Page 105 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince

But it keeps replaying in my mind: the access string, our string, etched into a trail of contraband and silence.

The badge logs Rafa was never present for.

The old audit mark—resurrected.

A ghost name tied to a handler who vanished, and the brother who might have helped him stay gone.

The stone beneath my soles is cold, and it feels as though it’s rising—leeching up into my spine, into my chest.

I press my palm to the wall once, just to steady myself.

It’s slick with the condensation of autumn settling into the house.

The stone doesn’t yield.

Neither does the ache spreading through my ribs.

I pass the war room without slowing.

I don’t want to see the screens, the routes lit in red, the men hunched over data points, drawing circles that tighten by the hour.

I don’t want to see if my name is among them.

Or his.

If I stop, I’ll have to breathe.

If I breathe, I’ll have to feel.

And if I feel, I might scream.

So I keep moving, silent and steady, like a thread unraveling one loop at a time.

The garden door waits ahead, half open.

Beyond it, the cold seeps in from the courtyard.

I slip through before the house can change its mind, and let the silence follow me into the wind.

The door to the south terrace is ajar, and I slip through it like a shadow, trying not to wake the walls.

Autumn has settled more fully in the past few days, and though the sun hangs heavy above the olive trees, it offers little warmth.

The wind carries the scent of turned soil, fading roses, and the faint salt tang that always drifts in from the distant coast.

I cross the garden in silence.

The gravel doesn’t crunch.

The wind doesn’t lift my hair.

The world seems to understand that I need it to hush.

There is a narrow path behind the old guesthouse, overgrown with ivy that’s begun to yellow at the edges.

It leads to a shaded alcove tucked between a tall stone wall and a row of dense hedges that used to mark the Salvatore boundaries before Dante expanded the estate’s surveillance perimeter.

It’s not far from where we keep the children’s bicycles.