Dante reaches for the table beside him. Small. Metal. A single blade laid across it, clean as a surgical instrument. He picks it up.
The sound Flavio makes is not human.
Dante holds the handle the way Papa taught us. Seated in the palm, thumb along the spine. “I’m not going to negotiate with you.” Dante’s voice hasn’t risen. “I’m not going to accept your names or your money or your supply routes.” He crouches, bringing himself level with Flavio’s eyes. “Papa’s name was Salvatore. He sat at the head of our table every Sunday. He taught me how to use a knife. He planted a garden with Mama and sat in it every morning until the day he couldn’t.”
Flavio’s wrists strain behind him. The zip ties creak against the chair.
“You took him from us.” Dante stands. “You did it with patience. You let him believe his own body was betraying him.”
“Dante.” Flavio’s voice cracks. “Please. I can make this right. There are ways to?—”
“There are no ways. No negotiation. No mercy.” His grip doesn’t waver. His breathing doesn’t waver. “So this will not be quick.”
He looks at me. Not for permission. Just to know I’m here. I meet his gaze. Hold it.
He turns back to Flavio.
Dante starts with the hand that signed the order. The blade goes in beneath the knuckles of Flavio’s right hand, severing tendons, and Flavio screams against the corrugated walls until the sound loses oxygen.
The first cuts are controlled. The Don executing a sentence. Then he starts talking. Low. Not to Flavio. To the room. To Papa. Names. Dates. Every Sunday dinner Papa missed. The garden Mama planted that he sat in every morning until the morning he couldn’t. His voice catches on the garden. His breath hissesthrough his teeth and the next cut goes deeper than the ones before.
The blade moves to Flavio’s abdomen. Not measured anymore. Dante’s hand doesn’t waver but the distance behind his eyes is gone. Every line he draws is a name.
Flavio’s head drops forward, snaps back. His mouth works around sounds that aren’t words anymore. The chair legs scrape against concrete as his body tries to escape what his bonds won’t allow.
He pauses. The tattoo over his heart rising and falling with breath that’s coming harder now.
“The day he couldn’t walk to the garden.” Rough. Stripped down to something I’ve never heard from my brother. “You were already killing him. And he sat there thinking his own body was giving up.”
The blade goes back to work. This isn’t the Don executing a sentence anymore. This is Salvatore’s son.
Flavio’s screams narrow to a thin, continuous keen from a man who thought he was untouchable.
When Dante draws the blade across Flavio’s throat, the sound stops. Thins. Goes wet. Goes quiet. Flavio’s head drops. His chest heaves twice, three times.
Then nothing.
Dante straightens. Steps back. One breath. Deep enough that his shoulders drop and whatever he carried into this room escapes with it. His shirt soaked dark. He sets the blade on the table.
I push off the wall.
Stefano Benedetti hasn’t made a sound through his uncle’s death. He sits in his chair with that sealed eye and those broken ribs, silent the way a man is when sound might draw the knife to him next.
I stop in front of his chair.
He lifts his head. The one good eye finds mine.
I don’t need one. Never have. My hands know this work the way other men know a steering wheel or a prayer.
“The girls you kept.” My voice is flat. Final. “Sofia Vitale. The others.”
Stefano’s throat bobs. “Business,” he rasps. “Just business.”
Shit.Business.
I crouch in front of him. Eye level. Patient. The way I was patient in rooms like this before Isabella existed. Before I understood what it costs a person to survive what he put girls through.
“She doesn’t talk anymore.” I let those words sit between us. His words, from Flavio’s mouth, living in my head since that interrogation room. “Sofia Vitale. Fifteen when you took her. Eighteen now. Doesn’t talk. Flinches at footsteps. Screamed when a man moved toward her in a room where she was supposed to be safe.” I hold his gaze. “What do you think you made?”
