Chapter 11 Nico #2
“No,” he says, watching me over the rim of his glass. “That’s the problem.”
Rossi gives a small nod, satisfied. “I’ve doubled the men on this floor. Cameras are live, feeds secure, and I’ve also increased your own personal guard, especially on Miss Letty. No one gets on this door or near any of you without us seeing them first.”
“Her mother,” I say suddenly.
Adi looks up. “What about her?”
“Isabella will call her tomorrow. When she does, I want someone outside the woman’s building. Quiet, no contact. If Orlov is using Isabella as leverage, he might go after her mother, too.”
Rossi nods. “Consider it done.”
I exhale slowly. There’s still too much we don’t know.
Who sent the first tip to Isabella? Although I suspect it was my uncle playing his first move.
How many hands did this move pass through before it reached Oleg?
How deeply Domenico is involved in this, if at all, is unclear right now, but not for long.
“Do we tell her?” Matteo asks.
The question lands heavy. I picture Isabella asleep in the guest room, curled around her bruised ribs, the line of fear still etched between her brows even when her eyes are closed. I picture the way she said she needed to keep working, how her voice went thin around the word home.
She hates secrets. Lives to drag them into daylight. Telling her nothing will burn what little trust we’ve started building. Telling her everything could put a target squarely on the parts of her that are still whole.
“Not yet,” I say finally. The words taste wrong but necessary.
“We tell her Orlov is in play and leave Domenico’s name out of it.
When we have something we can act on we can tell her.
Right now, all we have is a name and a half-broken thug’s word.
I’m not putting that in her head until I know we can actually do something about it. ”
Adi studies me for a long moment. “You’re going to have to tell her some of it, Nic. She isn’t the type to sit in the dark.”
“I know,” I say quietly. “But tonight she sleeps. Tomorrow, we start ripping this apart from the inside.”
“What if we get her to do her own digging from here? Think about it. She’s an investigative journalist. Following breadcrumbs is what she does. If we include her, she can help us and it keeps her from working on anything else, which would take her out of our protection.”
I smile at Matteo. He might be pretty but he has a razor-sharp brain underneath it, too. “That’s fucking brilliant.”
“And Domenico’s involvement?” Adi asks, ever the cautious one.
“Keep it quiet for now.”
The room falls quiet again. The city glows beyond the glass, uncaring. Traffic moves. People buy coffee. Somewhere, someone laughs.
Here, in this penthouse, four men and the ghost of a fifth make decisions that will carve up the next few weeks.
Matteo finishes his drink and slides off the stool. “I’ll hit the clubs tonight,” he says. “Plant some questions, see who flinches.”
Adi closes his laptop. “I’ll start on Orlov’s financials first thing. Send me everything you have, Rossi.”
Rossi nods, already pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll stay on this floor tonight. Take the room in the spare wing. If anything happens, I’ll be at your door before the alarms finish ringing.”
It should make me feel better and it does. Some. But as they move, as the night splits into tasks and strategies, my mind drifts back to the small sliver of light under Isabella’s door.
She wrote words that threatened the life I built. Her article painted targets on walls I’d spent a decade scrubbing clean.
And still, when I heard her scream, every other priority in my body vanished.
“Nic.”
I look up. Adi is watching me, expression softer than he usually lets it be.
“We’ve got this,” he says. “You don’t have to carry it alone.”
For a moment, I see us as kids in my father’s study. Matty’s voice cracking as he swore he’d handle the numbers, Adi promising to keep the paperwork clean, me promising to keep the promise.
I nod once. “I know.”
They leave one by one. Matteo with a clap on my shoulder and a wicked smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Adi with a steady look that says more than his words ever do. Rossi with a professional nod and the weight of a man who’s cleaned up more messes than I’ll ever see.
When the apartment finally goes quiet, I turn off the kitchen lights. The city glows on without us.
I walk down the hallway one more time, stopping outside the guest room. That thin stripe of light is still there. Her breathing is faint but steady through the door, a soft rhythm that shouldn’t matter to me as much as it does.
“Sleep, Isabella,” I murmur, too low for her to hear. “Let me handle the monsters.”
Then I do what my father would want. I check the locks. I check the cameras.
And once everything is secure, I sit in the chair in my office, door open to the hallway, and let the night stretch around me like an old, familiar coat.
Us three against the world. That’s what I texted my brothers earlier. What I didn’t add is the part that scares me most.
Because now, whether I meant to or not, I’ve pulled Isabella Romano under that shield.
And anyone who tries to touch what I’m protecting is going to learn just how little of my father’s darkness ever really left.