20. Gio
Gio
The light inside the dockside container office is a single, unprotected yellow bulb that sways with the wind off the bay.
On the metal chair in the center of the room, Matteo’s captured courier is bleeding onto his own boots.
His hands are zip-tied behind his back, his chest heaving under a torn leather jacket.
Dante stands by the door, his shoulder resting against the corrugated steel, slowly rotating a heavy brass roll of tape between his palms.
"I don't have the patience for a long conversation," I hiss as I stand over the courier. "Where did you get the Boston probate records?"
"A warehouse," the man wheezes, spitting a dark clump of blood onto the floorboards. "Matteo’s lawyers... they pulled the original estate file for Maria Rossi. They know she was Maria Salvatore. They know she died in Maine."
"Who did they deliver the copies to?" I ask, my hand resting on my holster.
"The New York captains," he gasps, his eyes tracking the slight movement of my fingers. "They’re already circulating them. They’re telling Salvatore that his daughter has been alive for twenty years, and that you’ve been hiding her to squeeze them out of the Palermo shipping lines."
Cazzo.
"Gio," Dante huffs, his voice carrying an unbothered tone. "If the New York capos think we’ve been playing them, the merger is dead on arrival."
"They won't think anything," I mutter, turning away from the chair. "Because I am going to tell her myself. Today."
"She’s not ready," Dante says.
"She has to be," I mutter, pulling my secure phone from my pocket.
Before I can key the screen, the phone begins to vibrate in my palm. The display shows a private, encrypted New York prefix. My chest goes tight, my jaw clenching as I slide my thumb across the glass and hold the receiver to my ear.
"Giovanni," Don Salvatore's gravelly voice cuts through the line, heavy with old age and a cold, autocratic authority. "My captains are showing me court records from Boston. They tell me my Maria is dead, and my daughter is living in a bookstore under a fake name."
"The records are real, Don Salvatore," I reply, my voice steady. "But she's safe, I have her."
"You have had her for weeks," Salvatore growls, the sound of his fist hitting a mahogany desk echoing through the line. "You kept her from me. You played the neighbor while my blood was living across the hall from you. Why isn't the contract executed?"
"If I dragged her to New York in handcuffs, she would have hated us both," I told him, my fingers clenching the phone. "The New York families would have seen the merger as a hostage trade. I needed her to trust me."
"I do not care about her trust, Giovanni," the old man spits. "I care about my legacy. Matteo’s scouts are crawling through Massachusetts. If they find her before she is legally yours, they will kill her to end the claim. I am giving you twenty-four hours."
"Salvatore, listen to me—"
"If the marriage papers are not signed by tomorrow night," Salvatore interrupts, his voice dropping to a low, icy threat, "I will send fifty of my own shooters to Maine. I will bring my daughter home by force, and I will put a bullet in your head for the delay. The merger is over."
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone, my chest rising and falling fast.
The clock has run out. The lie is about to detonate.
"Dante," I call, my voice a quiet vibration. "Clean this room. Keep the courier locked in the hold. I'm going back to the apartment."
"You're going to tell her?" Dante asks, stepping away from the door.
"I don't have a choice," I answer, pulling my coat over my shoulders. "If she hears it from Salvatore's men, she will run. If she hears it from me, I might still have a chance to make her understand."
"And if she doesn't?"
"She has to," I turn on my heel and slam the heavy steel door of the container behind me.
The drive back to the Maine apartment is a blur of gray mist and screaming tires.
I push the SUV to its limit, my hands shaking on the steering wheel from the terror of what I am about to do.
I am going to look into those wide, amber eyes and tell her that her entire life is a fabrication.
I am going to tell her that the boy from her dreams and the neighbor who fixed her shelf are the same monster.
I park the vehicle in the alley, not even turning off the engine. I sprint up the wooden stairs, my boots silent on the steps, my heart hammering a frantic, wild rhythm against my ribs. I reach the third-floor landing and grab my key, sliding it into the lock of her door.
"Lina?" I call out as I push the door open.
The apartment is dead quiet.
The air is cold, carrying only the faint, lingering scent of her lavender soap and the smell of rain from the open kitchen window. I step inside.
Something is wrong.
Lina’s yellow cardigan is missing from the coat hook. Her canvas bag is gone from the wooden chair by the table. I walk slowly into the bedroom, my hand resting on the frame of the door, my throat going completely dry.
Beside the mattress, her mother’s cardboard box is pulled out. The yellowed flaps are torn open, the interior messy, ordinary letters scattered across the hardwood floorboards.
In the center of the room, a single sheet of paper bearing a gold seal lies flat. It is her birth certificate. Beside it is a torn cream-colored envelope, my mother's diamond ring rolling into the dark shadow beneath the nightstand.
My heart stops. The air in my lungs turns to solid ice.
She knows.
"Lina!" I bellow, my voice a raw, broken roar that echoes off the empty walls of her bedroom.
I scramble to my knees, my fingers clutching the paper. I read the looping handwriting of Maria Salvatore, the words burning through my retinas like acid: The boy they promised you to is a wolf. He is not your savior.
I stand up, my head spinning, my chest caving in under a sudden, crushing agony that makes my knees buckle.
I look at the window, at the freezing rain pouring onto the sill.
She ran. She stood in this room, looked at the ring I prepared for her, realized every touch, every kiss, every word was a calculated deception, and she ran directly into the dark.
I pull out my secure phone, my fingers flying across the keys as I speed-dial Dante.
"Dante!” I growl, my voice a gravelly, desperate rasp. "She's gone."
"What do you mean she's gone?" Dante asks, his tone alert. "Did Matteo's men take her?"
"No," I reply, my hand clenching the birth certificate until the paper tears. "She found the box. She knows who she is and who I am. She ran."
"Gio," Dante whispers quietly. "If she tries to take a bus, train, or flight, we will pick her up on the cameras. Do you want me to send the men to bring her back?"
"No!" I roar, my voice rattling the quiet bedroom. I force my chest to settle, my breathing shallow, my mind clawing for control through the panic. "No. If we drag her back by force, we prove her mother was right. We prove I am the wolf."
"Then what is the play?" Dante asks. "Salvatore's shooters will be here in twenty-four hours. Matteo’s mercenaries are already in Boston. She is a civilian on her own in the middle of a war zone. She won't survive a night."
"Trace her," I command, my voice dropping to a low, lethal purr. "Use her credit card, use the cameras at the harbor, use every contact we have in the state. I want her located in under sixty seconds."
"And when we find her?"
"We don't touch her," I answer, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth grind.
"We do not let her see us. But you take Marco, Enzo, and six of our best New York shooters.
You put an invisible perimeter around her.
If she goes into a motel, you buy the rooms on either side.
If she walks down a street, you shadow her from the rooftops. "
"Gio, that is a massive risk," Dante warns. "If she spots the perimeter, she will panic. She might run deeper into the dark."
"She won't see you," I snap, my possessive protective instinct flaring into a dark, suffocating rage. "But if anyone, including Matteo’s men, including Salvatore’s shooters, including a stranger who looks at her wrong, comes within ten feet of her...
you put them in the dirt. Do you understand me? She is my woman. Keep her breathing."
"Understood, Don Giovanni," Dante responds, his voice solemn. "We are moving the men now."
I hang up the phone, sliding it into my pocket.
I walk over to the window, my forehead resting against the cold, wet glass. The rain is still drumming a relentless beat against the roof, casting long, watery shadows across the empty bedroom. The scent of her is already beginning to fade, swallowed by the damp autumn chill.
I will not lose her to Matteo, and I will not let her father trade her like cargo. Even if she hates me for the rest of my life, even if I have to watch her from the shadows, I will keep her safe.
My phone pings once in my palm.
It is a secure text from Marco, stationed at the communication desk. It is a single line of coded Italian characters.
Matteo’s Boston cell just activated three burner units. They are moving north toward the coastal lines. The predator has smelled the crack in the perimeter.
"Let the games begin," I whisper to the empty room, my hand sliding down to grip the cold steel of my SIG.