The Forgotten Page had never felt less like a sanctuary.
Luca sat at the small table in the back room, shirt off, fresh stitches pulling every time he breathed. Elena had cleaned the blood off the floorboards with bleach that still stung his nose. Capote watched from the highest shelf, tail lashing like a metronome of judgment.
Spread across the table were the twelve Polaroids from the package, plus the ones Reyes had given them at the lighthouse. Twenty-four frozen moments of a life Luca had tried to burn to ash.
He hadn't slept. Couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes he saw muzzle flashes in the fog, felt the bullet carve its new signature along his ribs.
Elena came down the stairs carrying two mugs of coffee strong enough to wake the dead. She'd showered; hair still wet, wearing one of his old Navy sweatshirts that hung to mid-thigh. The sight did something complicated to his chest.
"You're brooding," she said, setting a mug in front of him.
"I'm thinking."
"Same face." She slid into the opposite chair. "Find anything?"
He tapped the photo on top: the one of him on the brownstone steps with Vittorio and Dante Valenti. "Look at the background. Behind Dante's shoulder."
Elena leaned in. A section of brick wall was visible, and on it, half-hidden by shadow, a carved symbol: a small circle bisected by a vertical line with a serpent coiled around it.
"That's not Rossi crest," she said.
"It's older. Salvatore's personal mark. He put it on every property he actually owned, not the family shells." Luca's voice was quiet. "Safehouses, cash drops, places he didn't want Vittorio to know about."
He pulled the photo closer, angling it under the desk lamp. "There—see the address plate on the door? 214. And the street sign reflection in the window: Commonwealth Ave, Boston. Back Bay."
Elena's eyes widened. "A safehouse in Boston. Your father's, not Vittorio's."
"Exactly. If Salvatore hid anything about the night he died, it'll be there."
She was already pulling up satellite maps on her tablet. "214 Commonwealth is a six-story brownstone, currently listed as luxury condos. Top two floors owned by a trust out of the Caymans. Paper trail dead-ends in 1996."
Luca traced the serpent symbol with his thumb. "That's the place."
He stood, wincing as the stitches pulled stitches. "We go tonight."
"Tonight?" She arched a brow. "You were shot twelve hours ago."
"I've been shot before. I'll live." He met her eyes. "Clock's ticking. Vittorio knows we're moving."
Elena studied him a long moment, then nodded once. "Fine. But we do it my way. No cowboy bullshit."
He gave her half a smile, the first real one in days. "Who, me?"
They left Harbor's End at dusk in a nondescript gray Camry Elena boosted from long-term parking at the Portland jetport. Luca rode shotgun, ribs wrapped tight, pain a dull throb he welcomed; proof he was still breathing.
For the first hour neither spoke. Just the rhythmic click of the wipers against wet glass and the low hum of tires on I-95.
Then Elena broke the silence. "You going to tell me how you actually died?"
He glanced at her. "Thought I was pretty clear on the 'faked it' part."
"I mean why. What was the final straw that made Alessandro Rossi decide to burn his whole life down?"
Luca stared out at the sodium lights streaking past. Rain blurred the world into watercolor. He'd never told anyone the whole truth. Not even himself, not really.
"His name was Matteo Lombardi," he said finally. "Twenty-two years old. Cousin to the Philly don. Vittorio wanted to send a message; ordered me to put him in the trunk of a car, drive him to the docks, make him disappear. Kid was crying, begging. Said he had a daughter on the way."
Elena's hands tightened on the wheel.
"I couldn't do it." Luca's voice was flat, distant. "So I put two in the ceiling, cut him loose, told him to run and never look back. Vittorio found out two days later. Sent Dante to bring me in for 're-education.' That night I rigged the car, paid a junkie to wear my watch and ring, and walked away from the explosion with half my face on fire."
He turned to her. "I didn't fake my death because I grew a conscience. I did it because I finally realized I was the monster in someone else's story. And I was tired of it."
Silence again, heavier now.
Elena reached over, fingers brushing his knuckles on the armrest. Not romantic; just human. "You were twenty-six. Brainwashed since birth. That doesn't make you a monster. It makes you a survivor."
He didn't pull away. "Tell that to Matteo's daughter."
She let go. "I can't. But I can tell you this: the man who let Matteo live is still in there. I saw him on the cliff when you covered me instead of saving yourself."
Luca looked out the window so she wouldn't see whatever was on his face.
An hour later, just past Portsmouth, she spoke again, softer. "You don't trust me."
"Should I?"
"No," she admitted. "But I need you to try. Because I'm terrified, Luca. Every person I've ever loved is dead because of these people. You're the first one who's ever fought back."
He studied her profile; the sharp line of cheekbone, the tremor in her lower lip she tried to hide. "I'm not fighting for you," he said. "I'm fighting because if I don't, the kid I used to be wins. And I refuse to let that bastard have the last word."
Elena's smile was small, fierce. "Good enough."
They drove the rest of the way in silence that felt less like a wall and more like a bridge.
214 Commonwealth Avenue was a cathedral of old money; limestone, gargoyles, wrought-iron everything. The top-floor windows glowed faintly behind blackout curtains.
They parked three blocks away in an alley off Newbury. Black tactical clothes now, gloves, hoods. Elena carried a slim Pelican case with her laptop and lock-picks; Luca had the Glock and a suppressed .22 he'd lifted from Reyes's cache.
Rear service entrance. Old lock; thirty seconds with Elena's tension wrench and rake. Inside smelled of lemon oil and old secrets.
Freight elevator to the top floor. No cameras in the shaft; Salvatore had always hated being watched. They stepped out into a private foyer paneled in dark walnut. A single door, biometric pad glowing red.
Elena pulled a strip of graphene tape from her kit, pressed it over the scanner. Thirty seconds of silent war between her laptop and the lock later, the light flipped green.
The door opened into darkness.
Luca's heart hammered. The air smelled exactly like his childhood; leather, cigar smoke, his father's cologne. He hadn't been here since he was five, but his body remembered.
They moved room to room. Most had been converted to sterile luxury; glass and chrome, no soul. But at the back, behind a false bookcase (Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy as the trigger, of course), they found it.
Salvatore's study, untouched.
Desk. Leather chair. Wall safe behind a portrait of Isabella Rossi, Luca's mother, painted the year before she "committed suicide."
Elena exhaled. "Holy shit."
Luca stared at the portrait. His mother's eyes followed him, sad and knowing. He reached out, touched the frame. The safe combination was his birthday; old school, four digits. The door swung open.
Inside: ledgers, cash bricks, a Colt Python that had been his father's, and a steel document box.
Elena photographed everything while Luca opened the box with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Inside: birth certificate (Alessandro Salvatore Rossi, legitimate), death certificate (Isabella Rossi, ruled suicide), and a thick file labeled PROGETTO MNEMOSYNE – FASE UNO.
He opened it.
Pages of clinical notes in Salvatore's handwriting. Test subjects. Dosages. And then, on page seven, a photograph paper-clipped to a report.
A little boy with dark curls and terrified eyes, strapped to a medical chair. IV in his arm. Date stamped three days after Salvatore's murder.
Luca's knees gave out. He sat hard on the Persian rug.
Elena knelt beside him, read over his shoulder. Her sharp intake of breath cut the silence.
The report read:
Subject A.R. received 15 mg/kg MN-7. Memory cluster 1995-11-18 (paternal homicide) successfully ablated. Emotional affect flattened. Suggestibility increased 89%. Recommend continuation as heir protection protocol.
At the bottom, Salvatore's scrawled note:
Forgive me, mio figlio. It was this or watch him murder you too.
Luca closed the file. The room tilted.
Elena's hand found his shoulder, grounding. "He didn't want to hurt you. He was trying to save you from what he knew Vittorio would do."
Luca's voice came out raw. "He let them erase me."
"No," she said fiercely. "He bought you time. And you used it to become someone Vittorio can't control."
He looked at her then, really looked. Tears tracked silently down her cheeks; for him, for Caterina, for every ghost in that file.
Outside, a car door slammed in the street below.
They moved fast; photos taken, files bagged, safe closed, bookcase shut. Out the way they came.
But as the freight elevator descended, Luca caught their reflection in the polished brass wall: two people covered in dust and old blood, carrying the truth like a live grenade.
Elena met his eyes in the reflection. "What now?"
He thought of the little boy in the photo, of the man who'd let a monster live, of the woman beside him who refused to let him drown.
"Now," he said, "we burn the whole thing down."
The elevator doors opened onto the alley.
And in the shadows across the street, a red laser dot danced across Elena's chest for half a heartbeat before disappearing.
They had company.