8. Rocco
ROCCO
My wife’s card declines in a grocery shop in Edinburgh. I know this because Lewis tells me, very carefully, from the other side of my desk.
“Which card?” I ask.
Lewis doesn’t blink. Smart man.
“The household account.”
“That account has a fraud hold on it.”
“Yes.”
“For her protection.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you standing in front of me like I shot someone?”
Lewis hesitates.
That’s his first mistake.
“Say it.”
“Because Mrs. Castellano was standing at a till with groceries,” he says. “And because Matteo paid.”
The office goes very still.
I can hear rain ticking against the tall windows. I can hear my own pulse in my ears.
But my wife had a card declined in front of strangers. My pregnant wife.
And Matteo Greco paid for it.
Something ugly opens in my chest. Not shame. Not first.
First is jealousy. It comes up fast and hot, a dirty thing with teeth. Matteo putting his card down. Matteo—my man, my soldier, on my payroll for nine years—becoming the one with money when my wife’s own husband turned her account to dead plastic.
I hate him for that for one full second. Then I hate myself more.
“Where was this?” I ask.
“A shop near Marchmont.”
“Near Lucia’s flat?”
“Not close enough to be sure.”
“Then how do you know?”
Lewis slides a printed report across my desk. I leave it where it lands.
A notification from the bank. A declined transaction. A call from Serena to customer service. A note added to her file.
Restricted by primary holder. Security concerns.
My words. My order.
I remember giving it. Four days ago. Half awake, half insane. I told the banker to lock the household account because if Rafe’s people had access, if the hotel footage was part of something larger, if Serena’s card was being tracked, if, if, if.
There were reasons. They’re still bad.
“Restore it,” I say.
Lewis nods once. “Already requested.”
He has the sense to look at the wall over my shoulder.
“You requested it?”
“Yes.”
“Before asking me?”
“Yes.”
I should be angry. I am angry. But not at him. Not cleanly.
“Good,” I say.
Everyone in this house is learning to breathe around me. Slow and quiet. As if the wrong sound might set me off.
Serena used to be the only person who didn’t do that.
She’d come into this office barefoot, steal coffee from my cup, and make my whole empire feel stupid.
God, I miss her.
She should be in our bed. She should be arguing with me about whether the nursery should have wallpaper with tiny moons or tiny lemons.
Instead, my wife is standing in a grocery shop while another man pays.
“Where’s Matteo?” I ask.
Lewis’s face shutters. The second thing.
“We don’t know.”
“Say that again.”
“We don’t know where Matteo is.”
The office gets smaller.
“He was ordered to keep Serena at the protected flat.”
“Yes.”
“Then he refused the return order.”
“Yes.”
“And now you don’t know where he is?”
Lewis’s face stays blank.
“His phone’s off,” Lewis says. “Tracker pulled. Car dumped two streets over from Lucia Russo’s building. The Edinburgh crew lost him yesterday evening—six men on the ground and he walked her out from under all of them.”
“Lost him.”
“Yes.”
“My wife.”
“Yes.”
“My pregnant wife.”
“Yes.”
I stand. Lewis doesn’t move back. Good for him.
“How many men?”
“Six watching Lucia’s building. Two on the rear lane. One on the roof opposite.”
“And Matteo walked her out?”
“We believe so. There was a delivery van.”
I laugh once. It’s not funny.
“Matteo Greco took my wife off-grid using a delivery van.”
“That appears to be what happened.”
Violent jealousy comes back, but now fear is under it. Real fear. The kind that doesn’t care about pride.
Matteo knows our routes. He knows how to vanish because I taught him the rules of vanishing.
And he has Serena.
No.
He’s with Serena. The difference matters.
“Is she in danger?” I ask.
“Not from Matteo.”
My head snaps up.
There’s a line men in my world don’t cross unless they’ve already made peace with dying for it. Refuse the boss, take what he’s protecting, go dark—that’s a death sentence in every crew from here to Edinburgh. Matteo stepped over it without breaking stride.
“Explain.”
“Matteo refused an order. He didn’t sell her location to a rival capo.
He didn’t call D’Amato. He bought groceries, prenatal vitamins, and a cheap pay-as-you-go phone from three different shops so nobody could trace one till.
” Lewis pauses. “He’s protecting her. Doing the job right, just not for us. ”
Protecting her. From me.
It’d feel good for about eight seconds to call Matteo and promise to peel his life apart if he doesn’t bring Serena home before sunset.
Then Serena would look at me the way she looked in my office when she said, twice, that the woman in the tape wasn’t her.
Not because an enemy lied. Because I listened.
Shame comes third.
It comes late. It cuts the deepest.
Matteo looked at my wife and chose her over an order. My order. He did the one thing her husband could not.
My legs put me in the chair before I decide to sit.
“Get me everything from the bank call,” I say. “Audio, if there’s any.”
“There is.”
Of course there is. We record everything that touches family money.
“Play it.”
The speaker crackles. Then Serena’s voice fills my office.
“There must be a mistake.”
I close my eyes. Bad idea.
With my eyes closed, she’s closer.
The banker asks questions. Serena answers each one. Her voice is calm in the dangerous way. Too calm.
“Mrs. Castellano,” the banker says, “the account was restricted by the primary holder four days ago.”
I hear rain. Cars. The whole world continuing while my wife learns I cut her off.
“All cards and transfers are frozen.”
Then Serena laughs once. Small. Awful.
“Of course it does,” she says.
Lewis stops the audio. I don’t tell him to keep going.
There are things a man can hear and things he deserves to keep hearing.
I’m not sure which this is.
My office door opens without a knock. Only one man does that.
Vittorio Castellano enters with Claudia half a step behind him.
My uncle wears a charcoal suit and the expression of a priest who has never forgiven God for making him mortal. Claudia is in black, as usual. Widow black. The kind of black that makes people lower their voices around her.
“We heard,” Vittorio says.
“Did you.”
“Matteo has betrayed the family.”
There it is.
Fast. Clean. Convenient.
“Close the door,” I tell Lewis.
He closes it. From inside. He stays.
Vittorio notices. His mouth thins.
“This is a family matter.”
“Lewis is family enough for this.”
Claudia’s eyes flicker. Tiny. Almost nothing.
I see it. I’m starting to see a lot of almost nothing.
Seeing late is still better than staying blind because pride likes the dark.
Vittorio comes to the desk and places both hands on the edge.
My desk. My office. My house.
Some habits are loud.
“You sent him to watch your wife,” he says. “He took advantage of her distress and removed her from Castellano protection.”
Claudia makes a soft sound.
Not quite agreement. Concern, but the manufactured kind, perfectly placed.
“Serena’s pregnant,” she says. “If he has feelings for her?—”
I look at her. She stops.
I don’t want to hear Matteo’s feelings described by Claudia Castellano.
Matteo cares about Serena. Maybe he’s in love with her.
The thought lands like a blade under my ribs. I let it stay there.
Pain is not an order. Jealousy is not proof.
“Where’s my wife unsafe right now?” I ask.
Vittorio frowns. “You don’t know where she is.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“She’s unsafe because she’s outside our control.”
Control. There’s that word, dressed up as protection so men like us can sleep at night after building cages and calling them walls.
Serena saw it before I did.
“She was inside our control,” I say. “She left.”
Vittorio’s mouth sets.
“Because a guard thought his feelings mattered more than your authority.”
“Maybe because my authority became the problem.”
Silence. Even Claudia goes still.
The words sit in the office like a loaded gun.
I said them. I can’t unsay them. I don’t want to.
“You’re tired,” he says.
I smile. It doesn’t feel nice on my face.
“Careful.”
“I’m being careful. You’re wounded, Rocco.
Your wife humiliated you with D’Amato, and now your own guard has taken her into hiding.
If you hesitate, every crew watching this family—and half of them are counting the days—will decide the Castellano house can be walked into through your marriage.
Then the tribute stops. Then the docks are up for grabs.
Then men start testing the borders you spent a decade holding. ”
“Uncle Vittorio is only saying what others will say worse.”
Of course he’s Uncle Vittorio now.
She’s so good at moving the knife with two fingers.
“What do you suggest?” I ask.
Vittorio doesn’t hesitate.
“Declare Matteo a traitor to the family. Freeze his assets, put the word out that anyone who shelters him answers to us. Put men on every Russo friend, every old Greco safe point, every clinic in Edinburgh. Find your wife and retrieve her.”
Retrieve.
Like luggage. Like the green dress hanging in my closet because I couldn’t bear to have it packed.
“And if she refuses?”
The answer is so obvious to him he almost doesn’t understand the question.
“She’s your wife.”
Claudia moves closer.
“She’s emotional right now,” she says. “Pregnancy, betrayal, being away from home. Matteo may be influencing her. If you bring her back, give her time, she may understand.”
Betrayal. Interesting word.
I wonder which betrayal she means.
The one she thinks Serena committed. Or the one Claudia helped put in my hand.
No.
I do not know that yet.
I know a missing pastry chef. I know Rafe laughed too easily. I know Serena’s face when she said no.
I know enough to be afraid of what I do not know.
Not enough to burn Claudia down.
Yet.
Vittorio taps the desk with two fingers.
“Rocco. Give the order.”
Three people in this room wait for me to give it. None of them is my wife.
Somewhere in Edinburgh, Matteo may be sleeping by a door again. My money isn’t what put him there. Serena’s on the other side of it.