Isabella. With them. Right now.
“Renzo, sit down.” Nico.
I don’t look at him. I’m gripping the table so hard the wood groans. A glass of water by Marco’s station. I knock it sideways. Don’t notice until it shatters on the floor and Nico jerks at the sound.
“Renzo.” Dante’s voice. Far away. Then closer, sharper. “Renzo.”
I can’t look at him. I’m already moving. Gun from the holster, checking the clip. Full. I cross the room in three strides before Dante steps into my path.
“Move.”
“And go where?” His hand hits my chest. Not gentle. “You don’t have a location. You walk out that door, you’re running blind into Benedetti territory, and they’ll kill you before you get within a mile of her.”
He’s right. That doesn’t stop the shaking.
“Marco.” My voice comes out wrong. Scraped raw. “Tell me you have something.”
His fingers fly over the keyboard. Minutes pass. His frown deepens.
“Shit.”
“What.”
“He routed through at least twenty different servers. Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, back through South America. By the time I untangle this, he could have called from anywhere.” Marco shakes his head. “Flavio’s been evading law enforcement for a year. He knows how to stay hidden.”
My fist hits the table. The monitors jump.
“Cazzo.“ The word grinds out of me. ”So we have nothing.“
“From the call? Nothing usable. I’m sorry, Renzo.”
Nothing. She’s out there. And I have nothing.
I slam the flat of my hand against the wall. The plaster dents. The sting shoots up my wrist. Good. That I understand.
Nico steps toward me. “Renzo. Hey. Look at me.”
I can’t. My breath is coming wrong, shallow and fast. Years of nothing. And now all of it. All at once. Her face when I pushed her through the door. The trust. And then the betrayal.
“We’ll find her.” Marco. Quiet. Not looking up from his screens.
I shove the gun back into its holster. Pull out the cleaning kit from the drawer beneath Marco’s station and start breaking down my backup piece. Field strip. Wipe. Oil. Reassemble. My fingers run the motions faster than prayer. The tremor in my fingers steadies when they have work.
The last time I shook like this, I was nineteen. Standing in the hallway outside Mama’s room. I couldn’t walk toward it. Couldn’t make my legs carry me to the place where she was dying.
I ran then.
I’m not running now.
“Nico. Pull everything we have on Benedetti safe houses east of the canal. Every warehouse, every shell company address, every property their shell LLCs have touched in the last five years.”
“Already pulling it.”
“I want a list. Twenty minutes.”
“You’ll have it in ten.”
I lay out the pieces of the Beretta on the table and wipe down the barrel. The oil smells like Sunday mornings with Papa, before everything, when gun maintenance was a ritual and not a preparation for war.
