Page 86

For twenty-five years, the DeLuca name has been a ghost, a whispered memory. Tonight, we breathe life back into it—and God help anyone who stands in our way.

“Do you really want to do this?” Chiara whispers nervously. “Once we step through that door, everything changes.”

I straighten my spine. “I stopped wanting to go back the moment I learned who Marco really was and who we were capable of being.”

His name burns my tongue like acid. One week since I left him, and still the wound feels raw, bleeding. Perhaps it always will.

“We could disappear,” Chiara suggests, not for the first time. “Change our names, go somewhere no one knows the DeLucas or the Bianchis. Somewhere safe.”

“There is no safe,” I tell her, the truth I’ve come to understand since Fabrizio snatched me off the street. “Not for us. Not anymore. The only way forward is through.”

Before she can argue further, I push the door open.

The room beyond smolders with tobacco smoke, ribbons of gray curling toward the ceiling. Crystal decanters of scotch glint in the light of a chandelier dimmed low enough to cast each face in dramatic shadow.

Seven men of varying ages sit around a mahogany table, conversations dying mid-sentence as we enter.

Time suspends itself as they turn, one by one, to look at us. I feel the air change, feel the collective intake of breath as recognition dawns. These men knew our father. Some perhaps even held us as infants. And for twenty-five years, they believed us dead.

At the head of the table sits a man in his early thirties, not much older than Chiara and me.

He rises slowly, his chair scraping against hardwood. The sound breaks the spell of silence.

He’s tall, with a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose, giving him a deceptively boyish appearance. His long, black, wavy hair frames his face in an untamed cascade, and when he locks eyes with me, I see the warmth in them.

This here is a man I can trust.

“Aria and Chiara DeLuca,” he says with a trembling voice. “My God, is it really you?”

I lift my chin, summoning every ounce of pride and certainty I possess. “It is.”

He moves then, not with the measured restraint of a powerful man meeting someone for the first time, but with the reckless abandon of a man seeing ghosts made flesh.

Before I can react, he enfolds me in an embrace so fierce it knocks the breath from my lungs.

I stiffen, not expecting this breach of formality, but his body shakes against mine, and I realize with a jolt that he’s crying.

“I never imagined,” he whispers, his voice thick with emotion. “All these years… I never imagined you two were alive.”

He pulls back, keeping his hands on my shoulders as he drinks in my face. He turns to Chiara, embracing her with equal fervor before stepping back to address us both.

“Forgive me,” he says quietly. “I’m Ettore Greco. Your parents were my godparents. I was just a child when we heard about the massacre. Eight years old. I didn’t understand then what I’d lost—what we’d all lost.”

The revelation strikes me like a physical blow.

My parents’ godson.

A piece of them, living and breathing in this room. A connection I never knew existed.

One of the other men clears his throat. He’s ancient, perhaps eighty, with skin like crumpled parchment. “Ettore, let’s not overwhelm the young ladies before they’ve even had a chance to sit down.”

Ettore nods, gesturing to two empty chairs at the table’s other end. “Please,” he says. “Join us.”

As we take our seats, I study the men who may become our greatest allies—or our first obstacles.

Besides Ettore and the elderly patriarch, there’s a broad-shouldered man in his fifties with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, a pair of brothers perhaps in their forties with identical scars running down their left cheeks, a slender man with wire-rimmed glasses who looks more like an accountant than a mobster, and a bulky figure missing his right ear.

The eldest speaks first, his voice surprisingly strong despite his years. “I am Lorenzo Venucci. I served your grandfather before your father was even born.”