voice was steady. The ringing in her ears had probably faded. Her face remained too pale.
“Part of the detonator.”
Vittorio moved closer. “You’re collecting evidence from an attack on Bellandi property?”
“The cemetery road is public.”
“Everything is property to men like you.”
“Elena,” Carlo said, “get in the other car.”
She did not move.
“What about the detonator?” she asked.
I held the bag where she could see the stamped metal.
“It came from an old Orsini inventory.”
The men around Carlo reacted exactly as expected. One swore. Another reached inside his coat. Adrian and our remaining guards spread out behind me.
Elena did not look away from the metal.
“Old?” she asked.
“Years.”
“How many?”
“Eleven.”
Her gaze lifted.
The attack that killed my mother had happened eleven years ago. The Bellandis knew that much. Everyone did.
“Was it stolen?” she asked.
“It was listed as destroyed.”
“By whom?”
“I’m finding out.”
Carlo stepped forward. “You bring a bomb made from your own materials to my son’s funeral, nearly kill my daughter, and expect us to wait while you investigate yourself?”
“If I had ordered the attack, Elena would be dead.”
Silence followed.
It was the wrong thing to say, although it was true.
Elena’s face changed first.
Not fear. Rage.
I had wanted to make Carlo understand the precision of the failure. Instead, I had forced Elena to imagine the successful version.
My control had never improved my timing.
Carlo lunged.
His men restrained him before mine needed to. Vittorio caught one arm, speaking close to his ear.
Elena stared at me.
“Try that sentence again,” she said.
Her voice was quieter now.
I looked at the blood already darkening the edge of her white bandage.
“The device was badly placed,” I said. “The blast was designed to be seen as much as it was designed to kill. Someone wanted you dead, but they wanted the families to understand who to blame.”
“And you recognized that because?”
“Because the person copied our methods.”
“Copied.”
“Yes.”
“Not used.”
“The distinction matters.”
“To you.”
“To whoever survives what comes next.”
Sofia’s fingers tightened around Elena’s forearm. Elena noticed and shifted closer to her sister.
“What comes next?” she asked.
“Your father retaliates. We respond. The person who built that bomb gets exactly what they wanted.”
Carlo stopped struggling against his men.
“You murdered my son,” he said, “and now you lecture me about war.”
“I did not kill Marco.”
“You were at the hotel.”
Elena’s attention snapped toward me.
Carlo had not been supposed to reveal that yet.
Neither had I.
“How does he know that?” she asked.
Vittorio looked at Carlo with brief irritation.
A camera, then. Or a witness. They had more than the weapon.
I could lie and purchase several hours.
Marco had asked me to protect Elena, not to make her trust me. The two goals had seemed compatible when he was alive.
They were not.
“I was there,” I said.
The hurt on her face lasted less than a second before anger covered it.
“At the time he died?”
“Near it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is not the place.”
She glanced toward her brother’s grave.
“No,” she said. “It clearly is.”
A Bellandi vehicle pulled to the curb. Two guards opened the doors and checked beneath the chassis with mirrors before stepping away.
Vittorio touched Elena’s back. “We need to leave.”
She ignored him.
“Were you the last person to see Marco alive?”
The question struck close enough that my body remembered the weight of Marco collapsing against me.
His hand had left blood across my shirt.
Trust her when she is ready, he had said.
Not before.
I had not known then how much damage the word ready could justify.
“Elena,” I said, “I will answer you. Not here.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
Her mouth parted, perhaps to demand one anyway, but Carlo stepped between us.
“You will attend a meeting tonight,” he said.
The grief in his face had become something colder.
“Neutral ground. No more than six men.”
“I’ll attend.”
“You will bring every record connected to that detonator.”
“No.”
His hand closed into a fist.
“I’ll bring the records I can verify,” I said. “Not documents someone may have altered specifically for you to find.”
“You expect me to accept your terms?”
“I expect you to want the truth more than you want my blood.”
Carlo looked past me at the burned car.
“I want both.”
Elena entered the replacement vehicle without waiting for anyone to open the door.
Sofia followed. Vittorio started to join them, but Elena said something I could not hear. He paused, then moved to the front passenger seat.
Before the door closed, Elena looked at me through the rain.
I had seen hatred directed at me by men whose brothers I had killed and fathers whose sons I had ordered punished.
Hers felt different because I wanted to correct it.
Because some part of me believed I deserved it.
The car pulled away.
Adrian came to my side.
“You handled that badly.”
“I’m aware.”
“Good. Saves time.”
I handed him the evidence bag. “Trace the inventory. No digital copies unless you create them yourself. Speak to Teresa.”
His eyebrows rose. “You think she knows?”
“She knew what was destroyed after my mother died.”
“She also raised you.”
“Those facts are not mutually exclusive.”
Adrian studied me for a moment, then nodded.
My phone rang.
The caller was one of our men positioned near the Bellandi estate.
I answered.
“Talk.”
“The Bellandis are moving weapons from two storage sites.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
Of course.
Carlo was preparing to attend a peace meeting with the ability to begin a war before dessert.
“Do not respond,” I said.
There was a pause. “At all?”
“No one moves against Bellandi property. No one crosses their territory. If they provoke, withdraw.”
Adrian turned toward me sharply.
The man on the phone said, “Your father won’t like that.”
“My father is dead.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I ended the call.
Adrian watched me. “Half the family will read restraint as weakness.”
“Let them.”
“You may lose votes.”
“I can recover votes.”
“And if Carlo attacks anyway?”
I looked toward the road where Elena’s car had disappeared.
“Then I lose something else.”