Isabella #2
The floorboard near the entryway creaks under my weight, and I hate myself a little for forgetting about the sound at all.
As I approach the door, my mind is already cataloging options with an old, mechanical efficiency I have not had to use in years.
There is no weapon in the house, not anymore, unless one counts the chef’s knife block still in the kitchen.
The nearest neighbor is two houses down and this town’s response time is quick for domestic emergencies and laughable for something like this.
I stop just short of the door and look through the peephole.
What I see surprises me but also does not.
There are four men in black standing on my porch.
Their posture is too rigid, their eyes too alert in that unmistakable way that tells me every one of them knows exactly how fast they can draw a weapon and how quickly it will take someone to call about the sound of gunshots.
Their hands rest near concealed weapons at their hips while their eyes scan the cul-de-sac like wolves who have finally picked up a long-cold scent and do not intend to lose it again.
At the front of them stands a man I never thought I would see again.
Davide Bianchi.
My stomach tightens, confusion rattling around inside my head.
For a moment, all I can do is stare through the fisheye distortion of the peephole, my mind refusing to align memory with what is standing on my porch.
Davide Bianchi, boss of the Bianchi syndicate and once one of my father’s most trusted allies, has no business being here standing in front of my house while my son plays soccer ten feet away in the back yard.
Yet… he is.
He’s older now, of course. Time has marked him in the ways it marks powerful men who survive long enough to be feared by a second generation.
Silver threads through darker strands at his temples. There are deeper lines bracketing his mouth and fanning from the corners of his eyes, etched there by years of command.
He still wears power with that effortlessly dangerous neatness men like him are born with. His dark coat is immaculately pressed at the collar. His polished shoes have no place on a quiet suburban porch like mine.
Confusion rattles hard inside my skull.
Why is he here? Why now?
I changed names. I became a woman no one would bother remembering or looking for. I lived small on purpose and told myself that enough years and distance would turn me into a dead branch on the family tree, at most. Something too inconvenient to dig up unless absolutely necessary.
He lifts his head then as if he can feel me watching him on the other side of the door.
Davide had always been loyal to my father with the kind of Old-World devotion that had become rare even then. He and my father understood each other in ways not even Vittorio Conti could.
They both believed in order and legacy, and in the careful architecture of power that could crumble in a single moment.
He had always spoken to me with a certain reserve that bordered on respectful. Seeing him at my door is easier to swallow than someone from another syndicate.
Whatever this is, I cannot let it unfold on the porch with Matteo outside or neighbors drifting out with coffee mugs and turning their curious eyes toward my house.
The absolute last thing I need is for these men to stay visible any longer than absolutely necessary.
In towns like this, people notice and gossip. Once someone starts asking the wrong questions, suddenly, this soft little life I’ve made will no longer be anonymous.
I pull in a breath and slowly ease the door open, only a crack at first and with the chain still hooked to the inside of the door. Davide’s gaze lands on me immediately.
For one horrifying instant, I am twenty again, back in the world of ornate ballrooms and bloodstained loyalties, standing in a floor-length silk dress surrounded by men deciding my future without asking me whether I wanted them to or not.
“Ms. Hayes,” Davide says, inclining his head toward me.
The use of my alias is not a courtesy as someone else in my position would be led to believe.
It is proof he knows both who I pretend to be and who I really am. Someone like Davide would not come knocking on the door of a single mother with no connection to his world. He wouldn’t waste his time if he weren’t sure of my real identity.
Even though I’ve been out of the crime world for close to a decade, I still know how it operates.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the door. “Sorry, do we know each other?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners just enough for me to notice. His gaze sweeps over me in one unhurried pass, taking in everything from the simple cream blouse and neutral slacks to my hair pulled back loosely at my nape, all of it so far from the woman I used to be.
He is assessing me in a way I am no longer accustomed to being looked at.
Around here, people see a tired single mother with good manners and a tendency to arrive five minutes early for school pickup. Davide sees none of that. Or, really, he sees through it all at once.
There is a faint, respectful tilt to his chin before he says, “May we come in?”
The politeness of it almost insults me. No one from that world has ever treated me as anything other than an ornament.
Well, except for…
Pushing the thought from my mind, I glance back at the armed men behind him, then back at his face. My pulse stays maddeningly steady despite the tension trying to straighten my frame.
“Whatever you want, the answer is no,” I say evenly.
For the first time, something in Davide’s expression shifts. Not in offense like I’m expecting, but closer to a kind of weary understanding, as if this is exactly what he expected from me and perhaps even exactly what he would have done in my place.
“Isabella, please. It is important.”
A frown tugs at my lips before I can stop it.
So.
We are done playing games, then.
No more Ms. Hayes or pretending he might be at the wrong house or I might still have some flimsy civilian deniability to hide behind. I’m no longer the woman who schedules dental cleanings and reminds Matteo to return his library books.
I’m back to being the daughter of Amos Russo and a ghost come back from the dead with too much to lose now.
I pull in a slow breath and shut the door.
For a second, I just stand there with my hand flat against the wood, my eyes closing briefly as I try to think around the surge of fear slowly coursing through my veins.
When I open them again, I spot the chain as it glints in the morning light. One small strip of metal between me and the men who dragged my past to my doorstep.
If I shut him out now, what are the chances he will actually leave me alone?
Slim to none, most likely.
Men like Davide do not track a woman down after eight years and however many dead ends it took to find my trail just to accept a no from behind a locked door.
If anything, refusal would only confirm that whatever brought him here matters enough to warrant persistence.
Every minute he remains on my porch is another one some neighbor might peek out through their blinds and see black-clad men standing at Marina Hayes’s door like the opening scene of a disaster movie no one in this town is equipped to understand.
Whatever he has come here for, it cannot be good. If this conversation is happening, it will happen where I can control it.
After another long moment, I find my hand moving almost against my will, sliding the latch away from the door with a soft metallic scrape that sounds far too much like surrender.
When I pull it open again, Davide is standing there patiently.
He has not shifted his posture or shown one ounce of irritation. He simply waits, composed and grave, as though he already knew exactly how this would go.
Perhaps he already understood that the woman on the other side of the door would never choose impulse where her child was concerned but would eventually know when to give in.
There is something unsettling in that scrutiny, in being seen so clearly by someone who belongs to the world I worked so hard to escape.
It makes me feel exposed in ways my plain clothes and false name never prepared me for, stripped of camouflage and returned, however briefly, to the version of myself who knew exactly what men like him looked for and exactly how to hide from it.
Only now, I no longer have the luxury of thinking only of myself.
I step aside at last, inviting them all in without another word. Davide moves only then, crossing the threshold with the quiet confidence of a man long accustomed to entering places where he knows he is not entirely welcome.
He stands just inside the entryway, taking in the room with one measured glance.
The family photos on the side table and Matteo’s shoes kicked crookedly against the baseboard are what his eyes linger on first.
He moves deeper into my home, past the drawings framed on the wall leading into the living room, all bright crayon stick figures and trees. Every detail of the life I built is now being seen through someone else’s eyes.
I hate how I can’t tell what he makes of it.
I fold my arms across my chest and lead him into the living room. We both settle on the couches facing opposite each other. His men crowd just inside the archway, keeping a bit of distance from us to give us space.
When Davide looks at me again, it’s the first time since I opened the door that he looks less like a syndicate boss. Sitting here in my living room, he looks more like a man carrying a heavy weight that he can no longer bear on his own, bowing under it visibly.
“Another family is moving in on my territory,” he begins, lacing his fingers together over his knee.
“They have begun seizing assets piece by piece. Quietly at first, with disrupting warehouse supply chains and shipping routes. Recently, they’ve moved to the financial fronts and have gotten a few of my accounts frozen.
Entire operations I've had for decades are beginning to collapse overnight. They are ruthless and have no clear plans of stopping anytime soon.”