5. Rocco
ROCCO
Serena calls me from Edinburgh. Her name lights up my phone. I do not answer.
There are reasons. They’re all bad.
I’m standing in a warehouse with Rafe D’Amato tied to a chair. Three of his men are on the floor. Two are breathing. One is making enough noise to prove he’ll be fine.
Rafe has blood on his teeth and a smile on his face.
My wife is calling.
I let the phone ring.
“You should take that,” Rafe says.
I hit him hard enough to tip the chair. It’s easier than answering. That’s the truth.
If I hear Serena’s voice, I’ll want to believe her.
If I believe her before I have proof, I hand every capo who wants the Castellano name weakened a reason to move on me.
If I don’t believe her, I have to hear what that does to her.
So I choose the option that lets me pretend I’m still in control.
I leave my pregnant wife to talk to my voicemail.
The ringing stops. Something inside me goes quiet with it.
“Now,” I say to Rafe, “we start again.”
He spits blood onto the concrete.
“Your wife likes you angry.”
I grab the front of his shirt and haul the chair upright.
“You do not speak about her.”
“You brought me here to speak about her.”
“You brought her into your room.”
Rafe laughs. Actually laughs. My fist closes.
“I have brought many wives into many rooms,” he says. “You’ll need to be specific.”
I break his nose. The laugh becomes a shout.
Behind me, Lewis shifts his feet. He’s seen worse in this warehouse and said less.
He doesn’t tell me to stop. Nobody tells me to stop. That’s the whole point of sitting where I sit—the orders run one direction, down the chain, and no hand comes back up to catch mine.
It used to feel like power. Today it feels like being alone in a crowded room.
I pull the phone from my pocket and show Rafe the first video.
Not the second.
I’ll kill him before I let him watch another man touch a woman dressed as Serena.
I’ve been arguing with myself for ten hours. Neither side is winning.
Rafe watches the hallway footage. His smile fades, only for a second. Then it returns.
“Bad angle,” he says.
“Who is she?”
“Your wife, apparently.”
I hit him again.
“Try a different answer.”
“I have several. Pick your favorite.”
“Did Serena come to your room Thursday night?”
“Ask Serena.”
“I asked you.”
His smile stalls. He understands now.
He understands that I asked my wife and didn’t trust her answer.
Rafe leans back as far as the rope allows.
“This is better than I thought.”
I wrap one hand around his throat.
“Answer me.”
His face reddens. He still smiles.
“A woman came to my room,” he says.
I loosen my grip enough for him to speak.
“Which woman?”
“One who wanted to be there.”
The second video plays in my head.
Dark hair. Black underwear. My ring. Rafe’s hands on her body.
I want to kill him.
That part is clean. Everything else is not.
“Say her name.”
“I don’t ask for names.”
“You knew the camera was there.”
He lifts one shoulder.
“I know many cameras are there.”
“Who recorded it?”
“Not me.”
“Who sent it?”
“Not me.”
“Who has the original?”
His smile shifts. He knows something. I can see it.
“Rocco,” he says, “if you can’t tell your own wife from a cheap video, why should I help you?”
The words land harder than his fists ever could.
I step back. Rafe laughs again.
“Put him in the east room,” I say.
Rafe’s smile disappears.
Good.
The east room doesn’t have cameras. It doesn’t have windows either.
“For how long?” Lewis asks.
“Until he becomes useful.”
“And if D’Amato’s men come?”
I look at Rafe.
“They won’t find enough of him to take home.”
It’s a threat. I’m not proud of it.
Serena didn’t leave a message.
I listen to the empty voicemail anyway.
Seven seconds of room noise. A breath. Then the call ends.
I play it three times.
On the fourth, I hear something in the background. A door closing. A man’s voice too far away to make out.
Matteo. It has to be Matteo.
Jealousy hits before sense. Ugly. Instant.
He’s protecting her because I ordered him to protect her.
I also know he held her hand on the plane.
He told me because I asked how she handled takeoff.
She was anxious. I offered my hand.
I nearly told him never to touch her again.
Then I remembered I was the man who put her on the plane alone.
I had no right to object to the hand she needed because mine wasn’t there.
That doesn’t mean I liked it.
I call him now.
“Boss.”
“Did she arrive safely?”
“Yes.”
“The flat?”
“Secure.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Has she eaten?”
Matteo pauses.
“Some crackers on the plane.”
“That was hours ago.”
“Get her food.”
“I’ve tried.”
My grip tightens on the phone.
“Try again.”
“Yes, boss.”
I should ask to speak to her. The words reach my throat. They stop there.
“No visitors,” I say instead. “Not even Lucia until I clear it.”
Matteo is silent.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
Not yes, boss.
I notice. I let it go. Another mistake.
At five, the team checking Serena’s story gives me nothing useful.
Amelie Laurent is gone.
The pastry chef didn’t turn up for her shift. Her flat is empty except for furniture, three dead plants, and milk in the fridge that expires next week. Her passport is gone. Her car is still parked two streets from the Halcyon.
People planning to disappear don’t leave milk, a car, and a week of clean uniforms hanging behind the bathroom door.
People who are frightened might. People who somebody paid to move fast, in the dark, might too. Whoever bought her didn’t give her time to empty the fridge.
Every answer opens another door, and Serena’s the one paying the toll while I decide which one to walk through.
“She ran,” Lewis says.
We’re in my office. The second video is open on a screen behind him, paused before the woman’s face disappears under dark hair.
“Or somebody moved her,” I say.
“The hotel says she clocked out at nine fifteen.”
“Serena says she stayed until after ten.”
Lewis waits.
Everyone waits now when Serena’s name comes up. They want to see which husband they’re speaking to.
The one who believes her. Or the one who sent her away. I’m starting to hate both men.
“Put men on the airports, the train stations, the ferries,” I say. “Find out who paid her rent. Pull her calls for the last month. Lean on whoever needs leaning on.”
“Quietly?”
“No. I want whoever moved her to know I’m looking.”
Lewis nods.
“There’s one more thing.”
He puts a bank report on my desk. Serena’s household account is highlighted in yellow.
“What am I looking at?”
“It’s tied to her usual phone and cards. If someone has access to the hotel network, they may have enough data to track purchases.”
“She’s in a protected flat.”
“Which stops being protected the first time she buys coffee.”
Serena uses it for groceries, gifts, charity expenses, and the ugly garden statues she buys because she knows I hate them. Her name is on the card. My money—docks money, tribute money, money with other men’s blood dried into it somewhere up the chain—is what fills it.
I’ve never once stopped to think what that difference means. Until now.
“Freeze the cards,” I say.
Lewis hesitates. “All of them?”
“The household account only. Set up a clean account with a new card.”
“Matteo already has an expense card for the flat.”
I think of Serena handing that card back before the flight.
“Put the new one in her name.”
“Should I call her?”
“No.”
“Then how will she know?”
“Matteo can explain.”
Even as I say it, I know how it’ll sound.
Rocco froze your money. Rocco sent a replacement.
“It’s for security,” I say.
Lewis doesn’t answer.
I look up.
“Do you have something to say?”
“No, boss.”
He takes the report and leaves. The office door closes.
I tell myself Serena will understand when I explain.
I do not call to explain.
The council of capos meets at seven that night. Every man who runs a crew for me, every man who owes tribute up the line and collects it from the men below him, around one long table. Serena’s been gone less than a day.
Her chair is already taken.
Claudia sits to my right, where Serena sits when family dinners turn into business and everyone pretends the difference matters.
Claudia doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t need to.
Her black folder rests where Serena usually leaves her water glass. Her pen sits beside the little scratch Serena made in the table last Christmas when she tried to open a wine bottle with a dinner knife.
Claudia’s hand rests near that scratch.
“Move,” I say.
The room goes quiet.
Claudia looks up. “What?”
“That’s Serena’s seat.”
Vittorio sighs from the other end of the table.
“Rocco.”
“Move.”
Claudia closes her folder. Her face is calm. Hurt, but calm.
“Of course.”
She takes the chair beside Vittorio. Serena’s chair stays empty.
That is worse.
Vittorio watches me.
“You did the right thing today.”
“Did I?”
“You put the family first.”
I look at the empty chair.
“My wife is my family.”
“Your wife may have let Rafe D’Amato into your bed.”
The men around the table stop breathing.
I’m out of my chair before I decide to move.
Vittorio stands too.
“Say that again,” I tell him.
“You can’t kill every man who repeats what he saw.”
“Watch me.”
“This is what I mean.” He points at me. “You’re thinking with pain, not sense. Sending her away was the first clear decision you’ve made since the video arrived.”
“Do not mistake restraint for agreement.”
“You could’ve killed her.”
The room tilts. Claudia goes pale. One of the older men looks down.
Vittorio keeps talking.
“Old rules would allow it. She dishonored the boss. She endangered the family. You showed mercy.”
Mercy.
The word makes me sick.
I sent my pregnant wife across an ocean with guards and money because I couldn’t look at her without seeing another man’s hands.
Neither word changes what I did.
I left her.
I make the thought stop.
If I let it finish, I’ll get on the plane tonight. I’ll believe whatever she says because I can’t breathe in this house without her.
That is exactly why I cannot go.
Need is not proof. Love is not proof. The video is proof.
Isn’t it?
“Nobody touches her,” I say.
Vittorio leans back. “She’s safe.”
“That was not a general statement. It was an order, and it runs to every man at this table and every soldier under him. Serena is under my protection. Rafe is mine. Anyone who moves on either one without my word is moving on me.”
Claudia’s chin lifts slightly.
“Either one?” she asks.
“I decide when Rafe dies.”
“You have him?” Vittorio says.
I ignore the question.
“What about the woman in the footage?” one of the men asks.
“You do not speak about my wife.”
“Rocco—” Vittorio starts.
“Meeting over.”
“We haven’t settled the east docks. The shipment lands Thursday and D’Amato’s people are asking questions.”
“Then settle them without me.”
I leave the room.
For the first time in nine years, nobody follows.
At midnight, I lie in our bed. Serena’s pillow smells like her shampoo. I turn it over. The other side smells like her too.
I throw it onto the floor. Then pick it up thirty seconds later. This isn’t my finest hour.
The room is too quiet.
Serena sleeps with a sound machine that plays rain. I complain about it every night. She says a man who keeps armed guards outside the bedroom doesn’t get to complain about fake weather.
I turn it on. Rain fills the dark. It doesn’t help.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her against the front door in the green dress. Her body taking mine. Her voice saying yours.
Then I see the video. Black underwear. Rafe’s mouth on a woman’s neck. The ring.
I get out of bed. The closet light comes on automatically.
Serena’s clothes hang on one side. Mine on the other. She has arranged them by color because she says my system of “black, blacker, and funeral” is depressing.
There’s an empty space where the camel coat should be. Evidence has it now.
Not police evidence. My evidence. Locked in a room downstairs while three men examine anything that can tell me whether my wife wore it that night.
I open the laundry basket. The green dress is on top. I pull it out.
The silk is wrinkled from the floor. It smells like Serena’s perfume and sex.
The silk shakes. It takes me a second to understand it’s my hands.
I remember buying it for her. She stepped out of the fitting room, looked at herself, and said, “This is too green.”
I said, “Take it off.”
She bought it immediately.
That was Serena. She could make a joke while I was losing my mind over her.
Yesterday, she looked at me and asked me to trust her.
I sent her away.
I press the dress to my face. There’s no dignity in what happens next.
My knees hit the closet floor. I fold over the dress like something in me snapped its spine.
My eyes burn. I let them.
A man who owns half a city, kneeling on a rug in the dark, breathing a woman out of a rag of green silk.
I want her. I love her.
Love doesn’t answer the question. I hate that it doesn’t.
My phone rings in the bedroom. For one wild second, I think it’s Serena.
I stand too fast and hit my shoulder on the closet door. The screen says Matteo. I answer.
“What?”
His voice is flat. Too flat.
“Mrs. Castellano is refusing food, refusing your calls, and asking to see her sister.”