11. Enzo
ENZO
I don't need a mirror to know I look like hell.
I see it in the way the guards shift when I pass, in the low silence that trails behind me like something old and familiar.
The kind of silence that says I'm not in the mood for conversation, the kind that makes smart men pick a different hallway.
My boots echo along the eastern wing of the estate, slow and steady, and every step seems to stir what I have been trying all morning to bury.
The snitch's voice has not left me.
That last sentence, a broken whisper hanging just above the blood pooling on the floor, loops through my skull like a curse.
Someone in the family knows where she is.
Not someone from the outside, not a rival, not a passerby.
No, someone inside. Someone who eats at our table, who toasts with our wine, who swears on their mother's grave that loyalty is thicker than guilt.
And I am supposed to keep walking like none of this matters.
Like five years of absence did not leave a wound I still cannot cauterize.
When she left, I told myself I would not beg, not when I was the one who let her walk out of my life with her head high and her voice shaking, with that look in her eyes like she could not tell if she hated me or still wanted me to reach for her.
Maybe both.
She thought this life would eat her alive.
She never understood that it had already consumed me, long before I knew her name.
I was born into this world the way some men are born into winter, shaped by cold truths and quiet war.
She saw what we did to survive and called it a betrayal.
I called it duty.
I stop by the second-floor gallery, where one of Luca's old portraits hangs in a gold-trimmed frame.
He was my father's friend once, before the world turned and men like mine started dying faster than they could pass down lessons.
I was young when I learned that respect is not inherited.
It is carved, earned, bled for.
The Salvatores did not make me.
They tempered me.
And I owe them everything.
Still, I cannot pretend she did not take something with her when she vanished.
It was not just her touch or her voice or the way she could say my name like it meant something sacred.
It was the idea that I could be more than this, that maybe I was allowed to want something outside these walls.
She wanted me to leave it behind, all of it, and build what?
A life that would never stop chasing me down?
A clean house on a quiet street where I could forget what my hands were trained to do?
The question never needed an answer because she already gave herself one.
She ran.
I reach the end of the corridor before I realize I have no idea where I was walking to in the first place.
The weight in my chest has grown sharper, and I know it is not anger.
It is worse.
It is hope, the kind I try to drown in red wine and smoke.
The kind I don't admit I still feel when I pass a woman with dark hair or hear a voice in the crowd that sounds too familiar.
She is not supposed to be alive, and yet I have never stopped listening.
The soft patter of footsteps interfere with the direction of my thoughts.
I don't need to look to know it is Giovanni.
His scent always gives him away—bergamot and oud and just enough arrogance to make you believe he bathes in both.
He is with Alessandra, as always, her heels a counterpoint to his stride, both of them tailored and burnished like they just stepped out of a high-society execution.
When they approach, Giovanni offers a smile that has never once reached his eyes.
"I don't often find you lingering in empty corridors, Enzo," he says, tilting his head, as if the remark is casual and not half a probe.
Alessandra says nothing, only watches with that soft contempt she hides behind grace.
She has never liked me, and I share the sentiment.
I remind her of the things her marriage was designed to erase.
I meet Giovanni's gaze and shrug once, slowly, the way men do when they want to offer no explanation at all.
"Sometimes quiet is the only place you can hear what matters."
Giovanni's smile stretches, but it stays measured.
"Luca has summoned the crew. Dining hall. I believe he has news that warrants a toast."
I nod once and fall into step beside them, ignoring the looks that pass between brother and sister.
Giovanni likes to think he is subtle, but I have seen the way his eyes move when he is interested, the way his words coil around truths without ever settling.
He is the kind of man who gets close enough to kiss and kill in the same breath, and I respect him for that.
He understands the necessity of the game.
He is also the only one who sees me clearly.
Where Aria flinched from blood and called it a curse, Giovanni studies it.
He speaks of loyalty with a grin and sin with a shrug, and somewhere in the middle of all that charm is a mind built for destruction.
Alessandra brought him into our world, but I suspect Giovanni was waiting for it.
And since he arrived, nothing has been simple.
He doesn't wear the Salvatore crest, but he moves through our halls like a man who has already claimed a place on the chessboard.
We reach the main doors to the dining room, where the scent of roasted meat and sharp wine lingers in the air like a ritual.
The guards nod, and Giovanni pauses just long enough to adjust his cufflinks before glancing at me with something too close to amusement.
"You look like a man who has heard a banshee scream," he says, low enough that only I can hear.
I ignore him, but mostly because my thoughts are mine alone.
He respects my silence, and even though I initially detested him, he is, surprisingly, beginning to grow on me.
The corridor turns.
The marble underfoot gleams too bright for a house built on violence.
Sconces flicker along the wall, golden and glass-veiled, casting shadows that stretch long and silent across the carved moldings.
This place, the Salvatore estate, was designed to look like old money.
But anyone who knows better can see the fortress underneath.
The hidden vaults, the soundproofed chambers, the reinforced foundations built to outlast betrayal.
The door to the dining room is already open.
Luca Salvatore sits at the head of the long oak table, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, hands resting lightly on either side of a glass of Amarone.
His eyes flick toward me for less than a second.
I sit to his right, beside Dante, the third Salvatore brother.
Giovanni settles beside me like it's second nature.
Alessandra enters a moment later, her perfume hinting at bergamot and polished stone.
Cristiano rises to kiss her cheek.
Marco doesn't even look up from his phone.
Valentina isn't attending, presumably because she is visiting her best friend.
Luca doesn't question it anymore.
Took him years to track her down after she ran, and now that she's back under his roof, he's learned to handle her differently.
He doesn't like her sharp tongue or the way she speaks her mind in rooms that prefer silence, but he lets it slide more often than not.
Call it respect.
Or strategy.
Either way, he knows better than to cage something that fought so hard to stay free.
The conversation begins to ebb and flow as we eat.
This, right here, is the inner circle.
No outsiders. No pretense.
Giovanni leans in. "Luca's in a mood."
I glance at the half-empty wine glass in front of our Don, then at the pile of folded reports by his elbow.
It's that something has shifted in the last few months.
Unspoken, unnamed. Just under the surface.
Old enemies breathing again.
New threats growing teeth.
Cristiano, who had occupied himself with breakfast, sets his cutlery down. "There's chatter in Naples. Something about a port job that didn't go quiet."
Marco flips a page in the dossier beside him. "Di Ravello boys are making noise again. Probably just pushing territory, but they're using our corridors. That makes it ours."
Luca lifts his gaze, finally. "I want names by morning."
That's the way it goes. No flinching. No long-winded lectures. Just the facts and the fallout.
"We've traced a second account," Giovanni says smoothly. "Laundered through a shell in Marseille, same hands that moved the Orvieto shipment last winter."
His sister looks up at that, eyes sharpening.
Giovanni, ever the good brother, doesn't pause.
"Blanco and I will take the south quadrant. Cristiano can hold the docks with Enzo."
I nod once, feeling Giovanni glance toward me again.
He can sense that I'm not present, although he doesn't quite know why.
The truth is, ever since Valentina Salvatore has come home, I've wondered whether I was too harsh on Aria.
She never wanted this life.
She never understood that family in our world does not come with choices.
That legacy is not a thing you slip out of like a dress that doesn't suit you.
I asked her once what she wanted, and she said something quiet.
Something simple.
Something that would never survive here.
She left. And I let her.
Because staying would have killed her.
But what I didn't do—what I couldn't do—was forget her.
Giovanni's words from earlier loop through my head. Everything is for family.
What he doesn't know is that Aria was the first thing that ever made me want more than loyalty and blood.
The first thing that ever made me wonder what I would do if I had to choose.
And now I can't stop wondering who else knows.
"Enzo," Luca says.
I look up. My voice is calm. "Yes?"
"Take Cristiano to Belvedere. Check on the account lead. Quietly. No fire unless provoked."
I nod. "Understood."
Lunch break is soon after.
Alessandra rises first.
Cristiano follows close behind, hand at her lower back like she might vanish if he blinks.
There's something in the way he watches her—with a devotion so naked it borders on reckless.
I've seen men lose entire empires for less.
Marco lingers near the end of the table, still thumbing through satellite feeds like the next war might be hiding in the clouds.
His silence isn't unusual, but it grates on my nerves today, because everyone's moving, and I'm standing still.
I rise, pushing the chair back slowly.
Giovanni moves in at my side, steps matching mine. "Whatever's circling in your head," he murmurs silkily, "you should chase it down before it finds a better hunter."
A muscle ticks in my jaw.
He's not wrong, and that's the damn problem.
If one man knew Aria was alive, others would know soon enough.
Information never stays buried in our world.
It seeps through cracks, it sells itself on street corners, and once it's out, it spreads like wildfire in dry grass.
It means whispers in rooms I cannot control, questions I may not be able to silence.
And it means that I need to know if the rat was being honest, and fast.