Chapter 18
Massimo's office smells like him. Expensive, dangerous. Something dark and mysterious. I sit at his desk, keeping my spine straight, forcing my hands to steady, preparing to use his computer like it's a weapon I'm still learning how to hold.
He opened an incognito window for me before he left. He didn't say a word about it. Just stepped aside, tapped two keys, and walked out like privacy was something he granted, not something I had to ask for.
The chair is heavy, built for a man who doesn't fidget, who expects the world to adjust around him.
I move the mouse, and the screen wakes instantly.
No password prompt. No hesitation. Just access.
For a moment, I just stare at it. At the quiet arrogance of it.
At the assumption that no one here needs permission.
Then, because I'm human, because I'm standing in the center of a man's world and pretending I'm immune to it, I let curiosity win.
I know I shouldn't. But I try anyway. I click where his profile should be.
Or I try to. The bandages make it harder than I expected.
My fingers are clumsy inside the gauze, thick and uncooperative, at least on my left.
The right is better. Not good. Just… usable.
The cursor jerks across the screen in uneven jumps, mocking me. I exhale sharply.
"Of course," I mutter.
For a second, I consider giving up. But that's not my style.
I glance around the desk until I find a small pair of scissors tucked into a drawer.
I drag them closer, awkward with the bulk of my wrapped hands.
I wedge one handle against the desk and force my fingers through the other.
It's ridiculous how hard this is. But carefully, snip after snip at the tips of the bandages, I free my fingers.
Just enough. The soft cotton loosens, exposing the pads.
I flex them once. Better. Usable. I reposition my hand on the mouse; if I'm going to stand in this world, I'm not doing it helpless.
And there they are, user settings. Private directories.
Anything that might say Massimo Manetti.
The cursor spins once. Then stops. Access denied.
Not dramatic. Not locked down with flashing warnings.
Just… absent. Like the door was never there to begin with.
His world doesn't exist on this machine. Not personally. Not digitally.
What's here is infrastructure. Calendars without context.
Files stripped down to function and purpose.
No photos. No emails that aren't operational.
No trace of a man, only the shape of power.
I feel a strange flicker of something. Not disappointment.
Respect, maybe. Or the quiet understanding that this is a man who learned a long time ago that the safest place to keep himself is nowhere at all.
Whatever Massimo Manetti is—whatever he fears, wants, remembers—it isn't stored on a hard drive. It isn't accessible. Not even to me. I pull my hand back from the mouse like I've brushed against something sharp. Then I turn back to what I came here for: My father.
I start where it hurts least. Public records.
Safe territory. Familiar. My father's voting history scrolls past the way it always has, clean lines, predictable arcs.
Committee memberships. Co-sponsorships. Appearances.
I've seen all of this before. Grew up with it.
Dinner-table conversations dissecting policy.
Talking points rehearsed before interviews.
Press strategies discussed like chess. This is the version of my father I've spent years defending.
I click through donations next. Campaign finance reports. PAC disclosures. Everything filed on time. Everything properly categorized. No red flags. No obvious irregularities. Nothing illegal.
My stomach clenches, slow and unmistakable, as if a buried part of me has always understood what this means and is bracing for impact: Everything is too clean.
Bills that should have stalled glide through with barely a murmur.
Opposition that should have fought tooth and nail quietly disappears.
Amendments that should have sparked outrage never materialize.
Names that should raise eyebrows don't, at least not on paper.
It's not corruption.
It's lubrication.
The kind that keeps things moving so smoothly, you don't notice the hands applying pressure. I lean back. My burning eyes take in the screen without seeing the words any longer while my mind starts to work, but before anything can settle, I hear a knock on the door. Soft and polite.
The door opens before I answer. A bear of a man steps in, closing it behind him with practiced discretion.
He moves like someone trained to clear rooms, not enter them, broad shoulders, compact power, the kind of stillness that comes from knowing exactly where every exit is.
He looks like the kind of man you see in recruitment posters or action movies.
Black Ops. GI Joe. The kind of soldier who doesn't talk about what he's done because he doesn't have to.
He meets my eyes without staring, assessing without being obvious.
"Max," he says. "Head of security for Massimo."
Not at the casino. Not for the building. For Massimo. That alone tells me everything.
"There's a Sean here," he continues. "He wants to see you."
My head snaps up. Sean. My stomach twists. The timing is almost funny. Almost. I should have expected my father to send him or someone, maybe Marianne, sooner rather than later. Instead of trying to call me or coming himself.
"Do I have to?" I hate that my voice isn't steadier, that even now it gives away the kind of vulnerability I always feel around Daddy's bodyguard.
Max doesn't hesitate. "Not if you don't want to."
For all I know, Max might be a cold-blooded killer, but right now, the way he looks at me is nothing but reassuring.
It tells me that he has my back, that one word from me and Sean will disappear, no questions asked.
For a moment, I wonder what Massimo did to inspire that kind of loyalty in a man.
But it's quickly replaced by a feeling of power that I haven't felt…
ever? The dangerous part is that I like it. Very much so.
"Then tell him to go fuck himself."
Max's mouth twitches. Then he grins, slow and unapologetic. "It'll be my pleasure, ma'am."
He turns to leave without another word. The door closes. Silence rushes back in, thicker than before. I turn back to the screen, to the immaculate rows of numbers and names and approvals, and feel the unease settle deeper, colder.
I'll be the first to admit I've never been my father's biggest fan.
I've always loved him; I mean, he's my father.
I think I always will in one form or another.
Love doesn't disappear just because you start to see someone clearly.
Love, I'm discovering, can live hand-in-hand with hate.
It's just… thinner now. Like a photograph that was left out too long in the sun.
The shape is still there, but the color isn't.
Looking back, I realize the clues were there. He's always been ambitious. Relentlessly so. Work came before everything else, before birthdays, before dinners, before quiet moments that didn't serve a purpose. The world beyond our front door always seemed to matter more than the one inside it.
I never fully appreciated before what that ambition cost my mother.
Publicly, he adored her. He never missed an opportunity to praise her resilience, her grace, her strength in the face of her medical issues.
He spoke about her like a testament, like proof of his own decency.
Friends admired him for it. The press loved the story, a devoted husband standing by a fragile wife.
But love isn't what you say when people are listening. Love is what you protect.
He never protected her from the quiet accusation that lived just beneath the surface: she had failed him by giving him only one child, and a daughter at that. No heir. No legacy in the way he'd imagined it. Her body had betrayed him, and he blamed her for it.
He never said it outright, of course. But he never corrected the assumptions when people joked about him needing a son. Never shut down the speculation. He let the silence do the work for him.
Even as a child, I felt it, the way conversations would subtly shift, the way his pride dimmed when the subject turned to family. The way my mother would smile a little too tightly, as if she were apologizing for something no one should ever have to apologize for.
She died a year after Amauri was born. But in that short time, she was an amazing grandmother who loved him fiercely. She held him like something miraculous. Like a second chance she hadn't been given.
I miss her sometimes. Or maybe I miss the version of her I built in my head.
Because the truth is, she wasn't the mother she should have been.
Not to me. Not when it mattered most. The day I confided in her—terrified, pregnant, unsure—she told my father.
Before I was ready. Before I could decide what that meant for my life.
For my child. I told myself she was scared.
That she thought she was protecting me. Protecting us.
But something in me knew protection shouldn't feel like betrayal.
Even now, I don't know which memory to hold onto: the woman who rocked my son in the quiet hours, or the one who handed my secret to the man who she knew would use it.
Maybe that's where I first learned how treachery rarely announces itself.
How it slips in quietly and calls itself protection.
How professions of love can look like loyalty while serving something else entirely.