39. Sani’s Sanctuary
Sani’s Sanctuary
The cars came to a halt outside what seemed to be an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city.
The ground-floor windows were boarded up with splintered wooden crosses, and the garden was overrun with wild weeds and thorny vines climbing the walls and twisting around every stone arch, as if they were trying to choke the house.
“What is this place?” I asked, gazing up at Big-T and Raya’s main bodyguard, Ivano, who stood at our sides.
“You’ll see,” Raya whispered so only I could hear.
Max and Cami got out of the SUV behind us, with more Buccini soldiers and Nero heading our way.
“You’re about to see the other side of what we do, Aria,” Max said, his voice lacking its usual playfulness. “The darker side. Are you sure you’re ready for this? I’m not convinced Sani would want you here.”
“He gave her the key for a reason, baby.” Cami countered softly, offering me a reassuring smile.
“I’m ready. I know who he is.” I nodded, ignoring the nerves in my stomach. “Sani trusted me with this, and I want to help.”
Max studied me for a moment. “Okay,” he said, whistling low as he stomped through the wildflowers towards the back of the property.
We all followed him until we reached a decaying, wooden cellar door hidden beneath shrubs.
He yanked it open only to be met with another, much sturdier door.
After entering a code, the lock dislodged with a mechanical clank, revealing a dark, narrow staircase descending underground.
Max gestured for me to go first, and I swallowed hard before stepping down into the darkness.
When I reached the bottom step and pushed open another door, I froze at the stark contrast of the setting.
The vast space had been transformed into the most modern and clinical bunker.
The brightness of the artificial lights was almost blinding as it reflected off the concrete and steel surfaces.
To my left, a glass display case stretched along the entire wall, brimming with weapons—more than I had ever seen in one place before.
Handguns were arranged by size and calibre.
Assault rifles and sniper rifles were mounted in brackets.
Blades and knives of every shape and size lined the shelves.
In a neat and orderly fashion, torture weapons were showcased: batons, hand grenades, spiked baseball bats, spears, and chains.
I could already feel Sani’s influence over the precision and organisation, his quiet pride evident in it.
I moved forward, scanning all the weapons I would have no idea what to do with.
Turning around, I noticed that the entire right side of the bunker had six embedded heavy steel doors.
Cells. There was nothing in the middle of the space except bolted chairs and hanging chains.
What sent a shiver down my spine was the five drains beneath them, stained a deep rust-brown from the blood that had flowed through them.
“Welcome to Sani’s sanctuary,” Max said, walking past me with his arms outstretched as if he was presenting a showroom. “Quick tour: weaponry there, these are cells where we hold enemies.” He pointed to the chairs. “Where we do the questioning.”
Questioning. Right, that was the PG way of putting it.
“And this…” He marched up to a vaulted black door. “Is what that key will open.”
I stepped forward, hesitating for a moment and half-preparing myself for a museum of severed heads in glass jars before I swiped it across the electronic control pad.
The mechanism inside the door shifted with a precise, engineered click and then swung inward.
Max nodded to the men to stay outside, and only Cami, Raya, Max, and I entered.
My lips parted as I took in the steel shelving lining all the walls, stacked high with vacuum-sealed bricks of cash. Oh my fucking God. There had to be hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, in a variety of currencies. I knew he was rich but… this was insane.
In the centre of the room stood a long steel table fitted with multiple monitors, displaying hundreds of tiny square screens of Rome.
He had somehow accessed the city’s security surveillance, showing streets and all the most high-security buildings, including City Hall.
High-end servers hummed softly in the corner behind reinforced glass.
He was storing data without needing to supervise it.
Laptops and hard drives were encrypted and labelled with what information they contained, as well as thick, colour-coded physical files.
“This,” Max said with a smirk, closing the door behind us with a thud.
“Is the real reason people fear Sani. He keeps records of everything.” He walked along the shelves of files, running his hand over the spines.
“Names. Photos. Background checks. Financial trails. Government contacts. Shipping routes. Legal and illegal contracts. Enemies. Everything he has Nero work on ends up in here.”
“It’s Rome’s entire empire,” I breathed, and Max nodded.
I reached for the folder closest to me and flipped it open. Inside were surveillance stills of politicians, businessmen, judges, police, all marked with dates and leverage points.
“Why would he give me the key to all of this?”
“Because he must have known that something was coming. The only other person who has access to this room is Alessio. There must be something we can use among all of this to help get him out. And if he doesn’t get released…
” Max said, leaning against the storage unit and staring at me.
“...this all becomes yours. Your weapon and your protection.”
“Mine?”
“Si.”
Looking around, I finally understood exactly how my husband’s brain worked.
He was a complete and utter control freak.
It wasn’t just dominant energy in the bedroom; it extended into his everyday life.
I should have recognised it from the moment we met in that massage room.
He took control of the situation the way he wanted.
And then, when I disappeared on him, he didn’t panic because he had something of mine—something valuable that he knew I’d want back.
He controlled the narrative throughout. The gala.
The flowers in the hospital. Showing up for my shifts.
Breaking into my flat to seduce me with food and bubble baths. Dealing with Damiano.
The first time he lost control of the situation was when I almost married Callum.
And look how that turned out. He regained it with vengeance.
It was how he survived in this world. He controlled everything.
I had been so confused about why he hadn’t reacted when they arrested him, how he remained so calm and collected.
This was why. He protected himself. He owned Rome without having to declare it.
And now, he’d given me the key to the city’s secrets.
“Do we know the names of the detectives questioning Sani?” I asked Max while Nero grabbed one of the laptops labelled company procurements and started working on it.
“Si. Detective Ferri and Detective Morelli. Neither are on our payroll,” Max leaned back, cracking his knuckles. “Yet. Though that might mean they are on someone else’s.”
“You mean Callum might also be bribing the police?”
“Now that we know what he’s capable of, it wouldn’t surprise me. Particularly the commissioner.”
Raya twisted round and began searching through the files for their names to see if Sani had been keeping anything on them that we could use to sway them to our side.
“Do you think there’s any surveillance footage from Altezza?” I asked, moving towards the monitors. Max pulled out a chair and sat down, typing the name of the bar’s location into the feed search bar. He pulled up five different angles from various rooftops as well as the one in the bar itself.
“The police have the bar’s CCTV, but I doubt they have access to all of these.”
“That one,” I pointed at a feed coming from the building next door that showed a clear picture of the podium and crowd. “Zoom in and slow it right down.”
Max didn’t question me, and we both watched the terrace fill the screen while guests chatted, unaware of the chaos about to unfold. Champagne flutes were raised as my papi took the podium, and my stomach twisted. I scanned the sea of faces for anything suspicious.
Frame by frame, the footage crawled forward until I saw something that caught my attention.
“Rewind that,” I demanded. “Pause it!” I pointed at the man wearing a catering uniform who was about to walk past the podium. “Watch him.”
Max pressed play, and just like I’d seen before, the caterer brushed past one of the decorative lighting pillars and bent slightly.
His hand dipped low and out of sight. Max paused it and zoomed in on his hand.
It wasn’t a clear image, but he was definitely pressing or placing something at the base of the column hidden under the decorative silks.
“Could he be activating the explosive?”
“It’s possible.”
Max let the feed keep rolling, showing the caterer walking briskly away.
Four things happened in the next forty-three seconds before the explosion.
I made Max rewind it each time to double-check that I wasn’t mistaken.
After the caterer walked away, Callum looked up at the lighting rig with a smile.
Second, Sani noticed him doing this and appeared alarmed.
He started moving towards the stage, towards my papi, and towards the unknown bomb.
At the same time, the caterer nudged past Callum, and they exchanged eye contact.
And finally, once the explosion occurred, it was clear everyone was flung backward except Callum.
He was underneath the sturdy table that had been holding the champagne tower as if he had known it was coming and ducked just in time.