Chapter 52
Fell In Love With You
THE MAESTRO | Present
Three days.
Three fucking days since the world tore itself apart in that rainy alley. Three days since Hannah Visconti and Vane Davenport became stains on the pavement. Three days since my wife shattered the chemical locks in her mind and remembered every beautiful, devastating thing we ever were.
And in those three days, Selene has barely spoken fifty words.
The high-priced psychiatrist the Syndicate kept on retainer tries to tell me it is a textbook defense mechanism.
I have my hand wrapped around his silk tie, pulling his face inches from mine until he can smell the stale tobacco and dried adrenaline on my skin.
“This is a normal response, Mr. Vitale,” he says, his voice thin with calm. “Given everything she’s endured—”
“Normal?” I growl, the stitches in my side pulling with a fierce, cold bite. “There is nothing normal about what they did to her.”
The doctor’s medical degree doesn’t stop his pulse from hammering against his collar. “She is processing years of manufactured trauma, systematic memory suppression, and profound, buried grief all at once, Mr. Vitale. The mind protects itself through catatonia when the reality is too loud to bear.”
He swallows hard, trying to regain his professional composure. “Give her time.”
Time.
The one concept I have spent my entire life weaponizing or ignoring. Time doesn’t heal a goddamned thing. Time rots. Time turns fresh trauma into jagged, infected scars that eventually poison the bloodstream.
Yet here I am, doing the one thing I have never learned how to do.
Waiting.
Because for the first time in my miserable, violent existence, I am facing an enemy I cannot shoot, stab, or bleed out into submission.
Hannah played her game well.
I glance through the floor-to-ceiling glass of my office toward the courtyard.
Selene is sitting under the ancient olive tree.
She sat there yesterday. And the day before that.
Ever since the extraction team brought us back to the old Vitale Estate—the house where my Mother’s ghost still wanders the hallways, and where my Father eventually followed her into the dark.
A heavy wool blanket is draped over her shoulders despite the thick afternoon heat. She isn’t reading. She isn’t drawing. She stares into the middle distance, watching shadows move across the manicured grass.
My chest tightens. I know exactly what she’s looking at. She’s staring at the space where our child should have been running. A ghost that never got the chance to draw a single breath because of the woman who claimed to love her.
The door of the study clicks open. Kyle steps inside, and the grim set of his jaw tells me the fallout has already reached our gates.
“The leaks worked,” Kyle says without preamble, dropping the folder onto the desk.
“The anonymous data drops we routed through the offshore servers have dismantled the Syndicate’s anonymity.
The Founding Families of the Cosa Nostra are fully exposed to the authorities.
Arms trafficking routes, the synthetic drug pipelines, the political payrolls—it’s all out in the open. ”
I don’t look at the files. “And Hannah’s network?”
“What’s left of it is in ashes,” Kyle responds, leaning against the desk.
“Her safe houses were raided within hours of the leak. But Zagreus… the public is imploding. The Davenport empire was structured as a legitimate charitable foundation for orphaned children. Now the media realizes a monster was using those children as a front for a global trafficking pipeline. The backlash is feral.”
A dark satisfaction flickers in my gut, but it dies. “Good. Let the dead burn. What about the living?”
“That’s the problem,” Kyle says, his tone sharpening.
“With Vane Davenport dead and the central leadership exposed, the power vacuum is causing chaos. Half the Syndicate is fighting over the remaining black-market territories. The other half are liquidating assets and stealing whatever cartel money they can before fleeing the country. Like rabid dogs, I must say. It’s entertaining. ”
“Then we put them down,” I say softly.
“How?” Kyle asks, gesturing to the files.
“The international branches are fragmenting. Their bank accounts are frozen, properties seized, assets being cataloged by NCA task forces. But the blowback is going to hit us, too. Your name is hard-wired into the foundation of the Cosa Nostra. If you let the NCA dig any deeper, the Vitale legacy goes down with them. Your family’s assets, your territories… it all burns.”
I tilt my head back.
“Let it burn,” I say, my eyes on the woman under the olive tree. “Burn the entire fucking throne.”
Kyle blinks, stunned. “Are you out of your mind? You’re exposing your own bloodline to the wolves.”
“I do not belong to the Cosa Nostra, Kyle. I gave up my crown five years ago the second I lost her,” I reply.
“Exposing them isn’t a mistake. If I try to fight the remaining factions traditionally, it turns into a multi-year war of attrition.
More shootouts, more hitmen, more threats lurking in the dark.
Selene cannot survive another war. She needs peace to heal. ”
I lean forward, placing my palms flat on the desk, staring into Kyle’s eyes.
“By feeding the Syndicate’s infrastructure to the authorities, I am letting the law do my cleaning for me.
They will hunt down every single remnant of Vane’s and Hannah’s factions across the globe.
They will lock them away in maximum-security holes where they can never touch us again.
I am using the authority of the state as a shield for my wife. ”
“And the Vitale legacy?” Kyle presses, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The sacrifice?”
“The Vitale legacy is a curse that cost me my first child and nearly hollowed out my wife’s soul,” I spit, the raw venom in my voice cutting through the quiet office.
“If the price for Selene’s safety is the destruction of my Father’s blood-soaked throne, I will light the match myself.
I would watch the entire world turn to ash if it meant she could breathe safely under the sky. ”
Kyle stays silent for a long moment. Finally, he clears his throat. “And your brother? What happens when the NCA come for him?”
A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth. “My brother is smart enough to know when the ship is sinking. He’ll find his own exit.”
But right now? The only thing that exists in my world is sitting under that olive tree.
“The Syndicate exists because Hannah manipulated her way to the top. I thought it was George who wanted the seat at the table. But I guess I failed to see the woman who was behind all this.” Hannah played it nice.
Strategically, if I must say. Using Vane, using George, using my Father, using Adrian and then Corvin.
Every strike of hers was aimed at me. Because I found out about her relationship with my Father. “I want every shell company exposed. And every politician on her payroll dragged into daylight.”
Kyle studies me. “You realize what that does?”
“Yes.”
The man leans back. “The Founding Families won’t like it.”
For the first time all day, I laugh. “The Founding Families can choke.”
Kyle’s mouth twitches. “You want the ledgers released?”
“Everything.” I want the entire rotten foundation ripped apart. “Make it public.”
Kyle whistles softly.
“That’s a declaration of war.”
“No.”
I look toward the garden again. Toward the woman staring at nothing.
“It’s a necessary measure.”
Kyle looks at me for a long beat.
He tosses his silver lighter onto the desk, where it skims across the manila folder containing our ruin.
“Well,” Kyle murmurs, crossing his arms and leaning back.
“It’s a good thing I never planned on retiring with a corporate pension anyway.
Bureaucrats are exceptionally tedious, but they do excel at cage-building.
If we hand them the coordinates, they’ll lock up what’s left of Vane’s Syndicate out of greed for a promotion.
” He glances toward the window, catching Selene beneath the olive tree. His smirk drops.
“You’re making the entire government fight your war, free of charge.”
“They want a clean script to sell to the press,” I say.
“I am giving them the evidence. In exchange, they will construct a fortress around this territory that no scattered mafia captain will dare breach. If anyone so much as breathes in Selene’s direction, they will be stepping into a federal hornet’s nest.”
“And the money?” Kyle asks, flipping through the folder.
I glance at him before looking back through the glass. “Move it through Edinburgh.”
Kyle nods once. “The offshore network?”
“The entire thing.”
A page turns. “After that?”
“Convert everything.”
His eyes lift. “Everything?”
“Every cent.”
Kyle exhales through his teeth. “You’re really doing it. You’re crazier than Judas.”
I shrug. “The throne’s dead anyway.”
The words don’t hurt anymore. Maybe they should. Maybe five years ago they would have. Now? Now I can’t bring myself to care.
“The other families are going to lose their minds.”
“They’re welcome to.”
“They’ll think you’ve gone soft.” That earns him a look.
Kyle grins. “There he is.”
I shake my head. “Turn it into legitimate holdings. Real estate. Trusts. Investment portfolios. Things governments can’t touch.”
Kyle closes the folder. “And why exactly are we suddenly becoming respectable citizens?”
I look through the glass again. At the woman wrapped in a blanket. At the woman who still forgets to eat unless I sit beside her. At the woman whose entire world was stolen from her. “Because I have no intention of leaving her vulnerable again.”
“Fair enough.”
“You know,” he says, standing, “if someone told me years ago that the great Zagreus Vitale would burn down the mafia because he wanted to spend more time with his wife, I would’ve shot them.”
“I can still shoot you.”
“See? That’s growth. Old you would’ve done it already.” I throw a pen at his head.
Kyle catches it. The traitor.
He sets the folder beneath his arm and walks toward the door. “Try not to get arrested and thank your boss for me.” He scoffs; the cold Russian bastard is back. “He drives me insane.”
“Try not to get stabbed again.” He leaves without answering.
I sit there for another minute, then stand, wincing as the stitches shift.