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A cab waits by the street. The driver doesn’t ask questions, which is good because I don’t have answers. New York smells different outside the villa today. With the exhaust, wet stone, hot dog carts, and desperation, the city is real in a way the Benedetti compound never is. The authenticity causes my pulse to jump and my palms to sweat.
The address burns in my mind like it’s been branded there. A private lounge at an old hotel by the East River.
The man who abandoned me instead of raising me waits behind a cheap door in a building that probably hasn’t been updated since the seventies, with a name that used to mean home and now just means heartbreak.
The cab slows near a cracked awning. A narrow building looms ahead, the fire escapes rusted and skeletal. Inside, the air smells of bourbon and dust. Every light hums faintly, as if even the electricity is tired of this place.
The corridor stretches on, carpet worn to threads. Room numbers are faded. My hand shakes before I knock.
Then the door opens.
Vincent Martinelli stands in the threshold like he’s been anticipating this moment his whole life. He appears older, gray threading through his hair and a new scar along his jaw. But his cruel, sharp eyes haven’t changed. The same icy blue that used to terrify me as a child.
He grins as though no time has passed. “My little girl,” he greets, his voice dripping with false warmth.
My stomach turns to stone. Nausea rises, and I want to run, but my feet won’t budge.
The words sicken me. “Don’t call me that.”
His room looks exactly like him. Expensive chaos. I spy maps sprawled across a mahogany table, bourbon in a crystal tumbler, and a gun on the dresser. The drawn curtains create a suffocating atmosphere.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says mildly while lighting a cigar. “Enzo’s men will notice soon.”
“I came to see what kind of monster still breathes my mother’s name.”
He laughs. “Monster. You always did inherit your mother’s dramatics.”
The last thread of patience snaps. “She’s not dramatic. She’s broken. Because of you.”
“Broken?” He strides forward, his expression unreadable. “Elena was a liability. She didn’t understand the bigger picture.”
The words hit like a wave of freezing water on my soul. He talks about her like a bad investment, not a woman who used to hum while making coffee, not the mother who slow-danced in the kitchen when she thought no one was watching, who kept a jar of wildflowers on the windowsill and pressed one into every birthday card she ever sent me.
“Do you even hear yourself?” My voice trembles but doesn’t break. “You drugged her. You left her in that facility to rot.”
“She was uncooperative. I did what was necessary.”
My stomach churns. There’s not even a shadow of remorse in him. Just calculated, polished control.
“What are you doing back in New York?”
He exhales smoke toward the window. “Taking back what’s mine.”
“Yours?”
“The city. The game. The family names. You think the Benedettis are untouchable? They’ve forgotten who built the foundation they stand on.”
It’s delusion, or maybe conviction masquerading as sanity.
“You want another war?”
His lips twist. “War is inevitable when parasites overstay their welcome.”
“People will die.”
“They always do.”
“Who gave you the right to play God? You turned my life into a chess piece. You fed me to wolves to serve your own selfish agenda. I could’ve died.”
