Chapter 18 Atlas
Atlas
Gianni didn’t leave quietly.
The man never did anything quietly.
He stood in the doorway of my office like a man blocking a firing squad, one hand braced on the frame, the other holding his phone like it was evidence in a trial.
His suit jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loosened, and his expression said he’d spent the last few hours being ordered around by two people—my brother and his pregnant wife—and had enjoyed neither.
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
“I am not,” I replied, without looking up from the paperwork in front of me.
The ink blurred for a second. Not because my eyes were tired. Because my mind had been somewhere else all night. In an alley in Tuscany. With a girl holding a knife like it belonged to her the way a rosary belonged to a nun.
Gianni moved further inside, making himself comfortable like he owned the building, the city, and my patience. “Just come with me. We’ll be an hour, two tops. We can have a late lunch together on the way back.”
“I have things to get through, Gianni.”
He made a sound like he didn’t believe in my exemplary ability to lie.
I set my pen down slowly. The room was quiet, but not peaceful.
“Why are you still here?” I asked.
He held up his phone, waving it slightly. “I’m leaving. Mikayla’s appointment is in forty minutes and if I’m late, she’ll kill me, and I’m not ready to die today.”
“Go.”
Gianni didn’t move.
He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and watched me the way people watched a storm roll in—half fascinated, half terrified of what it would tear apart first.
“You’re coming with me.”
I didn’t respond.
“Atlas.” His voice was stern. “You know I can’t leave you on your own.”
“You can and you will. I’ll still be here when you come back.”
He stared at me, unconvinced.
Gianni sighed. “Okay. Fine. Let’s try this another way. I’m not asking you to stay home and knit. I’m asking you to call me if you’re going to do something that’s going to make Marcello start foaming at the mouth.”
“I don’t need to call you.”
“You do,” he corrected. “Because if you vanish again, I’m the one who gets sent after you. And I swear to God, I’ll crash your jet into the sea out of spite.”
I lifted my gaze to him then. The light from the window caught the hard line of my jaw, the tired shadows under my eyes. I didn’t look like a man who was about to behave, and Gianni could obviously read that.
“I think sometimes you forget who you’re talking to.”
His mouth tightened. “Promise me.”
I held his stare a beat too long.
It was funny, in a sick way. I ran an empire. Men bowed when I entered a room. Entire families rose and fell based on decisions I made with a single phone call. And yet my cousin was standing in my office like my keeper, trying to make me swear I wouldn’t do something reckless.
Gianni wasn’t afraid of me. That was his flaw. And, occasionally, his value.
“I’ll call if I need anything,” I promised, my tone flat.
He didn’t accept it. “And you won’t get into trouble.”
I almost smiled. It didn’t reach my eyes. “Trouble finds me.”
“Atlas.”
I exhaled slowly, like I was releasing something heavy from my chest. “Fine. I won’t get into trouble.”
Gianni’s eyebrows rose, like he didn’t believe I could even say the words without choking on them.
“And I’ll call you,” I added.
He nodded, satisfied, but still wary, like he expected me to break the promise the second he turned his back. “Good. Because Mikayla’s already texted me twice. She’s counting. If I don’t show up, I’ll be sleeping in the garage with the dog.”
“You don’t have a dog.”
“Exactly,” and he pointed at me. “See? That’s the level of suffering I’m dealing with.”
I didn’t respond. I watched him. His energy was too bright for my office. Too alive. Too normal. Like he belonged in a different world than mine. I wondered if maybe marriage had made him soft.
He stepped backward into the hall, still staring. “Call me.”
I gave him a look that could’ve stripped paint.
Gianni smiled anyway. “I’m serious.”
“I heard you.”
He finally turned and walked away, still muttering to himself as he got into the elevator.
The door shut.
And the building fell back into silence.
I stood from my chair and crossed to the window, looking out over Tuscany. It was already midday and the streets were teeming with the usual swell of vibrant tourists and those who made Tuscany their home.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
It was Marcello, no doubt checking in because he knew Gianni wasn’t with me.
I ignored it.
Because my main concern right now wasn’t business. It wasn’t the docks. It wasn’t the men still scrambling to cover the tracks of yesterday’s mess.
It was Neve Trimboli.
The girl who should have died fifteen years ago, and somehow hadn’t.
I turned from the window, grabbed my keys, and left without another thought.
The drive out of the city wasn’t long, but it felt longer with my mind working the way it was.
I couldn’t get her out of my head.
She was a monster.
Or she was becoming one.
And the thought didn’t repel me.
It pulled.
I didn’t like questions with no answers. I didn’t like loose ends. I didn’t like anything I couldn’t control.
And Neve Trimboli was all three.
The moment she’d dragged that knife across the man’s throat, something inside me had gone still.
It was shock and recognition. But more than that, I had watched a future I hadn’t expected.
A future where she didn’t die quietly.
A future where she might one day decide the world owed her blood.
Including mine.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel.
I told myself I was going to her house to observe her.
But the truth was uglier.
I wanted to see her again.
I wanted to watch her move in daylight. Watch her breathe. Watch her try to pretend she was normal, after what she’d done.
And I wanted to catch her off guard.
Not because I enjoyed the idea of frightening her.
Because I needed to know if she could be surprised at all.
A woman like that… a woman who killed with that kind of precision… shouldn’t be easy to approach.
If she was, then something was wrong.
If she wasn’t, then I’d have my answer.
I turned off the main road and into the quieter part of town. The streets narrowed. The buildings got older. The air felt heavier, like it carried the history of every secret ever buried there.
Then I drove onto the cul-de-sac.
Her street.
The old Volvo rattled up the quiet street, the same way it had the first time I came here, my eyes already lifting to the small house at the end.
For a second, it looked normal.
Small. Quiet. Forgettable.
But then something snagged in my vision.
Her garden.
It was crushed.
The plants were flattened like someone had stomped through them with purpose. Leaves shredded. Stems snapped. Soil torn up in patches that looked like feet had dug in and shoved off.
I pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
The silence that followed was thick. Wrong.
I got out.
The air felt different when I stepped onto her path, like the street itself knew something I didn’t want to admit yet. I moved slower, scanning the ground, the gate, the porch.
There was dirt smeared across the stones, like something had been dragged.
My pulse dropped into a colder rhythm.
I reached the door. It was ajar.
A woman like Neve didn’t leave her door ajar. Not after what happened yesterday.
I pressed the door with one finger. It gave instantly. The sound it made—low, drawn-out—felt like a warning breathed into my ear.
Inside, the house smelled like violence.
A chair was overturned. A table shoved sideways. A vase had shattered across the floor, glittering shards spread like diamonds.
There was a smear of blood along the wall. It was small, fresh.
My control cracked. Just a clean fracture down the center of something that was usually unbreakable. I stepped further in, boots crunching glass. I crouched, pressed two fingers to the smear. It was warm.
The room narrowed. The air exhaled.
Someone had been here. Someone had taken her.
I straightened slowly. There was a zip-tie on the floor.
There were scuff marks near the doorframe.
A drag pattern toward the exit.
She had fought. Of course she had. Neve didn’t go quietly. She was no longer that person.
But the evidence said it anyway.
She lost.
I stood in the wreckage of her small life, and something old and violent unfurled in my chest.
It wasn’t concern. Nor guilt. But possession.
Neve Trimboli was my problem. She was my decision, my loose end.
And someone else had stepped into that space like they had the right.