Chapter 27
GIOVANNI
Every lead I have chased on Vittorio Greco in the last two weeks has turned to smoke in my hands.
The man moves like water through cracks, never where I expect him to be.
Every time I think I’ve cut off his escape, he surfaces somewhere else, untouched, wearing that slick, knowing smirk that tells me he still thinks he is untouchable.
I have been living on little sleep. I cannot afford the luxury of rest, not now.
Not when Liliana is carrying my children.
My heirs. I have doubled security, stationed men at every gate, every hall, every blind corner of the estate.
Tomasso has run background checks so deep that no one enters this house—not the maids, not the delivery boys, not the men who unload bread from the trucks—without me knowing exactly where they have been for the last ten years.
Greco will not get close to her. Not while I breathe.
She told me she loved me. Sat in front of me, her voice rough with fever, and gave me words I had not been waiting for but wanted all the same.
She has given herself to me fully, completely, in ways she does not even realize.
And I have let that mean something. I have let it anchor me, even in the middle of this war.
This morning, Tomasso walks into my office without a word and sets a folder in front of me. His expression is unreadable.
“What is it?”
“Something you need to see,” he says, dropping the folder. He leaves quietly.
I flip the folder open. At first, it is numbers.
Bank statements. Transfer records. Half a million euros, funneled through shell accounts over the course of weeks, ending in an offshore fund tied to the money my father lost in Palermo.
Money I traced to Renato Marchelli when I first took this chair.
But this time, there is another name on the paper. Liliana’s.
It is there in black and white. Accounts she had access to. Transactions tied to her signature. The dates overlap with when the funds vanished, the funds Renato embezzled from my father’s Palermo operation, half a million euros siphoned through an account she allegedly controlled.
I turn the page.
A photograph stares back at me. It is grainy, time-stamped nearly a year ago. A bar in Naples. Vittorio Greco sits at a corner table, his posture relaxed, his smile sharp.
Across from him is Liliana. She's seated beside Vittorio, her face pale but composed, her hands folded tightly in her lap. The timestamp is months before our marriage, when her father, Renato, was still my father's enforcer.
She looks younger in the image. Her hair falls loose over her shoulders, and there is a softness in her face I do not see now. She is looking at him, not with fear, but something quieter. Curiosity, maybe.
My jaw tightens. I know that place. One of Greco’s bars.
Another photo. A wider shot. Renato is there too, leaning back in his chair, talking while Greco’s eyes stay fixed on her.
I set the pictures down, my hand flat on the desk.
I have been breaking my back to hunt this man, to keep him away from her, to cut off every avenue he could use to get close. And here she is in a photograph, sitting at his table. Money missing from my father’s accounts, her name attached to the trail.
I do not care if the meeting was before our marriage. I do not care if she thinks it means nothing now. She did not tell me. Not about the meeting. Not about the money.
She told me once she knew him only as her father’s friend.
That was all. She stood in front of me and said there was no association worth speaking of, that she had nothing to give me that could help take him down.
She had that stillness about her, that careful way of measuring what she allowed me to see.
The room tilts as rage and heartbreak collides, a storm tearing through me. This can’t be true, but the evidence is merciless, a noose tightening around my heart. My hands shake as I clutch the photo, her face blurring through my anger, each detail a wound to my jagged heart.
Without thinking, I’m on my feet, the folder in my grip, my boots pounding the marble as I head for the bedroom.
She’s in there, perched on the chaise by the window, a book in her lap, her face soft in the golden glow. The sight of her, so serene, so untouched by the chaos in my chest, ignites a fury I can’t contain. I stop in the doorway, the photo trembling in my hand.
She looks up when I enter, her mouth curving faintly, the kind of small smile she gives easily these days. I don't return it.
What is this?” I growl, my voice low, a blade honed to cut.
I thrust the folder toward her, the paper crinkling as she takes them, her brows drawing together. “You, with Vittorio, at his bar. Months before we married. And your name, tied to the money Renato stole from my father. Explain it.”
She looks down at the papers. I watch her eyes track the photo, numbers, the dates, the places where her name sits neatly alongside the accounts.
“You are tied to the money your father stole from mine,” I say. “Half a million euros. Do you know what that looks like to me?”
Her lips part, but no sound comes. Her hands are frozen, and her silence is a knife twisting in my gut.
“Say something,” I demand, my voice rising, the anger breaking free like a flood. “You sat with him? You helped him fund Renato’s betrayal, knowing what it would cost me?”
She says nothing. The silence stretches, and the more it does, the harder it gets to keep my voice even. “You could explain this. Right now. You could tell me why your face is in that photograph and your name is in those accounts. But you sit there like you owe me nothing.”
She looks away. That is answer enough.
“Do you know what this looks like to me?” My voice is sharp, cutting through the space between us.
“You, sitting in front of Greco in one of his bars. You, tied to stolen money. You lied to me the day I asked you about him. You lied when you could have given me something I could use to end this. And now I am supposed to believe you are innocent because you sit there looking at me like your silence is an answer.”
Her lips press together, her eyes unreadable. She signs, barely moving her hands. I cannot tell you.
I stare at her, and something cold moves through me. “You cannot, or you will not?” My voice drops lower. “Do you have any idea what that makes me think? That maybe this whole quiet, broken act is just that. An act. Was that just a ploy to make me pity you, to let you slip under my guard?”
Her eyes glisten, a tear slipping down her cheek, but I’m too far gone, the betrayal a fire consuming me.
“Did you connive with Renato and Vittorio to get to me? To weaken me from the inside while I was grieving my father? Maybe you have never been as powerless as you want me to believe. Maybe you and your father and Greco have been playing a long game, and I am the mark.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, a flash of something like disbelief in them, but it is gone too quickly.
“Tell me I am wrong,” I say. “Look me in the eye and tell me you did not sit in that bar knowing exactly who he was. Tell me you have not been keeping me close so you can feed him whatever he wants to know. Tell me you did not help your father rob my family blind.”
Her hands stay in her lap. Still.
“You have been sitting in this house, in my bed, letting me protect you, letting me trust you. Letting me believe you were mine while you have been playing me all along.” My chest tightens, the fury and something colder mixing until I can hardly tell them apart.
She shakes her head once, but it is small.
I press on, the words landing heavier than I mean them to. “What about when you told me you loved me? Was that also a lie? Was that just part of it? Letting me think I had something real with you while you were keeping his secrets?”
Her fingers twitch, as if she might sign something, but she doesn’t.
“You let me love you,” I say, my voice low, sharp, unrelenting. “You let me give you every piece of myself while you kept this in your pocket. While you sat across from me knowing you were hiding something that could help me take down the man who has been circling my family for years.”
She looks at me then, and there is something in her eyes I cannot name. Not guilt. Not quite hurt. Something else entirely.
I want her to speak. I want her to deny it so forcefully that I feel like a fool for ever doubting her. I want her to fight me, to demand I take it back. But she just sits there, her silence wrapping around her like a wall.
“Nothing?” My voice is low, but the weight behind it is sharp enough to cut.
I lean forward, closing the space between us until there’s nowhere for her to look but at me.
“After everything I have given you, after every time I have stood between you and the people who would see you destroyed, you cannot give me that?”
Her fingers curl against her knees, slow and deliberate, as if the motion itself is the only thing keeping her still. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t sign. The silence stretches, heavy enough that I can hear the steady tick of the clock on the wall.
A muscle in my jaw pulls tight. She could end this with one answer. One truth. Instead, she sits there as though she is made of stone.
The knock at the doorway slices into the tension, but it does not break it.
“Gio.” Tomasso’s voice is clipped, no room for hesitation. “We have movement on Greco. It’s urgent.”
I do not look away from her. My voice is colder when I speak. “We are not finished.”
Her head lifts then, her eyes finding mine, and something shifts in the air between us. There is no guilt there, no fear, but there is something there. Something guarded, unyielding, something that makes me want to strip it away until I know what it hides.
I hold her gaze a beat too long. Then I turn and walk out before I decide whether to drag the truth from her now or after I’ve dealt with Greco.
But the image follows me.
Her, sitting rigid in that chair. The photograph between us is like a wound neither of us is touching. The silence she wrapped around herself like armor, daring me to break it.
It stays with me as I cross the hall, as I pass Tomasso, as we move toward the next fight.
And it does not let go.