Page 29

He nods, eyes fixed on the building. “Third floor, apartment 3C. Home for eighteen years.”

I try to imagine it—the feared Calviño enforcer as a small boy climbing these steps, holding Maria’s hand. The image doesn’t align with the dangerous man beside me, yet I know it’s true. More real, perhaps, than the identity he wears now.

“Come on,” he says, opening his door. “We don’t have much time.”

The building smells of cabbage and disinfectant, with undertones of something more permanent—lives stacked upon lives, years of existence pressed into peeling wallpaper and creaking stairs. A baby cries somewhere, the sound echoing through thin walls. An old television blares a game show through one door.

Real people. Living real lives. Not calculating power moves or contemplating vengeance.

Alessio stops at 3C, fishing an old key from his pocket. The door opens with a familiar squeak he doesn’t seem to notice. Inside, the apartment is small but meticulously clean—Maria’s influence is still evident, though Alessio mentions she hasn’t lived here for some time now.

“I keep it,” he explains, noting my surprise at finding the place furnished. “Safer than any safe house in my network. No one hunting Alessio Gravano would look for him here.”

The space is modest—a tiny kitchen opens to a living area with worn but clean furniture and two small bedrooms visible through doorways. Family photos line one wall—Maria and a growing boy who becomes the man standing beside me. School pictures. A graduation. Moments from a life hidden from the world.

“She gave you a childhood,” I say, studying a photo of teenage Alessio in a baseball uniform.

“As normal as possible under the circumstances.” He moves to the kitchen, his large frame incongruous in the small space. “She worked three jobs sometimes. Cleaning houses, night shifts at hospitals. Whatever it took.”

I trail after him, noting how he moves through the apartment without thought—muscle memory guiding him around the wobbly kitchen chair, hand automatically steadying the cabinet door that doesn’t quite hang straight.

“She kept newspaper clippings,” he continues, reaching to the top cabinet. “Every mention of Giancarlo Calviño. Every business acquisition, every charity gala, every rumor of his criminal enterprises.”

He retrieves a weathered shoebox and places it on the small table. When he opens it, I see dozens of yellowed newspaper clippings, meticulously dated. Headlines about the Calviño family rise from the pile—business successes, society events, and underneath those, darker stories that rarely made front pages.

“She never let me forget,” he says, fingers hovering over the articles. “Not who he was. Not what he’d done. Not who I was meant to be.”

“Stefano Calviño,” I say, testing his real name.

His jaw tightens. “A dead boy. A ghost.”

“Until now.”

He looks up, amber eyes locking with mine. “Until now.”

He shows me more evidence—documents Maria salvaged the night of his mother’s murder, birth certificates, photographs of his mother that make his voice rough when he explains who she was. Sophia Calviño, born Sophia Mancini, daughter of a dyingcapowho trusted the wrong man with his empire and his daughter.

“I was just a transaction,” he says, bitterness edging his words. “A son to cement Giancarlo’s claim to the Mancini holdings. Once my grandfather died and the organization accepted Giancarlo’s leadership, we became expendable.”

“Because of Luca’s mother,” I say, remembering Maria’s explanation.

“Suzette had been his mistress for years. Already pregnant with Luca when he ordered the hit on my mother.” His fist clenches on the table. “He wanted to start fresh. New wife, new heir. No complications.”

I reach across the table, covering his clenched fist with my hand. His skin is warm, the tendons rigid beneath my touch. For a moment, he remains tense, then slowly turns his hand to clasp mine.

“What happened that night?” I ask softly. “When Maria took you?”

His eyes cloud with memory. “Rain. I remember the rain.” His thumb traces absent patterns on my wrist as he speaks. “Maria was taking me for a walk. I had just turned six the previous week. My mother asked her to tire me out before bedtime.”

The casual domesticity of the scene contrasts sharply with what I know comes next.

“We were almost home when Maria overheard Giancarlo’s men in the alley beside our house. They were reporting that the ‘missus’ was eliminated, but the child was missing.” His voice hardens. “I remember a fire and gunshots once we were in the car. Maria drove as fast as she could and ran with me. Took nothing but her purse and me. Disappeared into neighborhoods where Calviño’s men wouldn’t think to look.”

“And Giancarlo?”

“Reported to the press that his beloved wife and son had died in a tragic house fire.” His laugh is cold, humorless. “Even had a funeral with empty caskets. Quite the grieving widower, by all accounts.”

I try to imagine it—a man ordering the murder of his wife and child, then publicly mourning them. The calculated evil of it makes my skin crawl. Yet Giancarlo Calviño is the man my father respects, the man whose son I’m meant to marry.