Elio #2
The path heading up to the front doors is choked with weeds, the roots splitting through the gravel in thick, stubborn clusters that swallow the once refined structure of what was once a manicured drive.
The fountain in the middle of the circular carport is cracked through the center, its basin empty except for leaves, rainwater, and a thin film of green rot.
Vines crawl all over the stone faces carved along its sides, strangling cherubs and saints and whatever Old-World symbolism Amos once paid someone too much money to install. The figures stare out from beneath the growth with blind, eroded eyes.
Roses have grown wild on either side of the estate’s walls. They bloom beautifully despite being completely abandoned, thorns tangled through stonework, red petals opening bright against the gray morning.
I stop when I reach the marble steps, finding something I’m not expecting.
The stain is still there.
It’s faint, browned by time and nearly invisible unless someone were to know what had taken place here years prior.
This is where Isabella’s father bled out under the open sky. The first domino to fall, setting off a chain of events none of us could have ever predicted. Though perhaps my father’s hand had tipped it long before that.
I crouch near the stain before I can stop myself, my fingers hovering over it but not quite touching it.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words disappear almost immediately into the fog, swallowed by the wet morning air and the silence of the abandoned grounds.
A useless offering.
The words are barely audible, and I realize belatedly that it is pointless to do so.
The dead do not need apologies as much as the living do.
I have given Isabella nothing but reason after reason to spit mine back in my face, all the while expecting something different from her.
As if guilt counts when it never reaches the person it first wounded.
I am sorry I left.
I am sorry I believed them.
I am sorry I let your grief become inconvenient.
I am sorry I did not come back.
The list is endless.
No apology will ever be good enough to give to her. And yet some selfish part of me still wants her to understand, to look at me and see that I did not know the full weight of my actions and the consequences they would have on her future.
But ignorance is not innocence, and I am done hiding behind it. I don’t deserve to.
I rise slowly and step back from the stain, careful not to put my shoe over it. A ridiculous courtesy, maybe. Or an empty one. But I give it anyway because there are so few decent things left in me that haven’t already been tainted.
I move around the side of the house, pushing through wet branches and overgrown rose canes that snag at my coat with thorned fingers.
Their petals are dark red, almost black where dampness clings to them, and the sight sends a twist of nostalgia curling in my chest. Beauty surviving neglect, softness armed with thorns. It reminds me of Isabella.
She would hate the comparison if I ever said it to her.
The service entrance is where I remember it being, half hidden behind ivy crawling up the stone wall.
The narrow door is weathered, paint peeled in strips, brass handle darkened with age. I take one step back and give the door a solid kick near the jamb. The sound rips through the quiet like a gunshot as the wood splinters from the siding.
I freeze, one hand dropping instinctively toward the weapon at my side, listening for movement inside the house or on the grounds. But there is nothing.
I breathe out slowly before pushing the door open fully. It gives way with a groan that sounds too loud and foreboding against the eerie quiet.
Inside, dust hangs in the weak light slanting through the cracked windows. Each slow-moving particle suspends for a brief moment frozen in time, like the house is still trying to exhale the last breath it took eight years ago.
The halls are colder inside and it seeps beneath my coat through the fabric of my shirt, sending a shiver rolling up my spine.
Sheets cover furniture in soft, ghostly shapes like bodies arranged for viewing.
My flashlight cuts across them, and the shadows bend strangely, making it seem for one second as though the house is full of people who have turned their backs to me.
I pass a narrow table where a silver tray still sits tarnished beneath the grime.
Beside it, a crystal decanter rests empty, its stopper missing.
I pause there for a second too long, staring at it before forcing myself to move on.
The war room sits exactly how it was left years ago. Maps are still pinned to walls with routes marked in faded ink. Long strings sag between pins that connect through all of the territories surrounding this one.
Amos’s heavy oak desk sits beneath a thick layer of dust, looking like an altar no one has dared disturb since his death. The chair behind it remains pushed back at an angle as though he rose quickly and expected to return to it soon.
I stand in the doorway for a long moment and can almost see him there in this room, sharp-eyed and patient as always with one hand resting on the ledger Giovano told me about.
The picture of a man who knew betrayal would come one day and still let the wrong allies get too close anyway.
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps he never saw it and simply ran out of time.
Letting out a slow breath, I cross to the desk to search it first. Dust coats my hands the moment my palms settle on the old wood. It clings to my skin and gathers in the creases of my knuckles as I pull open the drawers one by one, each of them groaning softly on swollen tracks.
What I find first is nothing of importance, just old records from years past of invoices and shipping manifests that are now nothing more than wrinkled paper creating clutter.
I try the drawer below it and find much the same, all of it one useless document after another.
Frustration starts to crawl beneath my skin the longer I sift through it.
Giovano had said Amos wrote in his ledger religiously. Why wouldn’t it be with the rest of the other pieces that helped run his empire? If he were a smart man, he would never have allowed it to leave this room except for business ventures.
I shut the third drawer harder than necessary, the sound cracking through the room.
The maps on the walls seem to stare at me.
For a moment, I brace both hands on the desk and lower my head, breathing through the pressure building in my chest. If there is a chance the ledger was stolen—or worse, destroyed—then there is no hope of proving his claims.
I am not an anxious man. I have never had the luxury of being anything but steady in everything that I do. But this house is getting under my skin in a way I had not expected since the moment I crossed the service entrance.
I force myself to slow down and think like Amos.
Not like Alessio, who would tear the room apart and give up at the first sign of finding nothing on the surface. Like Amos Russo, the strategist. A man who might have known betrayal would come wearing a familiar face and needed to ensure the survival of the only piece of proof he had.
I crouch down to the floor, running my fingers along the underside of the desk.
The wood is smooth in most places, rough where age has warped it.
My fingers follow the seams and grooves of it, finding nothing at first. Then a subtle ridge catches beneath my index finger, too deliberate to be damage.
My pulse slows to a brutal, focused beat. I hook my fingers around the small latch and pry it away from the desk. It resists, years of disuse holding it stubbornly shut, but I work it loose with the edge of my nail until something clicks and a narrow panel drops open.
For several seconds, I do not move as I stare down at it.
Inside is a leather-bound journal, exactly like Giovano described.
The leather is stiff beneath my fingers, a soft smear leaving traces of dust behind when my fingers glide over the top cover.
It is heavier than I expect, thick with pages of proof and whatever truth it holds after being trapped inside it for too long.
The first few pages are covered in Amos’s slanted handwriting. I flip through the early entries that are filled with details regarding his family’s alliances and strategies, payments made to other various syndicates in Italy before striking a deal with ours.
Some he describes in cool, concise words while cataloging their weaknesses while others are simple notes attached with deeper thoughts about interpersonal relationships and future agreements to be made.
I keep turning the pages one after the other. It isn’t until I reach the final few that my hands begin to shake.
The first entries are calmly written, though laced with obvious concern about shifting alliances with both of our families. Pressure from eastern route disagreements has caused my father’s requests for preemptive strikes against the smaller syndicates to become more aggressive.
The notes then shift to my brother, about pushing through intermediaries, Bianchi’s name surfacing more frequently in relation to potential countermeasures that may be called on to quell the budding hostility.
Then the tone changes. The handwriting grows slightly more forceful, each letter pressed harder into the page, the ink biting deeper into the paper and making it practically bleed through.
My eyes land on one entry and my body goes cold.
Alessio Conti approached me privately to offer a deal to consolidate our territory with the Contis’.
Promised money in exchange for stepping back.
He wants to take over both families and absorb them into one, creating a stronger force to move against other syndicates.
When I refused, he threatened to remove me as an obstacle in his way.
I read it again and again, each time, the words become less comprehensible and more absolute.
My first instinct is denial. Not because Alessio is incapable of murder.