Page 177 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
"You look well," he says.
I close the door behind me and remain near it.
"You look like a traitor."
"Gianna—"
"You put my daughters at risk."
He exhales through his nose.
"I never meant?—"
"I don’t care what you meant. You breached my house. You used me. You dragged me into a game Father started in smoke and ended in ash. You made me the key to a war that should have ended with his grave."
He doesn’t try to defend it.
Instead, he sinks onto the bench, shoulders bowed. "I didn’t think it would go this far," he says. "I thought I could control it."
"You thought wrong."
Silence stretches between us.
He looks smaller than I have ever seen him.
No throne to lean against.
No followers to applaud.
Just him.
And me.
And the weight of everything he broke. "I could have activated it," I say. "The system. Father’s legacy. I stood in that room and watched the world stretch open like a vein. I could have let it live."
"But you didn’t."
"No."
He nods. "Then you did better than any of us."
I turn to leave. "You came down here," he says behind me. "To decide."
"Yes."
I stop with my hand on the latch.
"So decide."
"I already have," I say.
Later that night, Dante joins me in the war room.
"He lives," I tell him. "But not here."
"Where?"
"Where the Rossi name no longer means anything. Where power does not shield. Where he can’t rebuild, not even in his mind."
