17. Dante
DANTE
A niggling restlessness wakes me moments past five a.m., and by the force of the unease awaken in my chest, I make my way downstairs barefoot.
But the kitchen light is already on.
Marco stands at the counter in yesterday’s shirt, tie loosened, a travel thermos in one hand and a folder under his arm. His expression tightens when he sees me.
"You’re up early," he says.
"You’re dressed for war."
He doesn’t answer that right away, just sips his coffee.
Then, "One of the satellite storehouses tripped an alert. Surveillance wiped. Rear entry rekeyed sometime before sunrise. Tavo’s on-site, but I was going to swing by."
I study him for a second.
"You think it’s internal."
"I think it’s surgical. And that doesn’t come from outside." Marco grabs his keys. "It’s probably nothing."
"Let me handle it."
He raises an eyebrow. "You volunteering now?"
I step forward, take the folder from under his arm and flip through the first page.
"You’ve been running triage for weeks. Let me take this one."
"You sure you want to jeopardize the luxury life to start in a dead zone south of the river?"
The impulse to show him my middle finger is strong, but I restrain myself and give him a blank stare, no smile.
"I’m sure I need you and Luca to start taking me seriously. Besides, didn’t you say I know the streets better?"
He watches me for a beat too long, then exhales through his nose.
"Don’t fuck it up."
I head back upstairs and push open the bedroom door.
Gianna is already awake and sitting near the window, the silk robe loose around her frame, one leg tucked beneath her, the other stretched out like she owns the morning.
Pale light filters through the curtain and slides across the hollow of her collarbone, the skin still marked faintly from my mouth the night before.
Her coffee cup rests between both hands.
She hasn’t looked at me yet, but I can feel her thoughts pressing into the quiet.
I sit up slowly, watching her for a beat too long before I reach for my shirt.
The motions are careful, automatic, like muscle memory.
I say nothing as I start to dress.
This isn’t the kind of morning that invites small talk.
She speaks before I do.
"You’re leaving."
I pause at the dresser, button half-fastened.
Her voice is even, but there’s something frayed at the edge of it.
She isn’t accusing me.
That’s what makes it worse.
"There’s something I need to handle," I say, turning toward her.
She doesn’t move.
"What kind of something?"
Her question is quiet in its directness.
It lands in the space between us like a stone dropped into water.
I could lie.
I’ve done it before.
But she’s not asking because she wants details.
She’s asking to see if I’ll let her in.
And I can’t.
Not today.
"It’s better if you don’t know," I say.
She nods once and takes another sip of her coffee.
The movement is smooth, but her posture shifts as if she is retreating into herself.
She folds into herself without making a scene.
My heart lurches with how much I want to hold her, explain everything.
But everything is smoke and mirrors right now, and there’s not much to tell unless I’ve gathered all the intel I need to make a point.
The silence feels resigned.
I cross the room and pause at her side.
I want to explain.
I want to tell her this isn’t about mistrust.
It’s about everything else.
About the docks burned to ash, about proving to my brothers that I’m more than the man they let spiral, hoping I’d burn out before I ruined anything important.
This isn’t for them, at least not entirely.
It’s also for me.
For the younger brother no one thought would matter.
For the boy they expected to wear the name without ever earning it.
For the man they didn’t think would survive long enough to take anything seriously.
I touch her jaw, just lightly.
She lets me.
Her skin is warm beneath my fingers, but she doesn’t lean in.
I don’t expect her to.
"I’ll see you tonight," I say, and then leave without lingering.
The car is waiting, and I get in and drive, my mind refocusing on the job at hand. I drive myself.
South of the river, the streets thin into that dead industrial stretch where the buildings sag like old dogs.
This neighborhood doesn’t ask questions if a van idles too long.
One of our satellite storehouses sits here, tucked behind a fenced lot with rusted signage from a company that hasn’t existed in a decade.
We have a problem.
On paper, it’s just a supply delay.
But Marco believes otherwise.
I park at the edge and kill the engine.
One of the floor men—Tavo—waits out front.
He nods as I step out, eyes bouncing from me to the side of the building.
"When did it start?" I ask.
"Late last night. Exterior cam was wiped. Back door re-keyed. We had to go in through the boiler shaft."
"Inside?"
His eyes go wary. "Too clean."
He unlocks the side entrance and I follow him in.
The space is cool, silent.
Inventory sits lined and stacked the way we left it.
Pallets of sealed boxes.
Nothing scorched or cracked open.
But the office smells different.
Too sterile.
Tavo hesitates in the doorway.
I step around him.
The safe’s open.
Not broken into—opened.
No sign of forced entry.
No documents inside.
And on the floor, half tucked beneath the desk like it slid under during a shuffle, is a strip of cloth.
Worn canvas.
Deep green, stitched in a pattern that stops me cold.
It’s a packing cover from a Sicily-based customs run we dismantled six years ago.
I ran one of those convoys.
Only five men knew the marker we used to tag crates with classified contents.
None of those five were supposed to be alive now—two dead, two retired, one gone without a trace.
I crouch, folding the cloth once and slipping it into my inner pocket.
"Who had key access to the safe?" I ask.
Tavo scratches the back of his neck.
"Only Sandro and the guy from records. Sandro’s in Ibiza this week. The other guy...didn’t show."
"Name?"
"Ernesto Carra."
I’ve never heard it.
After taking one last look around the office, I gesture for Tavo to lock it up again.
By the time I return to the estate, the sun is already slipping behind the tree line, dragging a burned haze across the courtyard.
I don’t go to the south wing.
I don’t stop for a drink.
I head straight to the west study.
Luca’s already inside, jacket off, sleeves rolled, hunched over a dossier with a pen between his fingers.
Marco’s at the sideboard pouring two fingers of scotch, his expression unreadable.
I toss the canvas strip onto the table.
It lands with a flat sound.
Luca looks down at it.
Doesn’t touch it.
"Warehouse was intact," I say. "No damage to the cargo. Only the safe. Records are gone. No sign of forced entry."
Marco steps forward and nudges the cloth with the edge of the glass. "Where’d you find it?"
"Tucked under the desk." I sit down. "It’s from the old Sicily runs."
Luca finally lifts the strip, unfolds it.
The green is faded now, but the stitching’s still distinct.
His jaw tightens.
"I know that seal," he mutters. "We used it for high-value transfers. Priority routes. Internal eyes only."
I nod.
"Then someone’s watching those routes again."
"Not someone," Marco says. "Someones."
Luca walks to the far cabinet, unlocks the drawer that stays closed unless things are already sliding sideways.
He pulls out a newer file.
Thin, but not empty.
He lays it flat.
The top page shows a symbol I’ve never seen.
Crude, black-inked, spray-painted across a chain-link fence in what looks like the south district.
A serpent wrapped around a bleeding heart.
Beneath it, a single name.
Il Sangue Nero.
I lean back in my chair.
"We’ve been hearing whispers for weeks," Marco says. "Crews folding too fast. Turf going quiet instead of bloody. No names. No faces. Just clean disruptions."
"Not police?"
"No pattern. No warrants. No contact with narcotics or customs. And no product showing up on the street." He glances at Luca. "It’s surgical."
Luca closes the folder.
"They’re building something. Quietly. Efficiently. Like they’ve done it before."
I look at him. "And you’re only telling me now."
"We didn’t have proof until today," he says.
I nod toward the cloth. "So what is this?"
Luca meets my gaze.
"Proof that whoever’s behind this knows our history. Our tactics. Our internal routes."
The implications settle.
"And you think it’s someone we knew."
Marco answers for him.
"One of the old men who vanished. Disappeared during the border fires, back when we took the southeast."
"There were a lot of bodies in that campaign."
"Not this one," Luca says. "He didn’t go missing in the field. He walked away."
"Who?" I ask.
They share a look.
Luca’s voice is quiet. "We called him Arditi. Not his real name. That was the title the soldiers gave him."
The Daredevil.
"Tracker. Enforcer. Deep logistics. He built smuggling networks for the old capos and dismantled them just as fast when orders shifted. He was loyal. Then he wasn’t."
I look down at the cloth again. The edge is blackened. Cut clean, not torn.
"And you think he’s behind this?"
"We don’t know," Luca says. "But if he’s not leading Il Sangue Nero, someone who trained under him is."
Marco lifts his glass. "Either way, we have a problem."