"We'll take him down."
She looks at me. "Promise?"
"Yes."
She holds my gaze for a moment, then nods once and looks back at the screen. It's not absolution. It's not comfort. It's a target, and right now that's what she needs.
The recordings run for hours.
We listen in near silence, broken only by Niko's commentary and Serafina's questions — which turn out to be better than mine. She catches inconsistencies I miss. She maps patterns in the audio timelines without being asked. At one point, Niko slides his laptop toward her without a word, and she starts pulling metadata like she's done it before.
"Did you ever consider anything other than medicine?"
She doesn't look up. "My father wanted me in the business. I wanted the opposite of everything he stood for." A pause. "Bellevue was as far as I could get."
"And yet."
"And yet." Her mouth curves. Doesn't reach her eyes.
I look at her for a moment longer than I should.
Then I look back at the screen.
It's nearlyevening when Niko hits the last file.
Different from the others — not a financial record, not a conversation. A single audio memo. Short. The kind a man makes for himself when he needs to remember something. When he needs the record to show he tried.
Niko plays it.
The voice is older. Deliberate. The cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime choosing words carefully and knows the weight of every one.
Serafina goes rigid beside me.
I know why.
I recognized the voice three seconds before she did.
Niko lets it run to the end. Pauses the audio.
The room is completely silent.
He looks at me. His face does the thing it almost never does — uncertain and careful, the expression of a man delivering news he wishes he didn't have to.
"This file," he says slowly, "says Enzo authorized the first strike."
I don't move. Don't react.
Years of training have locked my face away, and right now I need every inch of that control because what's moving through me isn't clean or strategic. It's cold fury. The kind that doesn't burn. The kind that freezes everything it touches until you can't feel your own hands.
Enzo. My uncle. The man who handed me my first weapon and told me that loyalty was the only currency that mattered.
"Send me the file." My voice is even. "Lock down the copies. Nobody talks about this until I say so."
Niko nods. Knows better than to push.
I don't move for a moment.
Just a moment. Long enough to feel the floor not be there. The man who handed me my first weapon. Who sat across from me at Sunday dinners for as long as I can remember. Who buried my father and told me, in the car after, that family was the only thing that couldn't be taken from you if you held it tight enough.
