Chapter 16 Atlas
Atlas
Rage burned through me like an inferno as I dealt with the men who had cost me two million euros in stolen stock.
There was shouting. There was blood. There were screams that ended abruptly. Violence took the heat, the adrenaline, the edge the way it always did, until the room was nothing but breath and broken bodies.
Afterward came the stillness.
That hollow, quiet place where other men kept their guilt. I’d never had that. All I ever had was the aftermath. Silence. Control. Nothingness.
Except tonight, something else kept bleeding into it.
Her.
Neve Trimboli.
Even as I stood over men who had just learned what it meant to cross me, all I could see was her face in that alley. The way her eyes hadn’t wavered. The way her hands hadn’t shaken.
She wasn’t just a victim who got lucky.
She was a monster.
Or worse—a monster in training.
One who might someday turn that same steady hand on me.
And the thought didn’t make me afraid. It made something dark and electric coil low in my gut.
By the time I boarded the jet the next morning, engines vibrating under my feet, the warehouse and the bodies left inside it already felt like old news. Irrelevant. A task completed. A problem removed.
All I could think about was her.
Where had she learned to fight like that?
Who had trained her?
And why had a man like that gone after her in the first place?
Neve Trimboli didn’t drift through life by accident. Trouble found her. Or she walked straight into it. Either way, death kept reaching for her and missing, over and over again, like she was some feral little thing with nine lives and claws sharp enough to rip fate apart.
A cat, landing on her feet every time.
And I couldn’t decide if that made her dangerous… or irresistible.
My mind went straight back to Tuscany. To the alley. And the way the girl had moved — fast, precise, ruthless. She had had no hesitation, no fear. And definitely no mercy.
I couldn’t unsee what had happened, no matter how I tried.
I had watched her slit a man’s throat like she’d been born knowing how, with only direct, efficient violence.
And I had underestimated her.
I’d spent days assuming she had no real sense of danger. That she lived in that tiny house because she didn’t care what happened to her. That she walked around Tuscany oblivious, na?ve, still that scared girl I’d found hiding in a pantry.
But she wasn’t careless. And she wasn’t oblivious.
She was prepared.
Prepared in a way I hadn’t seen coming, in a way that only fifteen years of surviving alone could carve into a person.
She didn’t wait for rescue. She rescued herself. And the truth hit me hard: her instincts outclassed half the men I commanded. Her reflexes were more defined than soldiers twice her size. Her will to live was brutal, relentless, unbreakable.
Where the hell had she learned that? What had happened between the night I spared her and the moment she carved open a man’s throat in an alley? Because whatever had shaped her… hadn’t created a victim. It had created a monster.
I leaned back in the leather seat, staring at the dim cabin lights while the jet cut through the night.
The mess I’d left behind in Genoa faded the farther we flew. The blood. The bodies. The betrayal. All of it shrank into background noise. None of it held my attention.
All I could think about was her.
Neve Trimboli.
Fate had stepped in to save her more than once. First when I hadn’t pulled the trigger. Then again yesterday, when the bastard who grabbed her had failed to finish what I hadn’t fifteen years ago.
Twice she’d slipped through death’s hands.
And both times, I’d been there to witness it.
Maybe she wasn’t meant to die.
Or maybe — and the thought sat heavy and unwelcome at the base of my spine — she was only meant to die by my hand.
I didn’t know which possibility I hated more.
But one thing was clear: she was no longer the easy kill I’d convinced myself she’d be. She wasn’t the fragile girl I’d left on a convent doorstep. She wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t innocent. She wasn’t a loose thread waiting to be cut.
She could be a problem.
A breathing, thinking, trained problem who could gut a man before he knew he was in danger.
Getting to her wouldn’t be simple anymore. It wouldn’t be quiet or clean. But I hadn’t come this far to abandon the job.
Neve Trimboli had survived twice when she shouldn’t have.
And as the plane began its descent into Tuscany, the truth settled in my chest like a weight that refused to move: if I wanted closure, if I wanted certainty, if I wanted to erase the last living Trimboli… then getting to her wouldn’t be a hunt.
It would be a war.
And I was more than ready for it.
The jet touched down with a soft jolt.
I unbuckled, rolled my shoulders once, and tried to shake the last of the night off me.
It didn’t work.
The second the cabin door cracked open, cold air hit my face. And behind that cold air… irritation.
Because standing at the bottom of the stairs, hands in his coat pockets, looking entirely too pleased with himself, was my cousin Gianni.
I closed my eyes briefly, exhaling hard. Marcello must’ve called ahead the second I left Genoa. Baby brother wanted a watchdog on me? Fine. But did it have to be this watchdog?
Gianni waved like he was welcoming a celebrity. “Don Cavalho returns,” he called up. “And here I thought you’d sneak back into the city without saying hi.”
“I wasn’t trying to sneak anything,” I muttered as I started down the stairs. “I was hoping for one minute of peace. Clearly that was too much to ask.”
He grinned. “Marcello told me you might be in a mood.”
“Marcello needs to mind his own business.”
“Sure. Right after you stop giving him reasons to worry.”
I glared at him, but he didn’t budge.
“I’m driving you home,” he said, already walking toward the car.
“No,” I snapped. “Go home to your wife. She’s pregnant. She needs you more than I do.”
He opened the passenger door and gestured to it. “Mikayla’s fine. She told me to make sure you don’t get shot, arrested, kidnapped, or stabbed. Her words, not mine.”
I stopped walking. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
He shrugged. “Tell that to the people who keep trying to kill you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Gianni—”
“Atlas,” he mimicked, smirking, “get in the car.”
“I’m not—”
“Get in the car before I call Marcello and tell him you’re being dramatic.”
I stared at him for a long moment, weighing how much energy it would take to deal with this versus how much I actually cared.
Too much.
I got in the car.
Gianni shut the door behind me like he’d won the first round. When he rounded the hood and slid into the driver’s seat, he was grinning like an idiot.
“You’re in a great mood today,” he remarked.
“Drive,” I muttered.
He did.
Silence settled between us for a few minutes. Calm. Bearable. Then he asked the question I didn’t want to answer.
“So,” he started, eyes on the road, “want to tell me why you keep running back to Tuscany on your own?”
“No.”
“Want to tell me why you look like you haven’t slept in twenty-four hours?”
“No.”
“Want to tell me why Marcello sounded like he was two seconds from tearing the entire city apart trying to track you down before he realised you took the jet and left… again?”
I turned my head slowly and gave him the kind of look that told him I was done humoring him.
He just nodded, satisfied. “Thought so.”
We drove on.
The anger drained first. Then the noise in my head quieted.
What remained was her.
Hazel eyes. Steady hands. A girl who should’ve died twice and refused both times.
She wasn’t fragile or harmless. She was the kind of problem that kept a Don awake at night.
And she was the only thing on my mind.