Page 76 of The Devils in the Details

The choice was clean because clean choices were the only kind worth offering. Permanent, silent withdrawal from all Romano affairs. Bianca’s personal assets intact — the Greek family money, the jewelry, the social contacts that were hers by right rather than marriage.

Theo’s quarterly dividends severed. Complete. Immediate. No grandfather clause, no gradual transition, no performance of dignity that would allow either of them to save face in rooms where face was currency.

Or the documentation went public. Not to law enforcement — to families. The old-guard networks, the social circles, the people who moved in the same rooms Bianca had spent decades cultivating and who would not be quiet about what they learned.

Reputation was her currency.

The documentation was designed to spend it.

Bianca listened. Her expression did not change. Not a muscle. Not a breath. The composed elegance held through every syllable, the way a well-built wall holds through weather it was designed to withstand.

She reached for the pen. Signed. Three copies, three signatures, each one delivered with the steady hand of a woman who had decided that losing with dignity was preferable to fighting a battle she had already lost.

The pen made a soft sound against the paper. The kind of sound that happened when something significant concluded without ceremony.

Bianca gathered her purse. Adjusted a diamond bracelet on her wrist with the casual attention of someone checking a watch. Her eyes moved across the room once — inventorying, the way she had always inventoried rooms, filing details about people and places she considered beneath her and would never admit she had noticed.

“Athens,” she said. Not to the lawyer. To the room, or to no one, or to the version of herself that needed to hear it spoken aloud to believe it was real. “I’ll be in Athens.”

She was preserving what remained. Grieving a husband she had tolerated rather than loved, in the way women of her station tolerated rather than loved the men who provided the structure their lives required.

Alexios had been that structure. Now the structure was gone, and Bianca Romano was doing what women like her had always done — adapting, recalculating, finding the next configuration that would allow her to maintain the appearance of control.

The offer had been mine. Not stated, not signed, not delivered in a room where either of us would have to acknowledge it. Handled through D’Angelo’s legal channel because channels were what they were for — to create distance between the decision and the person making it, so that the decision could stand on its own without the weight of history attached.

I had allowed her to walk away clean. Personal assets intact. No violence, no humiliation beyond what the documentation itself contained, no public reckoning that would have satisfied the part of me that remembered every dismissive glance, every clipped reference, every time the word “nephew” had landed in a room like a demotion.

She did not deserve it. I had given it anyway. Not because I was generous. Because generosity was cheaper than the alternative, and I had already spent enough on Alexios to last a lifetime.

The car departed. Black against the pale gravel, moving down the drive with the unhurried pace of something that had somewhere to be and was not in a hurry to get there.

I watched it until the cypress swallowed the taillights, and then I watched the empty drive for a count of three because three was the number I used when I needed to be certain something was finished.

The lighter clicked in my hand. Open. Held. The small orange flame steady against the dim monitor glow.

I snapped it shut.

* * * *

Leon’s men picked Theo up on a Tuesday morning in Florence. Unremarkable sedan. No markings. The kind of car that belonged to nobody and everybody, the automotive equivalent of a man who had decided that being invisible was more useful than being impressive.

They brought him in through the service entrance. Gravel under tires, the sound carrying in the morning quiet, and then boots on stone as two of Leon’s dock-raised men walked him toward the security office with the casual efficiency of people delivering a package they had been told to handle with care.

Theo walked with a limp. The kind of limp that suggested he was trying not to limp and failing. The dark line on his thigh — visible through the thin fabric of his trousers when he shifted his weight — was clean and precise.

I’d seen the scar once already, in the security footage from the D’Angelo estate corridor. Zephyr’s switchblade, driven in with everything he had. The angle had been good. The depth had been better. Theo had bled enough to matter and not enough to die, which was the arithmetic Zephyr had been running whether he’d admit it or not.

The security office smelled like coffee and gun oil. Steel-framed desk. Surveillance screens cycling camera feeds along the north wall. No family portraits. No ornate furnishings. No anything that suggested the room belonged to a man who cared what visitors thought of his taste.

I’d chosen it deliberately. Some conversations happened better in rooms that had no history, and this one had enough history to sink a ship without adding decoration to the weight.

Theo sat in the chair across from the desk. His hands rested on his knees. His dark olive complexion had taken on a gray cast that suggested he had not been sleeping well, or eating well, or doing any of the things that kept a man’s color where it belonged.

His jaw was sharp. His eyes carried the quality of careful, patient attention that read as warmth until you were close enough to see what lived underneath, and right now what lived underneath was fear, plain and undisguised, the kind of fear that made no effort to hide because hiding required energy he no longer had.

I did not offer water. Did not offer courtesy. Did not offer anything except the terms, delivered in the flat, factual voice I used for statements that were not subject to discussion.

“Romano dividends are finished. Effective immediately.” I leaned forward. One elbow on the desk. The lighter sat beside my hand, metal cool against the steel. “Your access to every asset, every account, every property, every contact is revoked. Complete. Permanent. The architecture supporting your mother’s allowance remains intact. Yours does not.”