Epilogue #2
Vincenzo exhales a harsh breath. The tension bleeds out of his frame, but his hand immediately drops to my thigh. His long fingers grip my leg through the thick wool, a grounding tether. He touches me like he is verifying I am still safe, still here, still his.
I reach down and press my palm flat against the warm center of his chest, feeling the slow, heavy rise of his breath through the cotton of his shirt.
"I'm fine," I murmur quietly, my voice meant only for his ears. "He was just looking."
"He doesn't get to look," Vincenzo grunts, his jaw locking tight. "Nobody does. You belong to me."
"I know," I soothe, dragging my nails lightly over the cotton above his heart.
The action smooths the feral edge from his face.
His pupils dilate, swallowing the dark irises beneath.
He is so incredibly responsive to my touch, a man starved for connection, finally finding the one frequency he can tolerate.
My warm amber scent overrides the sterile noise of his world.
Matteo turns off the stove. The clatter of plates echoes in the large room.
"Eat," Matteo orders, sliding a massive platter of eggs, thick-cut bacon, and charred tomatoes onto the center of the island.
The domesticity of the scene hits me again, a strange, surreal wave.
I spent the last four years building a life with a man who smiled brightly, wore tailored suits to his corporate job, and then quietly drained my entire life savings of sixty thousand dollars to cover his gambling debts.
A civilian. A supposedly safe man who proved to be a coward and a thief.
Now, I am sitting in a fortress surrounded by mafia enforcers who routinely end lives before lunch, and I have never felt steadier.
Their violence is visible. Their danger is honest. Whatever betrayal is hiding in this house, it is not wearing Vincenzo’s face.
These men wear their violence on their sleeves, but their loyalty is absolute.
They are monsters to the outside world, but to the women they claim, they are impenetrable shields.
I pull a plate toward me and start scooping food onto it. I make a second plate and shove it directly into Vincenzo's chest.
"Eat," I command, mimicking Matteo's tone note for note.
Vincenzo stares at the plate, then stares at me. A faint, rusty sound escapes his throat. It takes me a full second to realize it is a laugh. A genuine, quiet laugh from a man who hasn't found anything amusing in a decade.
He takes the plate. "Yes, ma'am."
We eat in a comfortable, loaded silence.
The kitchen fills with the quiet clinking of silverware and the low voices of the brothers discussing logistics.
They talk about deliveries and shift rotations, nothing past the kitchen walls.
They do not mention the Bellanti probe that recently tested the gates.
They keep the violence locked outside the kitchen walls, preserving this sacred, domestic space.
More importantly, Vincenzo says nothing about the encrypted data we found in the underground vault.
The encrypted file.
The devastating mathematical pattern that points somewhere it should not, to elder-level clearance only the most trusted hands in this family hold. The data is a ticking time bomb in my head. I know the shape of the truth. Vincenzo knows it too.
But he keeps his mouth shut, eating his food with mechanical precision. He is protecting his family from a civil war until the proof is physical and undeniable. He carries the suspicion alone for now, a man holding his breath under a crumbling sky.
I shift my leg, pressing my knee firmly against the outside of his thigh. A silent message. You aren't carrying it alone anymore.
Vincenzo drops his hand from the counter, finding my knee under the table. His fingers interlock with mine, his grip bone-crushing and desperate. He reads me loud and clear.
Footsteps tap lightly down the hall, a different cadence from the combat boots of the men.
I count the room without meaning to: Matteo at the stove, Reese on her stool with the espresso, Santi's hand on her shoulder, Gemma's mug parked on the marble between two of Matteo's knives, the low hum of women's voices carrying through the open doorway from the war-room hallway.
A family. The Costa women hold the geography of this kitchen as surely as the men hold the perimeter.
Lucia Costa sweeps into the kitchen, visiting from Pine Valley, snow still melting on her shoulders.
She is a striking contrast to the massive, brooding Costa men around her.
Beautiful, sharp-eyed, carrying an air of quiet authority that only the one daughter of a mafia dynasty could possess.
She wears a tailored winter coat and a bright red scarf, bringing a blast of cold, fresh air into the room with her.
"Good morning, heathens," Lucia announces, marching straight to the island. She stops short when she sees me sitting behind Vincenzo.
Her eyes widen, tracking the oversized flannel, the messy state of my hair, and the incredibly territorial way Vincenzo is blocking me against the marble.
"Well," Lucia says, a slow, brilliant smile spreading across her face. "This is new. And overdue."
Vincenzo just grunts, chewing his bacon, ignoring his cousin’s commentary.
"I'm Lucia," she says, extending a neatly manicured hand past Vincenzo's massive shoulder. "You must be the tech specialist who finally broke the machine."
I reach out and shake her hand. Her grip is surprisingly strong. "Imani. And the machine wasn't broken. Just stuck in a loop."
Lucia laughs, a bright, clear sound that cuts through the loaded atmosphere of the kitchen. "I like her. Keep this one, Vincenzo. She's significantly smarter than you are."
"I'm keeping her," Vincenzo states, his voice leaving zero room for debate. He finishes his plate, sets it on the marble, and turns fully toward me. "We're going upstairs."
"I haven't finished my coffee," I protest, though I am already sliding off the stool.
"Bring the cup."
He doesn't wait for me to argue. He wraps his arm securely around my waist, lifting me slightly off my feet, and marches me out of the kitchen. I manage to grab my ceramic mug just before I am hauled away. I hear Lucia's faint laughter echoing behind us, mingling with the low hum of Matteo's voice.
Vincenzo navigates the labyrinthine halls of the Costa compound with the instinctive ease of a man who has paced these floors in his darkest hours.
We move past an ornate chapel with tall oak doors, past a study lined with leather-bound books, and finally climb a wide stone staircase to the second floor.
We walk down a long hallway lined with closed doors. The air up here is cooler, quieter. The domestic noise of the kitchen fades, replaced by the insulated silence of the residential wing.
Vincenzo stops in front of a heavy oak door at the far end of the hall. He pushes it open and guides me inside.
The room is a stark reflection of the man, the rare aboveground space he keeps when he surfaces from the bunker.
Minimalist. Utilitarian. A king-sized bed sits in the center, made with crisp, dark gray sheets.
There is a squat oak dresser, a comfortable leather armchair in the corner, and a wall of reinforced windows looking out over the sprawling, snow-covered training yard behind the main house.
He closes the door, throws the steel deadbolt, and steps into my space.
He takes the empty espresso mug from my hand and sets it on the nearby dresser without looking at it. Then, his hands find my waist. He lifts me effortlessly, carrying me across the room until my back hits the cold glass of the window.
The shock of the cold pane against my spine makes me gasp, but Vincenzo folds his body forward over mine, chest to chest, his warmth bleeding into my skin, sealing me against him.
"Mine," he breathes against the skin of my neck.
His mouth presses to my temple, a rough, desperate friction.
He isn't pushing for sex. This isn't the feral, violent claiming of the War Room table.
This is something deeper, something profoundly emotional that he doesn't have the words to express.
He just needs to feel me breathing. He needs the tactile confirmation that I am real, that I am here, that I chose to stay.
My arms wrap around his broad shoulders, fingers sliding into the short crop of his hair. I pull his head down, burying my face in the crook of his neck, inhaling the clean linen and ozone scent that is starting to feel like home.
"I'm here," I whisper fiercely. "I'm not going anywhere, Vincenzo. You're stuck with me."
"I locked the vault door," he murmurs, the words vibrating against my collarbone. "I cut the power. I trapped you."
“And I fixed the wires,” I remind him, rubbing my thumbs against his tense neck muscles. “I found the access panel. You tore open the service route. We got out. Together.”
He pulls back just enough to look at my face.
His eyes are sharply focused, no dead channel, no noise.
The damaged, touch-averse boy who sat in a hallway for six hours a lifetime ago is quieter now.
The Ghost remains, the spy who lives in the static, but he is tempered, anchored by the amber scent of the woman standing in his arms.
His fingers trace the line of my jaw, gentle and reverent. The calluses on his thumb snag on my skin, a physical reminder of the violence he is capable of, the violence he will unleash on anyone who tries to take me from this room.
I look past his shoulder, out the reinforced window.
Down in the training yard, the winter wind whips the snow into a frenzy. The high stone walls of the compound rise up against the bleak Chicago skyline, topped with iron spikes and 24/7 surveillance cameras. Beyond those walls, the Bellanti family is mobilizing.
Beyond those walls, a decades-long war is grinding toward its next escalation. Vincenzo believes a coordinated strike is coming. And somewhere in this family's oldest, most trusted ring, a ghost is hiding in the data, unaware that the man holding me has caught the first thread of it.
The world outside is a terrifying, chaotic nightmare.
But inside this room, wrapped in the arms of a man who views me as his sole signal in a universe of static, I feel untouchable.
Vincenzo’s mouth brushes the edge of my jaw, close to the spot where a comm earpiece would tuck if I ever ran his perimeter for him.
He breathes against me there. The ragged, panicked man of his past is gone, replaced by the calm, terrifying certainty of a man who finally has something worth killing for.
"Guardami," he murmurs against the shell of my ear.
I lift my eyes to his.
He brings his thumb to the hinge of my jaw and drags it slowly down the line of my carotid, the gold chain at his throat swinging forward to press the cross pendant cold against my collarbone. He stops there.
“Tomorrow,” Vincenzo says quietly, his voice carrying the finality of an executioner’s gavel. “Tomorrow, I start tracing the proof. Tomorrow, I decide what Dominic and Matteo can know without tearing this family apart.”
"I know," I say, meeting his gaze without a shadow of hesitation.
"It will be bloody. It will be violent." His thumb strokes a slow, grounding line along my jaw again. "You stay behind the walls, on a closed system I control, where I can reach you. Do you understand?"
"I understand," I promise him. I will manage the firewalls, secure the digital perimeter, and make sure that when he walks out into the fire, he has a safe harbor to return to.
Vincenzo nods once, satisfied. He leans down and captures my mouth in a slow, deep kiss. It is a promise, a vow, and a brand all at once.
The next strike is waiting at the gates, eager to burn this family to ash.
The ghosts of the past are rising through the data, demanding a toll paid in blood.
But as I stand in the arms of my lethal protector, wrapped in his scent and his absolute devotion, I am at peace. Let them come. Let the whole city burn.
I'm his now, which in this family is the same as belonging to it. And we don't lose.
The End
Dear precious reader, thank you so much for reading Ghost of the Mafia Spy!
Vincenzo Costa walked the limestone walls of his family's compound like a ghost for eight years—a man who weaponized silence—until Imani Tortora's voice cut through the static and dragged him back into his own skin.
Press your spine to the reinforced glass with her as the snow falls over the training yard below and the man who is about to tear his own family apart to expose the traitor strips her bare in the moonlight, carves her name into his bones, and growls sei mia into her throat on the eve of the war that ends everything.
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P.S. If you enjoyed Vincenzo's devotion, then I think you'll enjoy Wrath of the Mafia Soldier too!
Nico Costa is the family's most violent enforcer—a tattooed soldier with twenty years of warfare written across his scarred chest—and the physical therapist whose first clinic the Bellantis firebombed five years ago just became the only thing he's protecting. Flip to the next page for a sneak peek…