20. Giovanni
— ? —
Giovanni
The pieces fall into place like a lock clicking open.
It takes us two days to gather everything - the testimony of the turncoat Falcone man my people finally broke, the full shipping manifest that matches the torn scrap I’ve carried for five years, the records of false leads and dead ends that Ludovica has been feeding my network since the night Cielo disappeared.
But when we spread it all out on my study table, with Cielo standing beside me and Beppe silent in the corner, the shape of it is unmistakable.
“She planned it.” Cielo’s voice is steady, but her hands are trembling. “All of it. The raid, the timing, the-”
“Everything.” I force myself to look at the evidence, to accept what it means.
“The attack on the villa in Sicily was her operation. The men who broke through the windows that night - she hired them. She timed it for when I would be unreachable, when I’d silenced my phone and left it in that cabinet. ”
“And she had access to your phone.” Cielo’s eyes are distant, remembering. “When I called you - when I was alone in that house with bullets coming through the walls - I called your phone and she answered. You’d left it in that cabinet, and somehow she was the one who picked it up.”
“Yes.”
“She told me she was the reason for all of it - that night on the phone, when I was running. I heard her say it. And now these documents prove she wasn’t lying. She meant-”
“She meant every word.” I pull out the shipping manifest, the paper that’s haunted me for five years.
“This is her personal seal. The same monogram that was embroidered on the linens at her father’s table, the night we had dinner in Sicily.
She signed for the crew that attacked you.
She paid them, transported them, directed them. ”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward, she buried her involvement.” The words taste like ash. “Every lead I followed into the attack, every contact I pursued - she flooded my network with false information, redirected my people, and made sure every trail back to her went cold.”
Cielo is quiet for a moment, processing. Then: “But if she was covering your trail, she didn’t know where I was either. The false leads would have worked on her too.”
“Not quite.” I spread out another set of papers - communications logs, travel records, the evidence of Ludovica’s own five-year search. “She was looking for you too. She wanted to finish what she started in Sicily. But you disappeared so completely that even she couldn’t find you.”
“Until recently.”
“Until recently.” I point to a date, circled in red. “Three weeks before you returned to Italy. That’s when one of her people found a connection to your network - a contact of Delphine’s that Ludovica managed to compromise.”
“That’s how she planted the rumor.” Cielo’s face goes pale. “The story about you remarrying, about the search being over. It came through one of Delphine’s trusted contacts.”
“Yes. She fed false information through a channel you’d believe, knowing it would draw you out of hiding.” I can barely speak around the rage building in my chest. “She orchestrated everything - the raid, the five years of interference, the lie that brought you home. All of it was her.”
The silence that follows is heavy, suffocating.
Cielo reaches out and touches my hand where it rests on the manifest. The gesture is small, but it steadies something in me.
“The compromised contact,” she says quietly. “That’s how she knew my flight. Delphine helped me book it through her network.”
“Yes. The same contact who passed along the remarriage lie. Ludovica compromised that channel three weeks before you came back - just long enough to plant the story and wait for you to surface.”
“So the airport ambush-”
“Was her. The moment she had your travel details, she moved.”
Cielo is quiet for a moment, processing. Then: “The part I’m struggling with is separating what she did from what you did.”
“What do you mean?”
“She built the wall. I understand that now. But Giovanni-” She looks at me directly.
“You gave her the bricks. The nights you didn’t come home.
The dinners you missed. The weeks I spent feeling like I came second to everything else in your life.
Those were real. She didn’t manufacture those feelings. She just used them.”
“I know.”
“I was angry at you for the right reasons,” she continues.
“I just didn’t know the whole picture. I thought you chose her.
I thought you stopped loving me. Those beliefs were lies - her lies.
But the loneliness I felt? The sense that I was losing you?
That was real, and it was happening before she ever attacked the villa. ”
The words hit harder than any accusation she could have made.
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re absolutely right. I failed you long before she made her move. She just made sure you couldn’t give me a chance to fix it.”
“And that’s what I need to hold separately,” Cielo says.
“The betrayal I thought happened - you choosing another woman - that never occurred. But the neglect that made me vulnerable to believing it? That was real. And I think-” She pauses, choosing her words carefully.
“I think I can forgive what didn’t happen more easily than I can forget what did. ”
“That’s fair.”
“It’s not about fair. It’s about understanding where we actually stand.
” She reaches out and touches the manifest, the damning evidence of Ludovica’s obsession.
“She’s been taking revenge for something that was never real.
She wanted you. She thought she could have you.
And when she saw proof that you actually loved your wife-”
“She decided if she couldn’t have me, she’d destroy everything I did have.”
“By destroying us.”
“By destroying us.”
Cielo is quiet for a long moment. Then: “So these past few weeks, when I believed you’d given up on me, that you’d replaced me with someone else-”
“All lies. I never stopped looking.”
“Never?” Her voice cracks. “Not for one day?”
“Not for one day,” I say. “Not for one hour.”
She turns away, and I watch her shoulders shake with what might be sobs or might be anger or might be some terrible combination of both.
“Cielo-”
“I couldn’t safely contact you,” she says finally, turning back to face me.
Her voice is steadier now, though her eyes are still wet.
“Not then. Not with bullets coming through windows and her voice on your phone. But we’re not there anymore.
” She takes a breath. “If we’re going to try this - really try - then we talk to each other. Honestly. Even when it’s hard.”
“Agreed.”
The words hang between us, and I feel something shift - not forgiveness, not yet, but something closer to understanding.
“I’m going to find her,” I say. “Ludovica. I’m going to find her and I’m going to make sure she never threatens you or Gio again.”
“Good.” Cielo’s voice is cold now, the particular cold of a woman who’s found a target worthy of her fury. “Because I have a few things I’d like to say to her myself.”
The anger in her eyes is fierce, righteous - and for the first time since she came back into my life, it’s not directed at me.