12. Giovanni
— ? —
Giovanni
I take her somewhere safe because that’s what I do - I protect the things I love, even when they’re fighting me, even when they look at me like I’m the enemy.
I wasn’t at the airport by chance. My men have been watching a Falcone intermediary for weeks - someone I suspected was connected to the attack five years ago but could never prove.
This morning, surveillance flagged unusual activity.
Movement toward Malpensa. An urgent report brought me there before I even knew Cielo was on Italian soil.
The apartment is one of several I keep around Milan for emergencies, anonymous and secure, stocked with everything someone might need to weather a crisis.
I guide her inside with my hand on her back - not gripping, not restraining, just touching, reminding myself that she’s real, that she’s here, that five years of searching have finally ended in this moment.
She stands in the middle of the living room and refuses to sit down.
“You can’t keep me here.”
“I’m not keeping you. I’m asking you to stay until we figure out what just happened at that airport.”
“What happened is that your enemies found me. The ones you were supposed to protect me from.” Her voice is bitter, and I deserve it. “The ones who attacked me five years ago while you were in a meeting.”
“I know.” The words scrape out of me. “I know I wasn’t there. I know I failed you. I’ve been living with that knowledge every single day since, Cielo.”
“Have you? Because from where I stood, it looked like you found someone to console you pretty quickly.”
“There’s no one else.” I step toward her, and she holds her ground this time, which feels like progress even though her eyes are still wary. “There has never been anyone else. I don’t know who told you I remarried, but they lied. Look at me - look at my hand.”
I hold it up so she can see the ring that’s never left my finger. My wedding band, the same one I put on the day we married. It’s scratched now, worn from five years of searching, five years of refusing to give up.
Her eyes fix on it, and something in her expression cracks.
“You still wear it.”
“I never took it off.” I lower my hand. “I was never going to take it off. You’re my wife, Cielo. You were my wife then, and you’re my wife now, and whatever lies someone fed you to make you think otherwise, they were lies. Do you understand? They were lies.”
She’s quiet for a long moment, her chest rising and falling with careful, controlled breaths. I can see her processing, recalculating, trying to fit new information into a picture that’s been set for five years.
“If you didn’t give up,” she says slowly, “then why couldn’t you find me?”
“I told you. Someone was covering your tracks. Every time I got close, the trail went cold. False leads, dead ends, witnesses who suddenly forgot what they’d seen.
” I’ve thought about this constantly, obsessively, for five years.
“It wasn’t random interference. It was systematic.
Someone was actively protecting you from me. ”
“Or protecting themselves from you finding out what really happened.”
The thought has occurred to me. Has been eating at me since the night I stood in the ruins of that villa and swore I’d find her.
“Who, Cielo? Who orchestrated the attack?”
She flinches, and I know instantly that she knows something - something she’s been carrying for five years, something that still has the power to wound her.
“Does it matter? You weren’t there anyway.”
“It matters to me.”
“Why? So you can avenge your honor? So you can play the wounded hero while I-” She stops abruptly, pressing her hand to her stomach in a gesture that seems almost unconscious.
“While you what?”
“Nothing.” But her hand stays where it is, protective, shielding something I can’t see. “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters. I just need to go.”
“Go where?” I’m trying to stay calm, trying not to let the desperation show, but five years is a long time to wait for something and I can feel it slipping away again. “Back to wherever you’ve been hiding? Back to the life you built without me?”
“Back to the people who actually showed up when I needed them.”
The words land like a blow, and I let them. I deserve them.
“I’m sorry.” It’s not enough. It will never be enough. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I’ve been saying sorry for five years to an empty room, hoping somehow you’d hear me.”
Something shifts in her face - a crack in the armor, quickly repaired.
“Giovanni…”
“Just tell me where you’ve been. Tell me how you survived.
Tell me-” My voice breaks, and I have to stop, have to breathe, have to remember that I’m supposed to be strong.
“Just tell me you’re okay. Tell me you’re safe.
Tell me something real, because I’ve been imagining the worst for five years and I can’t - I can’t do it anymore. ”
She’s quiet for so long I think she’s not going to answer. Then:
“I’m okay. I’ve been safe.” She glances at the door, and I recognize the calculation in her eyes. She’s looking for an exit. “Someone helped me. Someone who didn’t ask questions, who just - took me in. I’ve been living quietly. Working. Building a life.”
“Alone?”
The pause before she answers tells me everything.
“Not alone.”
The jealousy that surges through me is ugly and immediate and completely irrational. Of course she wasn’t alone. Five years is a long time. She’s beautiful and smart and fierce, and any man with eyes would have seen that, would have wanted her.
“Who?” The word comes out harsh. “Who were you with?”
“That’s not your business anymore.”
“You’re my wife. It’s absolutely my business.”
“You keep saying that like it means something.” She finally moves, pacing toward the window, putting distance between us. “Like three years of marriage erases five years of absence. Like you can just show up and claim me because you decided to.”
“I’m not claiming you. I’m trying to understand.”
“Understand what? That I left? That I ran?” She spins to face me, and her eyes are blazing now, all the fear transformed into fury.
“You want to know why I ran, Giovanni? I ran because I was alone in a house that was supposed to be safe, and someone came to kill me, and you weren’t there.
You were at a meeting. A meeting that mattered more than your wife. ”
“That’s not-”
“And when I tried to call you, when I needed you more than I’ve ever needed anyone, do you know who answered your phone?
” Her voice is shaking now. “Ludovica. Ludovica answered your phone, Giovanni. She laughed at me and told me she was the reason for everything, and then she hung up while bullets were coming through my windows.”
The name hits me like a bucket of ice water.
Ludovica.
The contact I’d been using for intelligence. The woman who’d been pressing me to stay the night of the attack, who’d warned me I’d regret leaving, who’d smiled like a cat with a mouse when I collected my phone.
“Ludovica.” I say the name flatly, letting the confirmation settle. Five years of suspicion, of trails that went cold, of evidence that evaporated before I could grasp it. I always suspected her. I just couldn’t prove it. “So it was her. All of it.”
“You didn’t know?” Cielo’s laugh is bitter. “Your own contact, the woman you were spending all your time with instead of me, and you didn’t know she was planning to have me killed?”
“I suspected.” The words are bitter in my mouth.
“I suspected, but she covered her tracks. False alibis, dead ends, people who suddenly forgot what they’d seen.
Every time I got close to proof, it evaporated.
” I meet her eyes. “She was feeding me information on the Falcones. I thought I was using her. I didn’t realize-”
“You thought what? That she was helping you out of the goodness of her heart?” Cielo shakes her head. “She wanted you, Giovanni. That’s what I realized that night. She wanted you, and I was in the way, and you were too focused on your precious deal to see it.”
She’s right. She’s completely right, and the guilt that crashes over me is suffocating.
“I’m going to kill her.” The words come out flat, certain. “I’m going to find her, and I’m going to make her pay for what she did.”
“Revenge.” Cielo’s voice is tired now, the fury draining away.
“That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?
Someone hurts you, you hurt them back. Someone threatens what’s yours, you destroy them.
It never ends, Giovanni. It just goes round and round, and everyone you love gets caught in the crossfire. ”
“I’ll keep you safe this time. I swear-”
“You swore last time.” She moves toward the door, and I step to block her path. “Move.”
“Cielo-”
“I said move.” Her eyes meet mine, and there’s something in them I can’t read - determination, yes, but also fear, and underneath that, something that looks almost like grief. “I have to go. Someone is waiting for me.”
“Who?” The jealousy flares again. “The person you’ve been living with? The one who wasn’t alone with you?”
“You don’t get to ask me that.”
“I’m your husband.”
“You were my husband. Past tense. Five years past.”
“I never stopped being your husband.” I’m closer now, close enough to see the chain around her neck, the glint of something hidden beneath her shirt. “What is that?”
Her hand flies up to cover it, but too late - I’ve seen the shape of it, the outline of something round, something familiar.
“Nothing.”
“Cielo…”
“It’s nothing. Let me go.”
But I can’t. I can’t let her go again, not without understanding, not without knowing why she ran and who she’s been running with and what she’s been hiding under her shirt for five years.
“Please.” The word costs me something. “Please just talk to me. Tell me what I’m missing. Tell me why you’re so desperate to leave.”
She’s quiet, her hand still pressed to her chest, her eyes searching my face for something I don’t know how to give her.
Then her phone buzzes, and she glances at the screen, and the tension in her shoulders visibly releases.
“I have to go,” she says again, but softer this time. “Right now. Please, Giovanni. Please let me go.”
“At least tell me where you’re going.”
“Someone I trust is waiting for me. Someone who needs me.”
I want to argue. I want to lock the door and keep her here until she tells me everything, until we’ve sorted through five years of pain and found some way back to each other.
But the look on her face stops me. The desperation. The fear - not of me, I realize, but for someone else. Someone she cares about enough to brave airports and attackers and ex-husbands.
“Fine,” I say, and the word tastes like defeat. “But I’m not letting you walk into another ambush. Tell me where you’re going, and I’ll make sure you get there safely.”
“No.”
“Cielo-”
“I’ll text you,” she says, and she’s already moving toward the door. “When I’m safe. I’ll text you, and we can - talk. Figure this out. But right now, I have to go.”
She’s out the door before I can stop her, and I stand in the empty apartment and feel the last five years crash over me like a wave.
She’s alive. She’s here. She’s running from me again.
But this time, I’m not letting her disappear.
I move to the window and watch her emerge onto the street below, watch her walk quickly toward the corner where a car is waiting.
Then I grab my keys and head for the door.
I promised I’d never lose her again. And this time, I mean to keep that promise.