Chapter 14 RAFFAEL
The next day…
I dreamed of Sophia last night. Again. Her presence is like a ghost wrapped around me all day. One I can't seem to shake, no matter what I do. She's there in the forefront of my mind.
When I receive a signal that someone has entered my house in the Catskills, it’s just the distraction I need. I tell Yosh to call it a day and swing onto the Ducati. Whoever decided to break into my house has not only no idea who they are dealing with, but they have also picked the wrong time.
By the time I reach the Catskills, the city is behind me. I don't come to this place very often. It’s a secret palace I built for her. Sophia. When she's ready to take her throne.
She doesn't know it exists; no one does. Not even Leo or Mario. It’s tucked deep into the edge of the Hudson Valley, disguised as an old artist’s retreat, wrapped in private LLCs and shell accounts that trace back to dead companies on foreign soil.
Because there’s no way in hell I could afford this place on what Stephano pays me.
This estate was built on blackmail, silence, and secrets sold by the gigabyte.
Blood money. Guilt money. Power money. My money. Money I've earned with my company.
The long drive curves through a corridor of maples and oaks so thick they silence the world. Just how I like it. I leave the Ducati cooling in the lower garage, beside the backup SUV and the generator hatch that powers the entire grid if the world ever goes dark—one can never be prepared enough.
Stone steps lead to the main house, a modern fortress disguised as a retreat.
Glass walls look out over a private lake, and a wraparound terrace faces the sunrise.
Inside, the floors are a light gray oak.
The linens are imported. The kitchen is unused, but I keep it stocked with everything necessary to fix a gourmet meal or just a plain dinner.
There’s a piano room with a white Steinway. A music box in the shape of a lioness on her vanity. A closet filled with dresses she hasn’t worn yet.
And beneath it all?
A subterranean command room, synced to Omertà Infernale’s server's heart, silent as a tomb, except for the whisper of the servers. Everything is as it should be. Yet, my alarm went off; somebody is here. I feel it. A shift in the air pressure. A whisper where silence should reign. A breath, so soft it could’ve been imagined, if I didn’t know better.
My hand reaches for my Glock before the thought fully forms, and I raise it just as the chair by the main terminal begins to turn.
The man seated in it spins it slowly and deliberately, like we’re playing out a scene in a slasher movie.
He’s nothing and everything at once. Bald.
Wiry. Eyes like frozen steel with the kind of face you’d forget unless it were the last one you ever saw.
Calm. Patient. Unbothered by the gun pointed at his skull.
"Raffael DeSantis," he says smoothly, with the faintest accent, Eastern European if I had to guess, though it's deeply buried under layers of polish. "I have to say… this is much nicer than your storefront."
I don’t lower the gun.
He smiles faintly, like he’s disappointed by my lack of manners. "You can shoot me if you’d like. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried. But I’d suggest hearing me out before you repaint this lovely floor with my brain."
I step closer, still aiming. "Name. Now."
"Igor Pavlov," he replies. "Though most people who use that name tend to disappear shortly after."
A pause. Then, with a wry curl of his mouth, "But if we’re being theatrical, most people have heard of me as Ledyanoy Prizrak. I'm sure you’ve heard the myth."
My finger tightens. The name, Icy Ghost, cuts clean through my mind as I recall whispers and rumors of cold kills.
Missing bodies in locked rooms. I would have to be a civilian to have never heard that name before.
My curiosity is piqued enough not to pull the trigger.
A killer like him has no business with a man like me.
Ledyanoy Prizrak kills high-profile targets, politicians, kings, and billion-dollar targets.
I doubt anybody has put a bounty like that on my head.
He leans forward slightly, elbows on knees. Relaxed. Like we’re two old friends getting together for a drink. "Your alarm system is lacking," he says. "Your encryption’s impressive. Your perimeter? Less so. I had no problems letting myself in through your ventilation shaft."
My eyes flick toward the sealed wall vents. No way. "Impossible."
He shrugs nonchalantly, "Not for me."
The bastard smiles again. I should shoot him. I might still. But something in the way he’s watching me—not with fear, not with arrogance, but with interest—makes me hesitate. Inflames me.
He's here for a reason. People like him don’t waste time.
"You’ve got ninety seconds to explain why you’re sitting in my chair," I growl.
"Of course," he says, crossing one leg over the other. "I came to offer a proposal. Not for a hit. Not yet. For something… bigger. The game you're playing? I’ve seen it before. But the way you're building it?" His eyes glint. "That’s new. That’s worthy."
He flicks his hand toward the server wall.
"I thought I’d see it for myself before I made my offer."
I still don’t lower the gun. But I’m listening now.
Because how the hell did this ghost get in here? And more importantly, what kind of war is coming that Ledyanoy Prizrak just walked into my kingdom uninvited… while smiling?
"Let's start with what you built, Umbra Arcana," he nods appreciatively, "word of your company slips through the criminal underworld like smoke—heard, but rarely confirmed."
He pauses; he's probably waiting for me to appear impressed by his homework. Even though I am, I'd rather shoot myself than let him see it. I don’t know how he came by his knowledge. I haven’t even made it public yet.
Omertà Infernale has evolved beyond its original mission of hunting down Omertà code traitors.
No matter what people try to hide, I dig out the truth.
I’d recently decided to change the name from Omertà Infernale to Umbra Arcana—the Hidden Truth.
As if reading my mind, he continued. “Omertà Infernale.
A violent whisper meant to punish those who broke the Omertà code.
And it was exactly what the name promised: a silent retribution service.
Cleaning up the messes nobody else could.
Quietly. Permanently." He tilts his head, "I like that version better. "
I shrug, wait him out.
He doesn’t warm up to it. He doesn’t try to sell it. Igor just looks at me like a man who’s been carrying a thing too long and decides it’s time to put it down.
“Leonardo Zanello is your father,” he states flatly, as if he’s announcing the time.
For a second, the whirring of the servers seems to stop. My brain stumbles over the name the way a cracked engine stalls over a hill. Leonardo Zanello. The name lands like a hand across my face.
“You’re joking,” I say, because saying anything else would be an admission that the sentence could be true.
He tilts his head, allowing the faintest smile to curve his lips, but there is no warmth to it, just calculation. “Would I drive all the way up here, break into your house, just to sit on your chair and tell you a story for the hell of it?”
“Why would you even—” My voice narrows. “Why should I believe you? I don’t even know you.”
Igor’s face is unreadable for a beat. Then, without drama, he reaches into his coat and slides a small glass vial across the table. It catches the light and looks absurdly ordinary—no cardboard, no wrapping—just a tiny thing with a dark red liquid inside of it.
“I'm your uncle. We're family,” he says. “Have it tested." He points at the vial of blood. "Take it to anyone who knows how to read a lab report. It’ll tell you what you want to know.” He taps the vial with one knuckle, not possessive, not threatening, just practical.
My hand edges toward it and then pulls back. “You can’t just give me a thing and expect me to—”
He produces a pair of small, surgical tweezers from his pocket like a conjurer with a coin.
“I can hand you the tools,” he says. “If you want hair, I can give you chest hair—funny, I know—but this,” he nods at the vial, “is blood. It’s fresh.
It’s mine. If you want drama, take the tweezers and pull my hair.
If you want to waste time, go find Ed and make a scene. Your call.”
He rests the tweezers on the table between us, casual as folding a napkin. The offer is obscene: instruments for proof laid on my desk like a pact.
I stare at the vial as if it might explode, and the room tilts. Everything I thought I didn't know about my life rearranges on its axis. If Leonardo Zanello is my father, then—
The word king flashes across my skull. Leonardo Zanello was the Don of the La Famiglia before he died in a tragic car accident, and Edoardo took over.
Too young. The inked queen on my ribs burns, reminding me of Sophia.
Of my dream. Of my sense that I haven't found my destiny. The notion that I was born for something bigger isn’t romanticism anymore; it’s a blood vial with a label.
“Why you?” I ask finally, because anger is easier to spit than awe. “Why would you bring me this? Why tell me now?”
He leans forward, palms flat. “Because people you don’t trust are talking about you.
Because names move, and someone wanted to see what you’d do when you learned the truth.
Because I have reasons for doing this that involve a chessboard and someone who wants a certain piece moved.
” He gives a short shrug. “And because I’m family.
I’m your uncle. If you don’t want to believe that, have the vial tested. It will tell you the same thing.”