Section 35
The Estate
Gia
The Lussari estate materializes from twilight like a fortress dressed in evening wear.
I grip the wheel tighter as I navigate the winding drive. Gravel crunches beneath the tires in a rhythm that sounds too much like applause.
Your man worked for Valenti.
The simplicity of it is what burns. Frank didn’t use violence this time. He placed it on the table like a business card.
My jaw aches from clenching. I force it to relax before I step out of the car. I will not arrive here looking wounded.
The mansion’s stone fa?ade rises ahead, lit warm and deliberate. The kind of place built not to impress—but to endure.
I park. Cut the engine.
Count to three.
Breathe.
Dante stands on the veranda like something carved from restraint. Arms crossed. Silhouette sharp against the amber glow behind him.
He doesn’t move as I approach.
“This is unexpected,” he says.
“For both of us,” I reply, climbing the steps.
He studies my face.
“You look… inconvenienced.”
I almost laugh.
“That’s generous.”
He steps aside.
“Come in.”
Inside, the air is heavy with old money and quiet certainty. Marble floors. Chandeliers that don’t need to prove anything.
Security here isn’t visible.
It’s assumed.
“We can’t afford to downplay Bellini’s men,” Dante says as we walk. “They’re organizing at the south docks.”
“How recently?”
“Forty-eight hours.”
Of course.
Movement catches my eye.
Sylvie sits curled on a velvet settee, hoodie swallowing her frame. If I didn’t suspect he even slept in a three piece suit I’d almost assume it was Dante’s shirt. She rises when she sees me.
“I wondered when you’d show up,” she says.
Not why.
Just when.
“I saw two freight trucks unload at Peterson last night,” she continues. “No inventory verification.”
Peterson.
Dante’s territory.
Dante goes still. “That wasn’t brought to my attention.”
Fractures.
“You’re too pretty to worry about everything,” Sylvie adds lightly.
Dante pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters something violently Italian.
I almost smile.
Almost.
Whiskey appears in my hand without request.
“Frank’s meeting,” Dante says. “It went as expected?”
“Worse.”
I don’t ease into it.
“He brought Bellini. The Morozovs. Made it theatrical.”
“And?”
I hold Dante’s gaze.
“He suggested I should know who I employ.”
Dante’s eyes sharpen.
“The man in the helmet.”
“Yes.”
Sylvie watches me now. Carefully.
“Frank claims he worked for Valenti,” I say evenly. “Framed it as infiltration.”
The words taste wrong in my mouth.
“Interesting timing,” Dante says, swirling his drink. “Frank waits until he needs leverage, then suddenly has concerns about loyalty.”
“Classic Frank,” Sylvie mutters, her fingers tightening slightly around her glass. I don’t think she’s ever met Frank, but she’s not wrong.
I study her face, searching for recognition, for any hint that she might have connected Lucky to her past. There’s a buzzing sound, loud like an angry swarm of bees, and Dante scurries off to check the security cameras.
“How bad?” Sylvie asks once he’s out of earshot.
“Frank claims he was involved in your—” I pause, search for a delicate term, find none. “—extraction.”
Her face goes perfectly still. The kind of stillness that comes from practice rather than peace.
“Oh,” she says finally.
“Did you recognize him?” The question is out before I decide to ask it.
She studies me.
“Yeah, but the vibes were off.”
I blink. That shouldn’t matter.
“Off?”
“Not threatening,” she clarifies. “He wasn’t the one in charge. He didn’t enjoy it.”
“I see.”
“You slept with him,” she says quietly.
It isn’t a question.
I don’t answer.
She exhales. “Oh, honey.”
“I’m not compromised,” I say, a bit too sharp.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Heat flares in my chest. Anger.
At Lucky.
At Frank.
At myself.
“He should have told me,” I say before I can stop it.
The crack.
Sylvie’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”
“I don’t care that he worked for Valenti,” I continue, too controlled now. “We all did things under someone else’s command. That’s not the issue.”
“What is?”
“He chose not to tell me.”
That’s the betrayal.
I let him into my bed.
Into my operations.
Into my—
I stop that thought.
“Did you ask him?”
“That’s beside the point,” I huff.
“So, no.” Sylvie watches in her dangerously perceptive way. “You like him,” she says.
“I tolerate him.”
“You glow when he walks into a room.”
“That’s irritation.”
“Sure.”
I look away.
“We probably shouldn’t tell Dante,” she adds thoughtfully. “He takes ‘touch her and die’ a little too literally.”
“Same,” I mutter.
And that surprises us both.
DeLuca sweeps into the room then, breaking the tension with his typical dramatic timing. Dante looms behind him like a mildly inconvenienced shadow.
“Darling,” he says, kissing the air near my cheek. “Plotting revenge suits you, you’re practically glowing with rage.”
“Sit down,” I say.
I feel watched. Measured.
But not abandoned.
??
Later, alone in the guest room, the composure dissolves.
The door closes.
I don’t move for several seconds.
Then I walk to the window.
The grounds stretch below—manicured in true Lussari fashion, possibly trimmed using a ruler for perfection. My reflection stares back at me in the glass.
Unbreakable.
I press my palm to the cool pane.
I let him touch parts of me that don’t belong to business.
And he decided I didn’t deserve the full story.
I don’t crumble, but something inside me feels… bruised.
Trust is a luxury.
I know that—I was raised on that lesson—but it still stings.
Tomorrow, I’ll be steel again. I’ll devise strategies, counter Frank, box Bellini into a corner so tight he forgets how to breathe. I will stabilize the city.
But tonight, in this borrowed room with its borrowed security, I allow myself one small, private moment of rage—not at Lucky, not even at Frank, but at myself for forgetting the most basic rule of survival:
Everyone has a price.
Everyone has a past.
And no one, absolutely no one, is exactly what they seem.