“You can. And you will. Unless you want me to explain to the families why their shipments have been running short.”
Silence. Then: “I’ll make some calls.”
“Thirty minutes.” I end the call. Move to the next.
This is what I do. What I’m good at. But between the calls, between the threats, between the planning.
Her face. The image hits me without warning. Isabella, standing in the hallway outside the panic room. The moment before I pushed her through the door. The trust in her eyes. And then the moment after. When the door started to close. When she realized what I was doing. The betrayal.
I did that.
“Renzo.” Dante’s voice. “You with us?”
I blink. My phone out, staring at nothing.
“I’m fine.” I’m not fine. Not even close.Shit.My hands won’t stop moving. Dialing, gripping, flexing. The muscles in my neck have locked so tight my teeth ache.
I make another call. Threaten another man. Keep working.
I locked her in a room. Like she was fragile.
“Got something.” Marco cuts through the noise. “Signal keeps bouncing. Three Benedetti properties in that radius. One estate. That’s where Flavio runs high-value ops.”
The estate. Where he’d keep someone valuable. Someone he wants to use. My stomach turns. I push the image away.
“Can you confirm?”
“Not without getting closer. The signal keeps cutting in and out. But it’s our best lead.”
Our best lead. After hours of hunting. After every favor called in, every threat delivered.
“Keep working,” I tell Marco. “I need confirmation before we move.”
I don’t decide to go to the office. My feet take me there the way they take me to the garden. Before my head catches up. Before I can argue myself out of it.
The door is open. The way she left it.
Her laptop is still on the desk. Closed, the way she closes it when she’s stepping away and not when she’s done. Leaving thetabs open, leaving the threads mid-pull. On her side, the mug I brought her this morning. Cold now. A pale film across the top. Untouched.
Her jacket on the back of my chair.
She stopped asking to use it weeks ago. Started taking it the way she takes everything in this office — without asking, because we both stopped pretending this wasn’t hers too.
I cross the room. Stand at her side of the desk. The screen is dark but the cursor still blinks on the login prompt, waiting for her. The Benedetti files she’d been building for years, all of it locked behind a password only she knows. Three years of hunting. Every sleepless night in that apartment distilled into rows of data on this screen.
On the wall above the monitor, the photo. Sofia. Eighth grade. Braces and that ugly shirt.
I don’t touch anything.
The jacket is folded over the chair back at an angle only she makes — half off, one sleeve trailing. The sleeve that falls when she shrugs it on while typing, too focused on the screen to do it right.
She’ll fix it when she gets back.
I hold onto that.When.Not if.
I leave the office exactly the way she left it.
The garden is dark. Moonlight catches the edges of stone paths. Mama planted all of this. Created beauty that outlived her.
