Epilogue
Spreadsheets. Inventories. Shipment schedules.
The office feels sterile after the hospital. Efficient. The way it should be.
The restaurant won’t open for another four hours—just enough time to reestablish order. Rico’s disappearance has left gaps, and gaps invite questions. The LaRiccias are animals, but they manage their chaos well. Without Rico, certain arrangements have become… precarious.
My phone vibrates. Father. Again.
I let it ring three times before answering. Never the first. Never the last. Power is a rhythm, and rhythms must be controlled.
“Giovanni.”
“Your cousin is missing.” No greeting. No preamble.
“So I’ve heard.”
I shift a document one inch to align it with the edge of my desk.
“Three days now. His credit card was used for a private charter to Thailand. All his men went with him. His girls too.”
I make a sound that could mean anything. Agreement. Disinterest. Containment.
“He didn’t tell anyone. Not his father. Not me.”
“Rico has always been impulsive.” I check my watch. “Perhaps he needed a vacation.”
Silence. My father measures tone the way other men measure pulse.
“You saw him last,” he says finally. “At the estate.”
“Briefly. He was hosting a party I had no interest in attending.”
Another silence. He’s weighing what I’m not saying.
“If you know something—”
“I know Rico LaRiccia thinks rules don’t apply to him.” I study my fingernails. Perfect half-moons. “He always has.”
“Luca is asking questions.”
Of course he is. Rico’s father. The man who once ordered my kidnapping.
“And what answers are you providing?”
My father’s breathing shifts—shorter, heavier. Contained anger. “The truth. That his son is an impulsive piece of shit who decided Thailand was more important than family obligations.”
I almost smile. “And he believes that?”
“For now.”
The phrase lingers. For now means we have time. Time to make the story real.
“Let me know if there’s anything I should do.” The obedient son. The practiced voice of neutrality.
“Stay in Riverview. Handle your business. Let me worry about the LaRiccias.”
I end the call and open my laptop. Rico’s phone still pings from Bangkok every twelve hours. His social media is active—photos with women whose faces are conveniently blurred. Pre-death content, reworked with AI and queued to post automatically.
A dead man living his best life on Instagram.
I close the laptop.
Outside my window, Riverview continues its mundane existence.
People who have no idea how close they came to becoming collateral in a quiet war.
A war I may have started anyway.
My phone vibrates. Not my father this time.
Patient discharged this morning. Private transportation arranged as requested.
I delete the message.
She’s gone. As she should be.
I return to my spreadsheets. Order. Control. The only things that matter.
Luca’s suspicion is like a gas leak—silent, invisible, fatal if ignored. Four people know the truth.
Dom won’t talk. Ricky won’t talk. I certainly won’t.
And Emmaleen Rourke is—
A knock.
I look up.
Time stops.
She’s standing in the doorway like a glitch in the simulation. Not in. Not out. Hovering between intrusion and invitation.
Another thrift-store tragedy: lavender cardigan with two different buttons, a floral dress in a color that can’t commit to peach or pink, combat boots that have survived things most soldiers haven’t.
A canvas tote with a faded slogan about saving something—bees, trees, humanity—something destined to die anyway.
It’s a performance of carelessness so deliberate it borders on strategy. Every mismatched thread a manifesto. Every scuff, a declaration of defiance.
Her hair is in that same disobedient knot, strands escaping like they have better places to be. Freckles in full rebellion. Skin pale, translucent under the office lights, blue veins tracing a map of things I shouldn’t be looking at.
And the wound.
A precise, medic’s row of stitches—still red, still raw. Six days is not long enough to heal what was done.
Six days was only long enough for me to bury her.
“You left me money,” she says, voice steady despite the tremor in her fingers, “but neglected to leave clothes. Had to bribe a nurse for scrubs.”
She gestures down her body with a sweep that catches on a dangling thread. “Then, because I’m broke, I went to the thrift store. Yes, I’m aware this isn’t your aesthetic. Tragic. Deal with it.”
“Broke?” I snort. “You’re not broke.”
“I am broke.” She lifts the case like it’s evidence. “I didn’t spend a penny of this. Won’t spend a penny of this. You know why?”
“Let me guess—you’re about to tell me.”
She walks in—uninvited, of course—and slams the case onto my desk. The metallic echo fractures the stillness. My papers shift. My order fractures.
“Because,” she says, leaning forward, palms flat, nails bitten to the quick, “I’m not for sale.”
Her eyes are sharper than they should be for someone who almost died—green glass catching fire.
“Double or nothing,” she says. “I’d like to play again.”
The absolute fucking audacity.
“Are you insane?” My voice is ice. Even. Controlled. The kind of calm that precedes a kill shot. “You’re going to ruin everything.”
“Am I?” A challenge disguised as a question.
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
She doesn’t blink.
“You’re going to get me killed.”
Still nothing.
“You’re going to start a war that will—”
“You stole from me.”
The interruption hits harder than a slap. I stop mid-sentence, air slicing through my teeth. Not fear—recognition.
“Excuse me?”
“You disappeared into the night while I was still unconscious.” Her voice climbs, but not in volume—in conviction.
“Left me with notebooks full of—what even? Sentiments? Feelings? Little scraps of your goddamn soul scrawled between demerits and points?” She taps the desk—once, twice, again—each word a precise strike.
“And then you vanish. Like I was some… limited-edition experiment that expired.”
She straightens, shoulders back, chin lifted. The same stance she used the first day—back when she thought she could bluff me. The stance of someone who refuses to fold.
“Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Mob Boss,” she says, voice steady now, dangerous in its restraint. “I’ve lost everything in the past five years—”
“No.” My voice comes out harder than intended. Louder. The kind of loud that earns witnesses. I lower it fast. “You didn’t.”
“Oh really?”
“I just gave you—”
“You just paid me off!”
“That was the deal!”
“No!” she insists. “That was the deal before you left me this case filled with money and feelings. Before you cataloged my heath on a minute-by-minute basis. Before you wrote sarcastic notes in shaky but still perfect handwriting, about how scared you were when I was dying!”
“Oh,” I huff out a breath. “You wish.”
“I wish? You are deliberately trying to terrify me, Emmaleen. Selective hearing is not an attractive quality, Emmaleen. Breathing is not optional, Emmaleen! You like me. No. You more than like me. You…”
I shake my head at her. “Don’t even try it.”
“You—”
“Emmaleen,” I hold up a hand. “I’m fucking serious. Don’t say it.”
“You want to dress me.”
I crack a smile.
“You want to dress me up in your stupid clothes inside stupid color-coded garment bags and control me. You want to… make me get my hair done, and my nails done, and turn me into something… yours. And… and… well, it’s not up to you.
” She lifts her chin up, folds her arms across her chest. Looks me straight in the eyes.
“It’s up to me. My chains, my choice. Double or nothing. I want to play again.”
I sit down and lean back in my chair, creating distance between us.
This woman with her ridiculous cardigan and unwashed hair is the single most dangerous thing in my life right now.
More dangerous than Rico’s body buried on my family’s property in Bucks County.
More dangerous than his father’s inevitable questions.
The mathematical part of my brain calculates outcomes, probabilities, risk factors. The emotional part—the part I’ve spent decades suppressing—whispers something else entirely.
I could keep her.
I could wake up to that messy hair on my pillow.
I could read her my mother’s poetry.
I could show her Venice in spring when the wisteria blooms.
I could have something real.
And then I’d get her killed.
If not by Luca LaRiccia’s men, then by someone else. Someone trying to get to me. Someone I’ve wronged. Someone looking for leverage.
In my world, love isn’t a strength. It’s a death sentence.
“Seven more days,” I agree. The words are businesslike. Precise. A match struck for expediency. “But only because it’s the quickest way to get rid of you. And when I win, you take the fucking money, you get on the fucking plane, and you never come back.”
She extends her hand across my desk, disrupting my papers further. “Deal.”
I shake it. “Deal. You start tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. And this time, if you’re one second late, I will ruin you.”
“We’ll see,” she says, turning away with a swing of her hair. “We’ll fucking see.”
She will lose this time. I’ll make it so.
I will lie, cheat, and steal the margins of the world to ensure she walks away.
This is how I save her.
By making her hate me enough to leave.