20. Gianna
GIANNA
W e don’t speak as we walk back to the south wing.
The corridor feels long, and the hush of the house presses in around us like it knows what we’re carrying.
Our footsteps are quiet on the tile, but the silence between us isn’t. I can feel it twisting, reshaping itself with every breath I take and don’t release.
When we reach the bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the floor, hands folded in my lap like I’m waiting for a verdict.
Dante moves around the room without a word.
Loosens the buttons at his collar.
Shrugs off his jacket.
But he doesn’t leave.
I think that’s what undoes me.
Not the suspicion in his voice earlier.
Not the way his hand brushed my cheek like he still wanted to protect me from something.
It’s this.
The fact that he’s still here.
"I didn’t want to believe it," I say quietly.
He turns.
Watches me.
"I thought Rafa was trying to protect me. That marrying into this family was a way to make sure I was safe. Untouchable."
My throat tightens. "But he wanted me here. Too much. He was too... certain. About you. About the Salvatores. About what I needed to do."
I shake my head, slow and bitter.
"He said I’d come to love the name eventually. That I’d understand why it had to be you. And I believed him, because it sounded like care. Like loyalty."
I swallow.
The pressure behind my eyes is unbearable.
"But it wasn’t about me. It never was. He wanted me here because it gave him access. Because if I was close to you, then he was close to all of it. Every route. Every safehouse. Every crack in this family’s foundation."
Dante doesn’t speak.
He sits beside me, close but not touching.
"I think he used me," I whisper. "I think he always did."
The words come out strangled.
I bite my lip, but it’s already too late.
The sob slips loose, raw and guttural.
I press my hands to my face, trying to stop it, trying to contain the thing unraveling inside me.
He reaches for me, slow and certain.
One arm goes around my back, the other gently pulls my hands away.
He doesn’t ask me to stop.
Doesn’t tell me it’s okay.
He just holds me.
I cry harder than I mean to.
Into his shoulder, into the quiet space between his heart and mine.
And when the tears finally run dry, when my body goes slack with exhaustion, he shifts only to lay me down.
His fingers find my hair, smoothing it back with a patience that feels older than anything I’ve known in this house.
He doesn’t leave.
Doesn’t retreat behind duty or distance.
He lies beside me, one arm beneath my head, the other tracing gentle circles across my shoulder until the rhythm pulls us both under.
It’s a while later when my eyes fly open at the sound of knocking on the door. He wakes up just a minute after I do.
I tense first, but it is not the kind of knock that means danger.
Not the three-rap code of a guard or Luca’s sharper rhythm.
It is lighter.
Almost uncertain.
Then I hear the soft voice on the other side, barely a whisper.
"Mama?"
Dante sits up immediately, grabbing his discarded shirt and pulling it on, still half-buttoned as he crosses the room.
I wrap the sheet around myself and gather my robe, heart already flipping into a different rhythm.
When the door swings open, both girls are standing there.
Arietta with one braid undone, Alessia clutching a stuffed lion to her chest.
"Can we sleep with you?" Alessia asks, and it takes all the composure I have not to dissolve entirely.
Dante doesn’t hesitate.
He reaches for them both and lifts one under each arm, letting them cling to his sides like small vines, their limbs wrapped around him.
He walks them to the bed where I’ve already pulled back the cover, and they tumble in, breathless with joy.
They smell like rosewater shampoo and clean linen.
Arietta burrows into my side.
Alessia presses herself against Dante, already half asleep.
There is no war in this room.
No codes.
No bloodlines.
Just this small, strange thing we have built.
I don’t know how to name it without sounding like I’m tempting fate.
So, would it still be the end if we chose to survive it together, if this… if I allowed this to be my real family instead of mourning over the brother who may have sold me off?
Later, after stories and a tray of warm milk and honey fetched silently by one of the night staff, we sit at the long dining table under the veranda, eating simple food in our nightclothes.
The light is golden.
The laughter is low.
I can barely taste anything on the plate, not because the food is bland but because this peace is so sharp it steals the rest of my senses.
Dante carves meat for the girls without speaking.
I pour a second glass of wine I won’t drink.
Arietta makes a face when her sister drops rice into the sauce.
It is normal.
It is perfect.
It is heartbreaking.
I go to bed with them after, one girl on either side of me, small hands tangled in the sleeves of my nightgown.
Dante kisses my forehead before returning to the master suite.
I think he does it so I can pretend this is what it would look like if there were no war waiting beyond the gate.
I let him.
Sleep comes in waves, and somewhere in the tide of it, I dream of my father’s study.
The old scent of ink and ash.
The map he used to keep hidden behind the false panel.
And the seal I was never allowed to break.
When I wake, it is still early.
Dante is already gone. The girls are dressed and out the door with their nanny before I’ve even tied the sash on my robe.
I eat toast I don't want.
I reread the same page of a book four times without comprehension.
I wait until the house feels still again.
Until the men are in meetings and the women are at their tasks.
Then I get out of the Salvatore home and take a taxi to the old Rossi estate.
My chest clenches when we reach and I get down after paying the driver.
The Rossi crest is still carved above the gate—weatherworn, flaking at the edges.
The lion we used for public eyes, flanked by olive branches.
My father called it ornamental.
Renato looks the same. "Ma’am, to what do we owe the?—"
"Is Rafa here?" I cut him off before he can call this pleasure.
He shakes his head, as I knew he would.
When my brother becomes busy, he tends to vanish for weeks at an end.
With a little nod, I step inside, and he leaves me to it.
The rooms we used to fill with strategy and ceremony now echo with absence.
But I have a faint idea where I need to go, and head straight for the study.
The desk is still there, heavy and old, the lock on the bottom drawer rusted but intact.
I pick it easily.
Rafa himself taught me how when I was twelve.
Inside: one rolled schematic of old trade routes, four spare bullets, a sealed envelope labeled UM-N4 .
My hands tremble as I open it.
Three printed pages in faint Rossi syntax.
The formatting alone tells me enough.
I’ve seen it before; once, years ago.
My father called it contingency documentation.
The date on the files predates Luca’s rise.
My father’s name isn’t listed.
But it doesn't have to be.
His presence is all over the structure: the way he outlined dummy shipments, fallback shells, coded port handlers listed under made-up syndicates.
It’s a ghost-map of the infrastructure beneath the Rossi name.
Heart full of dread, I make my way to the north wing archives.
The doors open without sound.
The deeper I go, the colder it gets. It smells of mildew, rust, paper left too long in air that doesn’t move.
I pass crates stamped with the original crest.
Scrolls from smuggler registries.
Ledgers of bribes paid in currencies no country claims.
And then I find a folder tucked behind one of the legal drawers on the second row.
It reads OPERATION UMBER .
The ink is black.
No flourish.
No seal.
Inside are four pages with my father’s signature with old stalwarts like the Lombardi senior, cold in its phrasing.
Strategic relocation of assets.
Rerouting of high-risk shipments through neutral syndicates.
Back-channel transport vessels registered to shell identities I’ve seen on freight logs, but never tied to a single port.
At the bottom of the final page is a third annotation. Initials: R.R . But not in Rafa’s handwriting.
This one is sharper.
Harsher.
The lettering belonged to the man who taught Rafa to write that way.
My father.
And beside it—not a date, not a seal—but a crest drawn in faint ink.
Not the lion.
The hawk.
The private Rossi sigil.
The one he used on things not meant for courtrooms or council rooms.
The one he stamped on blood money.
It takes everything in me not to drop the folder.
Because if someone is invoking Operation Umber now—rerouting shipments, activating shell companies, pulling ghost names like Silvano out of retirement—then they’re using my father’s old world to build something new.
And the infrastructure isn’t Salvatore.
It’s Rossi.
I sink back against the stone wall, breath shallow, the pages fluttering in my lap like they know what they carry.
If Rafa’s tied to this—if he’s using our father’s buried systems, the names and routes that were meant for wartime only—then he’s not trying to protect the bloodline.
With no inkling about how I do it, I somehow manage to get out of the estate, into another taxi, and go home.
My intention is singular: I need to find Valentina.
It comes as a relief when a maid tells me she’s in the east solar.
Breaking into a run, I barge inside, and she looks up to see me in my disheveled state.
Surprise shines in her eyes.
"Gianna," she says, her voice even. "I wasn’t expecting?—"
I hold up the folder.
Her eyes flick to it.
Still, she does not stand. "Close the door."
I do, and hand her the files to study.
"I found these in the old Rossi archives," I say. "Filed deep. Behind legal redundancies. Classification: UM-N4."
She hums softly as she goes through all the details.
"It’s contingency documentation," I continue. "Signed by my father. Coded in the old syntax. Routes I haven’t seen since before the alliance."
"So this is the elusive Operation Umber."
I blink. "You know it?"
"I’ve heard of it." Her voice is careful. "I was a teenager when the old men spoke about it. Never in front of us. But...close enough."
I study her.
"Your father?"
The irony still isn’t lost on Nuova Speranza that Valentina’s father was killed by the men of the man she married.
But like much else in our world, the reason often justifies the cause, albeit in twisted ways.
Valentina nods.
"He wasn’t a strategist. Not one of the dons. But he handled sensitive tasks. Quiet favors. He worked for whoever paid him—Rossi, Biancavilla, even the Calabrians once. By the time the Salvatores rose, he was already aligned. My education came from that shift."
"So, you’ve seen this kind of thing before."
"Not this exact plan. But the shape of it, yes." Her eyes drop to the final page. I tap the symbol at the bottom. "This crest isn’t public. It was my father’s private mark. The hawk, not the lion."
She nods once, slowly.
"I think someone’s reactivating the routes," I tell her. "Blacksite holdings. Syndicate-safe shipping corridors. Even the courier chain. I got these papers through one of them."
Valentina’s expression tightens. "It wasn’t supposed to be used unless the existing ruling family was on the edge of collapse."
"Someone thinks we’re there."
She finally reaches for the top page, fingers barely brushing the corner.
"This system was locked down after your father died. There were people who still knew the old ways, but most were absorbed, or retired."
"Or killed."
"Or killed," she agrees.
I look at her. "Would Rafa have known about this?"
She exhales slowly, visibly choosing her words.
"He was curious. Even as a boy. Always wanted to sit in on council meetings. He resented being kept out of the ledger rooms. I remember your father saying Rafa asked too many questions."
"But did he have access?"
"Not officially. Not even when your father was alive."
My voice lowers. "But after?"
She nods once.
"If he found someone who still remembered. Someone who didn’t fold into the Salvatores’ structure. Someone loyal only to your father...it’s possible."
The air in the room seems to cool.
"If he’s using Operation Umber," I say, "he’s not just building something new. He’s borrowing legacy…"
Valentina stares at the page in front of her.
"Then he’s not the only one. Because someone had to teach him how to read this."
I nod.
"I think he found someone who never left," I murmur.
Valentina doesn’t contest that.
I move toward the papers again.
"You still love him," she says.
I don’t answer.
She doesn’t need me to, but she does need something else.
"I will be informing the brothers, Gianna. There is no way out of this except through."
She’s right, of course.
My eyes start to hurt again, so I look away.
"Yes. Do what you must. I have to go."
Before I leave, her voice cuts through the silence again—quieter this time.
"If Operation Umber is awake...someone has decided the rules don’t apply anymore. Not ours. Not theirs. They aren’t resisting. They’re rebuilding. Choose your side before it’s too late, little dove."