The dining room in the Rossi brownstone smelled of garlic, cigar smoke, and fear.
Twenty-six-year-old Alessandro Rossi sat three seats down from the head of the table, hands folded, eyes lowered in the perfect picture of respect. Crystal glasses clinked. Silverware scraped. Twelve capos and underbosses laughed too loud at jokes that weren't funny.
At the head, Don Vittorio Rossi raised his glass of Barolo, gold pinky ring flashing. Sixty-two years old, silver hair slicked back, smile warm as a snake's. To the outside world he was Alessandro's grieving father. Inside the family, he was Zio Vittorio, the man who had "saved" the boy after Salvatore's tragic murder.
"To family," Vittorio toasted. "The only thing that matters."
Everyone drank.
Alessandro drank last.
Vittorio set his glass down with deliberate care. "Business. The Lombardis in Philadelphia think they can move product through our ports without tribute. They are mistaken."
Dante Valenti, sitting to Vittorio's right, leaned forward. "We hit their warehouse in South Philly tonight. Make it look like the Albanians."
Vittorio shook his head. "No. We send a message they will feel in their sleep." His gaze slid to Alessandro. "Nipote, you will handle it personally. Matteo Lombardi. Twenty-two. He's visiting his nonna in Bensonhurst tomorrow. Take him. Make it slow. Film it. Send the file to his father with my compliments."
The room went very quiet.
Alessandro felt every eye on him. This was a test. Fail, and he would be the next example.
He met Vittorio's black eyes. "Understood, Don Rossi."
Vittorio's smile widened. "Good boy. Remember, Alessandro: family is everything. Betray it, and you become nothing."
Later, in the marble hallway, Vittorio pulled him aside, hand heavy on the back of his neck like a benediction.
"You hesitate lately," the old man murmured. "I see it. Your father; God rest him; was soft at the end. Do not make me regret raising you as my own."
Alessandro swallowed. "I won't."
Vittorio patted his cheek, the same way he had when Alessandro was five and covered in his real father's blood. "That's my boy. And afterward, we celebrate. You'll sit at my right hand. Where you belong."
Alessandro nodded.
That night he drove to the docks alone, gun in his lap, and stared at the black water until dawn.
Two days later the car exploded on the BQE, and Alessandro Rossi ceased to exist.
But Vittorio's voice still echoed, eight years later, like a curse that never ran out of breath.
02:14 a.m.
Luca sat on the safehouse couch; an abandoned loft over a shuttered Italian bakery in the North End; shirt off again, fresh bandage around his ribs, burner phone in his hand. Elena slept on the opposite couch, wrapped in a moving blanket, gun within reach. Moonlight striped the brick walls through broken blinds.
He stared at the number he hadn't dialed in eight years.
Marco "the Fixer" DeLuca. Ex-Rossi, ex-everything. The only man who had helped stage Luca's death and never sold the story.
Luca pressed call before he could talk himself out of it.
Three rings. Then a sleep-rough voice: "This better be a wrong number or a dying wish."
"It's me," Luca said.
Silence. Then: "Madonna santa. They said you were dead."
"They were half right."
Marco, I need to know what I'm walking into."
A long exhale. "You're walking into a war, fratello. Vittorio put twenty million on your head; ten if you're breathing, ten bonus if you're talking. Every crew from here to Palermo is looking. Word is you killed four of his best men in Maine yesterday. He's… not happy."
Luca closed his eyes. "He sent a video. Said he wants to talk."
"He always says that right before he feeds people to pigs." Marco's voice dropped. "Listen, there's more. He's moving the Forget Protocol auction forward; forty-eight hours. Private island off Capri. Buyers are already arriving. Governments, tech psychos, some cartel out of Sinaloa. They want to buy the world's eraser."
Luca's stomach turned. "I need a way in."
"You need a miracle." A pause. "There's a rumor you're not traveling with a woman. Journalist. Vittorio thinks she's leverage. He's got orders to bring her alive. Said something about 'fixing what was broken in the bloodline.' Whatever the hell that means."
Luca's gaze flicked to Elena's sleeping form. Bloodline.
"Marco… is there anything about me he doesn't know?"
A bitter laugh. "He knows you're coming, Alessandro. He's counting on it. Be careful. Some debts even death doesn't cancel."
The line went dead.
Luca set the phone down and stared at the ceiling until the sky outside turned the color of old blood.
Dawn found them in the bakery's back room, sharing stale cannoli and planning the next move. Elena's satellite uplink was pulling encrypted chatter from Rossi channels. Luca cleaned the .22 with mechanical precision, trying not to think about the phrase fixing what was broken in the bloodline.
Elena's burner buzzed.
She frowned at the screen, then stepped into the tiny bathroom and closed the door.
Luca's instincts went cold.
He moved silently, pressed his ear to the door.
"…yes, I have him," she was saying, voice low. "He's… cooperative. Wounded, but useful. The lighthouse went sideways, but we lost them in the fog."
Pause.
"No, he doesn't suspect. He's too busy hating himself to look at me clearly."
Another pause. A soft laugh that sliced Luca's chest open.
"Forty-eight hours. I'll deliver him to the island personally. Just make sure the payment clears this time."
She ended the call.
Luca stepped back as the door opened. Elena froze when she saw his face.
For a long moment neither spoke.
Then Luca's voice came out flat and terrible. "Who was that?"
Her eyes flicked to the gun in his hand, then back to his face. "Luca—"
"Answer me."
She lifted her chin. "A source. Inside NeuroLex. He's feeding me buyer names."
"You said 'deliver him.'"
Her throat worked. "I was lying to him. Keeping him on the hook. Standard tradecraft."
"Bullshit." He reached for her phone. She didn't stop him.
He scrolled the call log. One outgoing number, encrypted. He hit redial.
A man answered on the first ring, voice cultured, amused. "Elena, darling, change your mind?"
Luca knew that voice. He'd heard it at a hundred family dinners.
Dante Valenti.
Elena's face drained of color.
Luca ended the call and crushed the phone under his boot.
"Start talking," he said quietly. "Or I start shooting. And I won't miss twice."
She didn't flinch. Just looked at him with those storm-gray eyes that suddenly looked very tired.
"My real name," she said, "is Elena Rossi."
The room tilted.
"I'm Vittorio's daughter," she continued, voice steady. "Illegitimate. My mother was his mistress in Lugano. He acknowledged me privately, never publicly. When Caterina died, he told me it was 'an unfortunate accident.' Offered me a place at the table if I brought him the one man who betrayed the family."
Luca felt the floor drop out from under him.
"I took the deal," she said. "To get close enough to burn it all down. Everything I've told you is true; Caterina, the drug, the auction. The only thing I lied about was why I needed you alive."
He raised the gun. "You were going to trade me for your sister's killer."
"Yes," she whispered. "And then I met you on that cliff and watched you bleed for a stranger, and I couldn't do it."
Silence stretched, thick and poisonous.
Luca's hand didn't shake. "Give me one reason not to put you in the ground right now."
Elena stepped forward until the muzzle pressed against her chest. "Because I'm the only one who knows how to get you onto that island without dying in the first five minutes. And because if you kill me, you'll never hear the rest of the truth about the night your father died."
The gun wavered.
Outside, church bells began to ring for morning mass.
Luca lowered the weapon, but his voice was winter. "You have until Capri to convince me you're worth keeping alive."
Elena Rossi."
She nodded once.
"Then we'd better start moving," he said. "Because family's coming."
And in the distance, sirens began to wail.