Istep off the boat at the Marvento Docks before the lines are tied, boots striking the warped planks of the old wharf.
The air is salt-drenched, heavy with the greasy smell of fishermen’s nets and the slow rot of abandoned crates.
Seagulls scream above, but they keep their distance.
Even the animals know not to linger when Salvatore men arrive unannounced.
Luca sent me here with a single instruction. No letter. No escort. Just a name. Vasco. A man once trusted with minor port oversight, now suspected of moving something through the water that does not belong to us. I do not ask why Luca waited until now to tighten the leash. I know better than to question the quiet timing of my king.
It has taken half the day to track him.
He isn’t in the shipping yards. Not in the market stalls near the harbor. I find him finally in a backroom above an old cantina that caters to men who remember what it was to be dangerous. The place reeks of sweat and old liquor. The windows are painted shut. He’s counting bills when I arrive, shoulders hunched in a way that tells me he knows exactly who I am before I speak.
‘Vasco,’ I say. The door clicks shut behind me. The room seems smaller with me inside it.
He turns slowly. No sudden movements. His eyes move over me like a man already calculating his odds, already reaching for some angle to survive.
‘Signor Moretti.’ His voice is low, too calm. ‘I didn’t expect—’
‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘You didn’t.’
I step forward. He stumbles back, bumping into the desk behind him. The cash flutters to the floor, forgotten. I watch him reach, subtly, toward the drawer on his right. My boot meets the edge of the desk before his fingers do.
‘I would think very carefully about what you reach for,’ I murmur.
His hand stills.
‘What are you moving through this port, Vasco?’
‘Only what’s authorized. Produce. Wine. Some low-level arms. All on Luca’s ledgers.’
I smile, slow and humorless.
‘That’s the report you give the clerks. I asked what you’re moving through this port.’
There’s a beat of silence. Then another. I reach into my coat and draw the blade I use when I want men to speak without their tongues splitting lies. Vasco’s eyes dart to it. His composure begins to crack.
‘We were told—’ he begins.
‘Told by who?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Try again.’
‘I swear, I don’t. He doesn’t use one. He deals through emissaries. I never saw his face. But the money, the shipments, they’re real. The crates are marked with Salvatore tags, but the contents—’
‘Are not ours.’
He nods. The sweat breaks across his brow now, beading near the temple.
I step closer, blade still loose in my grip. ‘You’re not stupid, Vasco. So, I want to know what made you take this risk.’
He hesitates. Then, in a voice barely more than a breath, he says, ‘They said Luca was slipping.’
I go still.
‘Who said that?’
His voice cracks. ‘Everyone. The city. The eastern ports. Even the old hands in Sicily have stopped calling him by name. They say he’s too old. Too slow. That Nuova Speranza isn’t his anymore. That it belongs to ghosts now.’
I reach out and grab him by the collar, yanking him toward me so fast he doesn’t have time to react.
‘Ghosts?’ I snarl.
‘Gotti,’ he gasps. ‘Cesare Gotti.’
My grip tightens.
‘You’re sure of that name?’
‘Yes,’ he chokes. ‘He’s alive. He’s building something. He’s using our men. Our routes. Said someone on the inside is feeding him. I only heard pieces. I didn’t know the whole picture. I swear it. I just wanted to survive.’
My blade rests against his throat now. Not cutting. Not yet.
‘You think betraying Luca Salvatore buys you survival?’
‘I thought—’
‘You don’t think,’ I cut him off. ‘You listen. And you beg.’
He falls to his knees without being told. His hands tremble. He knows this is the end. But something in him still hopes. Still pleads.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please, I can give you names. I can help.’
‘You’ve helped enough.’
I pull the knife away from his neck.
For a moment, he thinks he’s been spared.
Then I strike.
He slumps to the floor, blood blooming beneath him like a dark flower. I watch the light go out of his eyes. Only then do I let myself exhale. I take his phone, his ledgers, the keys to the lower docks. I wipe the knife clean with his sleeve and step over the body.
The cantina outside is quieter now. The sun has sunk into the ocean. The light is pale and cold. I walk down to the end of the dock, open the ledger beneath a rusted lamp, and scan the last shipments.
The marks are coded. Not official Salvatore inventory. But someone has forged the tags well. Whoever is behind this has help. From the inside.
Thirty years ago, Luca crushed the Gotti family. Dismantled them with surgical precision. They were too quiet, too clever, too greedy for their own good. Cesare vanished. Everyone assumed he was dead. But ghosts don’t die. They wait. And now, one is walking through our house again.
I burn the ledger before I leave. Too dangerous to keep. But the truth is already scorched into memory.
By the time I return to the boat, it’s full dark. The water churns low against the hull. I signal the pilot. Nuova Speranza rises against the night like a citadel built on bones. Lights glow faintly behind high windows. Guards nod as I pass through the gates, but their faces are drawn. Tired. I know that look. The estate is uneasy.
I make my way to the upper house. My boots echo through the marble halls. Luca is waiting in his study, the fire lit, the drink untouched. He looks up as I enter.
‘Well?’ he asks.
I close the door behind me and step into the firelight.
‘Cesare Gotti is alive.’
He says nothing, but his eyes go cold.
I continue. ‘Vasco was taking orders from an unnamed source. Shipments passed through under our seal, but they weren’t ours. Arms. Documents. Possibly personnel. Vasco claimed the intel was coming from the inside. Someone is feeding Gotti information from within the estate.’
Luca rises slowly. The fire flickers against the lines of his face.
‘Who?’ Luca asks, his voice like frost cracking across stone.
I exhale slowly, fingers curling tighter around the worn edge of the report I brought back, now folded in my coat like something shameful. ‘Not Vasco. He didn’t know. But someone high enough to access routes. Tags. Movements.’ I meet his eyes as I say it. ‘Someone close.’
Luca’s gaze sharpens for half a second before he turns away.
He walks toward the window with the kind of slow, deliberate steps that have always unnerved men more than shouting ever could.
The fire behind him throws his shadow long across the polished floor, and for a moment, he looks like a statue carved from rage and calculation, every angle chiseled to remind the world what power used to look like when it didn’t beg for permission.
He says nothing for a moment, just stares out across the garden, where the hedges rise like silent witnesses and the olive trees whisper with wind they shouldn’t feel. The estate has always held its breath before he makes a decision.
Then, quietly, like a blade unsheathing in the dark, he murmurs, ‘He waited. Waited for years. And now he sends rats through my walls.’
The words carry no emotion, but I hear it beneath them. The insult. The old fury buried beneath years of silent triumph. The idea that someone could crawl back from the grave and dismantle his house from within burns hotter than any betrayal ever could.
I step forward, boots muffled by the thick rug underfoot. The air feels thick with the past. I’ve stood in this room for a hundred judgments, a thousand quiet decrees that reshaped the city without ever speaking above a whisper. But this is different. This is not about business or street disputes or smuggling routes.
This is about legacy.
‘We find the leak,’ I say, low and certain, ‘and we stop it.’
Luca turns slowly, his expression unreadable, but I see the fire reflected in his eyes now. Not from the hearth. From somewhere deeper. The kind of fire that does not ask if it should burn, only when.
‘And if the leak is family?’ he asks.
I do not answer right away. Not because I don’t know. But because the truth has too many knives. If the leak is family, we do what we’ve always done. ‘We bleed for it, and we bury it.’
The stone corridor breathes with cold as I step out of Luca’s study, the firelight still searing behind my eyes, the report now committed to memory and nothing more. The door clicks shut behind me, quiet as a knife.
Then I hear footsteps, followed by a voice, high and tight with panic. ‘Dad!’
I turn just as Gabriel barrels down the hall toward me, his small body throwing itself into mine, arms wrapping around my waist. His face is blotched with tears, his breath jagged.
‘She’s gone!’ he cries, voice raw and trembling. ‘Mama’s gone!’
The words slam into my chest.
I crouch fast, gripping his arms, my pulse already roaring in my ears. ‘Gabriel. Breathe. What do you mean gone?’
He shakes his head hard, curls clinging to his cheeks. ‘I woke up and she wasn’t there. I looked everywhere. I called and called and she didn’t come. She never leaves me. Never.’
I scoop him into my arms and rise, my stride already lengthening down the hall. My jaw locks so tight I feel the ache rattle through my teeth. She wouldn’t leave him. Not like this. Not without a trace.
Something is wrong.
I storm through the lower levels, pushing open the door to the south house myself, ignoring the startled guard near the threshold. Gabriel clings to me, silent now except for his breathing. Inside, the lights are still on. The blanket she tucked around him is crumpled. Her coat still hangs on the hook by the door.
No signs of struggle. No note. No sign of a woman who left willingly.
I don’t waste time.
Back through the halls, past the arched windows that mirror the dead garden outside, I carry Gabriel straight to the main house. Luca is still in the drawing room, his fingers curled around a glass of dark liquor he hasn’t yet touched. He looks up, brows drawn.
‘She’s missing,’ I say, the words cutting like gravel. ‘Gabriel woke alone. No one has seen her.’
Luca’s stare sharpens. ‘You think she ran?’
‘No. She wouldn’t leave him. Not unless someone made her.’
He rises slowly, setting the untouched glass down on the table beside him. ‘Round up the men,’ he says.
I nod once. ‘Already moving.’
Within the hour, every soldier within reach has been called. Search parties fan out from the estate gates, flashlights slicing through the night. Dogs bark at the edge of the orchard. The guards at the perimeter gates swear they saw nothing. That no one came or went.
Giovanni appears not long after, buttoning his jacket as he approaches.
‘Heard the news,’ he says, adjusting his cufflinks. ‘Tell me where you need me.’
‘Check the west corridor,’ I say. ‘Speak to the kitchen. The maids. Anyone who saw her past sundown.’
‘Of course,’ he says, and vanishes into the shadowed hall. But as one hour bleeds into two, and there is no sign of Aria, my mind begins to unravel.
The dark sky turns silver at the edges, but there’s no trace of her. No sound. No sign. I sit on the back steps with Gabriel nestled in my arms, his small body shaking with silent sobs, the lion clutched to his chest now damp with tears. My hands rub slow circles on his back.
‘She said we’d find a new school today,’ he whispers. ‘She promised.’
I close my eyes. My throat feels raw. ‘We’ll find her.’
The boy nods, but I feel the doubt in his silence. He’s old enough to know when grown-ups are lying.
‘Enzo?’
I look up to see Valentina approaching.
She is barefoot, her silk robe trailing over the dew-soaked stones as she moves through the garden, a silver bowl in one hand, delicate shears in the other.
I watch her pause by the jasmine, her fingers ghosting over the petals before she looks up and sees us. ‘He shouldn’t be outside,’ she says, voice soft. ‘It’s too cold.’
‘He needed air,’ I murmur.
She kneels, setting the bowl aside, and brushes Gabriel’s hair back from his face. ‘What happened?’
I rub my eyes, the fatigue behind them sharp as grit. My palm lingers at the bridge of my nose, pressing hard, as if that might steady the world that feels one breath from tipping.
‘She vanished sometime after dusk,’ I murmur. My voice scrapes low, nearly a growl. ‘No one saw her leave.’
Valentina’s brows crease with something colder than worry.
‘But I saw her. Just after sundown. We spoke.’
The words snap my attention to her like a tether yanked tight. I straighten, one hand tightening around Gabriel’s small shoulder where he sits tucked close to my side. ‘About what?’
She shifts slightly, her silk robe trailing over the flagstones as she crouches to gather the petals that have spilled beside her feet.
The bowl had tipped without notice, a mess of marigold and white roses strewn like prayers never uttered.
Her fingers still among the flowers, but her voice stays steady.
‘Life,’ she says. ‘The house. She asked about Luca’s routines…about your work. She seemed calm. But then she asked about family life here. About how things had changed.’
My stomach knots. ‘Go on.’
Valentina glances up. Her gaze narrows as if recalling the texture of the conversation, not just the words. ‘She asked about Giovanni.’
That name lands like a stone in water. I can feel the surface break. Feel something beneath start to churn. A sharp ache rises in my chest, old instincts roaring to life. ‘What did she say?’
Valentina straightens, dusting her hands as she looks at me more closely. ‘That something about him doesn’t sit right,’ she says. ‘She didn’t elaborate.’
My thoughts reel, chasing images and instincts and memories down corridors I hadn’t thought to explore before. What did she know? What did she see? And why Giovanni?
The name churns through me, pulling threads tight behind my ribs.
Giovanni.
With his immaculate timing, his smooth tongue, his way of turning every answer into a dead end. He moves through this house like it belongs to him, yet never leaves a trace of where he’s been. My grip around Gabriel tightens slightly.
The boy leans into me, half-asleep now but trembling still.
I lower my head for a moment, burying my mouth in his curls. The scent of him—faint soap and warmth—grounds me for a second. A heartbeat. Then I rise.
‘You’re sure it was after sundown?’ I ask, my voice rougher now, clipped around the edges.
Valentina nods without hesitation. ‘Yes. The sky was already red behind the cypress line. I remember thinking how the whole estate looked like it was holding its breath for the sun to set.’
A sound leaves my throat—half exhale, half curse.
I have to find my son’s mother.
And I think I know where to begin.
