CHAPTER 9
Marcello
The phone rang at three in the morning.
I was awake before the second ring.
When you live the life I live, a call at that hour never means anything good—especially from her.
Romano was asleep down the hall. The house was dark, quiet except for the sea grinding itself against the cliffs below. I let it ring once more, enough to steady my breathing, enough to calm the instinct already tightening in my chest—then answered.
“Amore?” I was already standing.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
At first she was silent. There is a particular kind of silence that exists before bad news. I’d lived inside it long enough to recognise its shape.
Her sigh carried through the line, heavy, uneven. Measured in a way that didn’t sound like her.
“When are you coming?” she asked instead.
No hello. No I miss you. No attempt at normal conversation.My spine went cold. That was worse than panic.
“When I said I would. The day after.” I said carefully.
“Why?”
Another pause. I heard her swallow.
“He’s here.”
Two words. Three syllables. That was all.
They hit like three bullets to the centre of my chest. Clean. Precise.
He’s here.
No name. There was only one man in the world who could occupy a sentence like that without introduction.
I stepped out onto the terrace, pushing the doors open. The Sicilian night was cool, salt heavy in the air. The horizon was nothing but black water and distant lights.
I had always known this would happen. Men like Santino just don’t disappear. They step back and wait. They let silence do the work. Hoping time will dull whatever edge once existed.
But some edges don’t dull. They settle.
“When?” I asked.
“Tonight.”
I didn’t ask how he found her. I didn’t ask what he said. If she wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t in immediate physical danger. Which meant this wasn’t a crisis. It was something older. Heavier.
“I’ll be there in the morning.”
“I thought you had—”
“I’ll be there.”
Her breath left her slowly, with the weary resignation of someone bracing for a collision we both always knew might come.
“Okay.”
She hung up, but the echo of her voice stayed.
We didn’t say goodnight. But I knew that quiet. I knew the way she compressed emotion when she didn’t want it spilling out. I had seen that restraint, after Santino left and she told me she was fine. And she was anything but.
I stayed on the terrace long after the call ended, staring at nothing. The sea below moved with quiet violence. Familiar. Controlled. Dangerous if underestimated.
I let the cold air strip instinct from emotion, the storm tightening in my chest.
I thought of Romano asleep inside, safe. I thought of her, awake, spiralling. And I thought of the man who had lost the right to be near her. Then I called my sister.
By sunrise, Romano was in Alessia’s arms in Palma, babbling happily, delighted by the change of scenery.
Kyra was already there, probably turning the Leopardi estate upside down while Antonio pretended not to encourage it.
I made a mental note to send my sister the limited-edition Birkin she’d been eyeing for months. She’d earned it.
I crouched in front of Romano and brushed his hair back.
“I’ll be back before you miss me.”
He laughed and grabbed my collar like he didn’t believe me. He was a splitting image of Roxanne, but had my eyes.
I kissed his forehead and stood.
Leaving him when an unease settled never sat well with me. But this wasn’t a boardroom meeting or territorial negotiation.This was her.
And if her voice tightens, I move.
Ireland was pale and wind-bright when I arrived. The trees along the road were stripped bare, branches skeletal against the low white sky. The wind sliced sideways, cold and merciless. It felt like the land itself was bracing for impact.
I saw the bike before I saw the house.
Black. Lean. Reckless.
Parked in the gravel like a statement.
He was leaning against it, cigarette between his fingers, staring into the treeline across the road as if expecting something to emerge.
He looked different. Broader through the shoulders. Beard darker and thicker. His dark hair longer now, falling over his eyes that had lost none of their calculation. He looked more rugged. More worn than I remembered.
He crushed the cigarette under his boot and stepped toward the car. He looked at ease like he’d just gone for a fucking coffee break and returned.
That annoyed me more.
For half a second, we were younger again, brothers—blood uncomplicated, looking exactly like he used to, steady, unreadable. Then I remembered why I’d come.
A pulse throbbed in my temple.
Each tick was a warning. Each tick was restraint.
“Marce—”
I crossed the gravel in three strides and hit him without warning or speech. My fist landed against his jaw with a sharp crack before he could finish my name.
The sound was clean. Bone to bone. His head snapped to the side. He staggered once, then straightened. He took it without lifting his hands. That calm irritated me more than if he’d fought back, which made me hit him harder.
“Well… hello to you too,” he said, rolling his jaw.
“Fìgghiu di buttana!”
(Son of a bitch)
I hit him again.
“You disappear for two years,” I said, and hit him again.
“And you walk back into her space.”
Another blow.
“You expect what, a fucking welcome?”
His eyes met mine. No defiance in them nor apology. Just unnerving steadiness. Just the kind of calm that said he’d already accepted whatever I did next. Like he deserved it.
We stood there, close enough to share breath.
Neither of us stepping back. Neither of us blinking first.
Blood trickled from his split lip. He spat onto the gravel and wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, looking at it as if assessing damage.
“Finished?” he asked.
I grabbed his jacket and shoved him back a step. His jaw flexed.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He didn’t answer immediately, just held my gaze.
“I intercepted movement.”
“There has always been movement. Always some threat round the corner—lurking, waiting.”
“This time it was different,” he said, voice low.
The wind cut through the bare trees, the branches scraping against one another like bone.
“Different how?”
“Someone had been asking around. About her.”
My stomach went cold. For two years the air around her had been too clean. No escalation. No loose threads reaching her door. I had noticed. I just hadn’t asked why.
Why hunt the devil when he’s content to stay in the shadows? Mercy is rare. I didn’t question it.
I released him slowly.
“You lost the right to be around her.”
“I know.”
“Yet here you are.” I let out a dry laugh.
Santino’s gaze held mine.
“Non sono tornato per fare pace col passato.”
(I didn’t come back to make peace with the past.)
“Then what?” I asked. “Penance? Redemption?”
His expression didn’t change. His jaw ticked. Men like Santino didn’t resurface without reason. And instincts taught me to respect patterns. But in all my years of experience with the unexpected told me this wasn’t one.
Santino always preferred distance to confession. And violence to explanation.
“Where are they now?”
“Won’t be a bother. I’m looking into the actual person behind it.”
“And…” I pressed.
“I’m containing it.”
My eyes narrowed. “Containing what?”
The threat?
Or yourself?
Before I could press further, I heard tyres on the gravel behind us. We both turned.
Roxanne stepped out of the car before the engine cut. Her eyes found me immediately.
And for the first time since the call, whatever I had been clinging to loosened. Not because the threat was gone.Because she was here.