Page 22 of Blood Debt

They wave at me from the doorway. Bianca is smiling again.

I step beside Tony.

He doesn’t say anything.

We just watch them together—my mother’s arms curled protectively around her granddaughter, their silhouettes framed in gold light as the wind stirs the trees.

****

The car glides along the countryside road like it’s moving through another country entirely—one too quiet to be real.

The tinted windows throw my reflection back at me in broken patches. Loose strands of my hair curl around my collar. I tug my blazer tighter. My palms haven’t stopped sweating.

Tony sits beside me in the back seat, legs crossed, one arm propped against the window ledge. He holds a file on his lap, unopened for now. His face is unreadable—less like the man who comforted my daughter this morning, and more like the handler who’s sent people into places they didn’t always come back from.

The driver up front is stone-silent. Standard bureau chauffeur. No eye contact, no names.

The trees outside are thinning now—rustling pines and patchy farmland giving way to faded industrial yards and old gravel depots. Rome is still far behind us, but the scent of the airport is already in the air—jet fuel and hard coffee, the invisible clock that ticks louder the closer you get to your gate.

“You still have time to back out,” Tony says finally, breaking the silence.

I glance over.

He lifts the file from his lap, then offers it to me without looking directly. “This isn’t like your last assignments, Serafina.”

I take the file and open it slowly.

Inside: a printout of my alias profile. Fake references. Clean utility bills. Domestic service background. No photos. Just names, numbers, and placement details.

My eyes scan the last line.

Household Placement Target:

Cristofano Vittorio Bellarosa

Age: 36

Head of the D’Angelis Syndicate – Melbourne Division

I blink.

“Bellarosa,” I repeat aloud. “Haven’t heard that name on an ops file in years.”

Tony nods. “He inherited the estate seventeen years ago. His father—Don Vittorio—used to run the old Palermo corridor. They shifted the syndicate to Melbourne to expand shipping operations. Port access. Fewer regulations. More political loopholes.”

“And I’m going in as?”

“Live-in maid. Name’s Elia Rosetti. They think it’s a domestic placement flagged for discreet placement. Your cover was planted six weeks ago through a shell agency in Queensland.”

I flip the page. There’s no photo of him.

I frown. “Why no image?”

Tony exhales through his nose, then leans his elbow against the armrest. “Because this operation doesn’t officially exist. The FBI’s taken over the original task force. They think we’re out. So I buried the real mission inside a fabricated cyber smuggling case. If anyone pulls our strings, they’ll see an illegal auction ring we’re supposedly cracking out of Singapore.”

“And they bought it?”

“They bought it enough not to look closer.”