25. Enzo #2
The night is quiet except for the wind stirring through the grass. Then?—
Something cracks against the back of my leg.
I fall forward, the ground slamming into my ribs as I twist to catch myself.
I'm up in a second, spinning toward the noise, my hand already reaching for the pistol tucked beneath my coat?—
But I freeze.
Giovanni is standing there, his hands raised.
And behind him?—
Aria, her eyes are wild, her hair loose and tangled, blood trailing down one arm in a thin ribbon.
She is barefoot.
Filthy.
Alive.
And holding a shard of glass the length of a carving knife to the soft place beneath Giovanni's jaw.
His lips tremble. He does not move.
Aria's voice is hoarse. "Do not turn around. Do not speak."
I do not move.
I only watch her, the tremor in her arms, the way her shoulder blades lift with every breath.
The glass is pressed tight to his skin, a single heartbeat away from cutting.
She meets my eyes. "He took me. He locked me in a room. And he's planning with Cesare Gotti to bring down Luca."
Giovanni swallows hard. His pulse flutters visibly.
"You don't understand, Enzo," he says, his voice rising. "She's lying. She's confused. The hit to her head—she's?—"
"I read everything," she hisses. "Every note. Every name. I know what you are. I know what you're doing."
He tries to turn, just slightly.
She cuts him.
Not deeply.
Just enough to bleed.
He gasps.
I step forward now, carefully, slowly, watching every line of Aria's body.
"Let me take him," I say to her. "Let me handle it."
She is shaking, her arms locked.
But she nods and steps away as I point my gun at Giovanni. "The game is over, Gio." I nod gently at Aria. "Come on. We have business to finish."
Giovanni's eyes have gone red with rage. "I?—"
"You try to run, and I'll shoot you." I let him know this coldly and quietly. "Now, walk." He's out of options, so he moves in front, with my gun stationed at his spine, shirt half untucked, his lip split.
I keep my hand clamped on the back of his neck as I march him through the corridor, past men who have served the Salvatore family for decades, their eyes wide but silent.
No one dares ask questions.
They can see the fire in my stride, the steel in my jaw.
Luca is in the eastern drawing room.
Valentina sits to the side, her long fingers resting on a cup of untouched tea.
She looks at Giovanni without surprise, but with a kind of bone-deep tiredness that only those who've lived through betrayal understand.
I look at her for a second, and she raises a hand to let me know Gabriel is safe.
She rises, gestures to Aria, and takes her away from the room.
I shove Giovanni to his knees in front of Luca, the echo of his body hitting the marble floor reverberating through the study like a warning bell.
He lets out a short, bitter laugh, but it's empty now, hollow like the schemes that brought him here.
Luca is not seated.
He stands beside the wide desk that has been the location of this family's business decisions for decades, one hand resting lightly on the wood, the other tucked into the crook of his arm.
His posture is still, but it carries the kind of power that makes men forget how to breathe.
He does not raise his voice. "Enzo," he says, without looking at me. "Tell me what you learned."
I do.
"He's not who he says he is. Giovanni isn't just a Salvatore cousin.
He's Cesare Gotti's son. Illegitimate, but blood all the same.
Planted here when he was barely a man, passed off as Alessandra's half-brother through her stepmother.
I got it from her. Put a gun to Cristiano's knee in front of her, made her confess. "
Luca listens, not like a man surprised, but like a man fitting one final piece into a puzzle he's kept locked in a drawer for too long.
When I finish, he walks toward Giovanni, his shoes silent on the stone. He doesn't stop until they're face to face. "Start talking."
Giovanni lifts his head. There's blood drying at the edge of his mouth and madness blooming in his eyes, but under it all, pride. Still.
"What do you want me to say?" he mutters, lips cracked. "That I'm sorry? That I was confused? That I had no choice?"
"No," Luca replies. His tone is measured, cool. "I want the truth. I want all of it."
Giovanni turns to me instead, his gaze burning. "You think you've won something, Enzo? You think dragging me in here on a leash means anything? You let me in. You gave me a seat at your table. You watched me talk to your son and never once asked who I really was."
I don't answer. I want to hear it all.
"You were never one of us," Luca comments.
Giovanni chuckles. It sounds like something unraveling.
"I was more Salvatore than half the bastards in this house. At least I had vision. My father saw what this family could become. He offered you power beyond these dusty walls, and you spat in his face."
Luca steps closer, lowering himself into the chair behind the desk, one leg crossed over the other.
He picks up the glass of whiskey at his side and sips it, not rushed.
Not stirred.
"Cesare Gotti wanted to marry influence. Merge our empires. Share our bloodlines. But he didn't want an alliance. He wanted a seat at my table with a knife hidden beneath the cloth. So, I answered in kind."
Giovanni's jaw tightens. "You buried his men in ports and rivers. You starved his contacts. You lit Corsica on fire and thought that would be the end. But you left one seed."
"And what exactly was your plan?" Luca asks, his voice bored now. "To sit beside me until I died and hand over the estate to your father like a well-wrapped gift?"
"To bring this house to its knees," Giovanni snarls, rising shakily to his feet. "To make it bleed from within. So no one could pretend it was ever unbreakable."
He's panting now, veins taut in his neck, the fever of too many lies breaking through the surface.
"Cesare trusted me. And I delivered. Your allies questioned you. Your name lost its shine. You spent years watching your empire shrink while I was feeding every crack in the foundation."
Luca finishes the whiskey and places the glass down with care.
"And now?"
Giovanni swallows. "Either way, he'll move without me. You've already lost."
I step forward, my gun heavy at my side.
Luca leans forward. "Finish it."
I don't hesitate. The gun fires once. Giovanni's body jerks, then folds. There's no last word. No defiance. Just blood soaking into the rug of a family he was never truly part of.
I lower the weapon. Luca doesn't look away. "You know what your next assignment is, Enzo. It has to be quick. It has to be clean."
Even as I begin to nod, there is a reckoning rising in me, in the shape of something I cannot yet name, but that I've begun to want.
The kind of life that does not demand blood for loyalty.
A different rhythm.
A slow one.
Sun-warmed.
Distant.
A small farmhouse maybe, far from the ports, where my hands can hold more than knives.
Where Aria stands at a line of laundry, her dress brushing her knees, eyes lifted when I walk in from the fields.
Where Gabriel runs without looking over his shoulder.
I don't say any of this out loud.
Instead, I meet Luca's gaze, steady and unflinching.
"Boss," I say quietly, "I have a request."
He studies me then.
Long enough for the silence to gain teeth.
His fingers tap once on the side of his tumbler, the rhythm more thoughtful than dismissive.
"You've earned the right to speak," he says after a beat. "Go on."
But I don't rush. I don't speak of the farm.
Of the boy I've come to love like he carries my soul in a smaller skin. I don't say Aria's name, because it doesn't have to be said.
It lives in every choice I've made since the day I found her again.
"I'll finish the job," I say instead. "As asked. No mess. No trail."
Luca tilts his head slightly, the ghost of a smile barely touching his mouth.
"And after?"
The question sits there between us, soft as a trigger click. He already knows.
Of course he does.
Luca Salvatore always knows the shape of a man's breaking point long before the man does.
That's what makes him who he is.
That's why I've followed him through a dozen doors other men wouldn't even knock on.
"I'd like to talk when it's done," I say. Nothing more.
He watches me carefully, then drains the last of the amber in his glass. He sets it down with a muted clink.
"If it goes well," he says, brushing an invisible speck from his cuff, "you may find I'm more open to conversation than usual."