Page 112 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
Doesn’t speak—until he sees the scarred man behind Silvano.
He straightens.
"We’ve seen him," I say. Luca nods. "He used to run interference for Arditi. Small jobs. Background noise."
"And now he’s pulling our old men out of hiding," Luca doesn’t argue. "Silvano didn’t build this. He followed someone in."
He taps the corner of the photo.
"That man’s not just running interference anymore. He’s the link. He’s connecting the old network to the new one."
A beat.
"He’s building Il Sangue Nero from the bones."
I run a hand through my hair and sit down hard on the bench under the west window.
The light here is soft.
It makes everything look gentler than it is.
I stare through it without seeing anything.
The edges of my mind are fraying, and I know it’s not from the enemy.
It’s from the doubt.
"Your brother-in-law had access. Legacy access. He helped broker the marriage. He restored those supply lines, even if only on paper."
I don’t answer right away.
I let the words hang.
"He also had reason to want control," Luca adds. "The old Rossi name never fully recovered after the southern purges. But a new structure—quiet, off-grid, loyal to him?—"
"Would make him untouchable," I finish.
Gianna said nothing.
And now I don’t know if that silence was loyalty or guilt.
Luca folds the pages carefully. "Do we take him alive?"
"If we can."
"And if we can’t?"
I look up. "Then we bury what’s left and follow the trail back. Every time."
We don’t say anything else.
We don’t need to.
This is what we do.
We follow blood until it leads us to the knife.
We don't flinch when it’s our own hands that held it once.
