Page 38 of Knight
"Did you read it?" I ask without looking up.
"I read it."
"And?"
Fabio is quiet long enough that I know his answer before he gives it.
"You already know what I think, Romeo."
I do. He thinks I should honor the pact. Marry the Marchese girl. Preserve the alliances. Become the obedient son of a dead king who built an empire on making people do exactly what they were told.
I fold the letter and slide it beneath the cracked Knight on my desk. The marble horse sits on top of the Marchese seal like a headstone on a grave.
Every door just closed.
The Fracture Inside His Own House
Santino arrives first. Pia waits in the hallway — she knows which rooms she's welcome in and which ones run on blood instead of reason. Dante materializes from somewhere in the estate the way he always does, like he heard the meeting being called through the walls themselves. He takes the far corner near the window and leans against it with his arms folded, already watching everyone.
Nineteen years old. Built like a weapon someone forgot to issue a safety manual for.
Fabio stands at parade rest near the door. Old habits from a dead king's regime that he's never bothered shedding because Giovanni's methods are the only gospel he's ever worshipped.
I lay the letter on the table. Santino reads it standing. His eyes track each line with that priest-trained patience that makes you feel like he's hearing your confession and your sentence at the same time.
He sets it down. Says nothing.
Fabio breaks first. "The math is simple. The Marchese control the eastern corridor. They have three distribution networks and a private militia that outnumbers our security four to one. If we add the co-signatories — Caruso, Bellini, Fontana — we are looking at a war we cannot win. The strategic play is to honor the pact."
"The strategic play." I repeat his words back to him and they taste like ash.
"Your father understood that alliances require sacrifice, Romeo. Personal preference does not factor into—"
"My father is in the ground, Fabio. And three of his most loyal men just signed a document threatening to put me there too."
Fabio's mouth pulls tight. He looks at Santino for backup and finds a wall of silence.
I turn to my brother. "You have an opinion? Or are you just going to stand there and let Fabio run the funeral arrangements?"
Santino lifts his eyes from the letter. The scar at his collar catches the overhead light — that pale strip where the chain used to hang, a ghost of the man he killed to become this one.
"What are you willing to lose?" he says.
One sentence. Six words. Each one a blade aimed at a different organ.
Because he already knows. He can see it — the way I read the letter, the way my hands keep clenching, the way I haven't once mentioned the obvious solution. He knows there is a woman in a fourth-floor walk-up across the city who changes every calculation I'm supposed to be making. And he is asking me, with the precision of a man who shed holy vows for love of his own, whether I understand the price.
"I'm not marrying Valentina Marchese," I say.
"That's not what I asked."
The silence that follows is heavy enough to crack the floor.
Dante shifts in the corner. One small movement — a redistribution of weight — and every head in the room turns toward him. He meets my eyes with those dark, unreadable irises and holds. He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. His body is a vote and right now it's abstaining.
I look around the room. Fabio wants compliance. Santino wants clarity. Dante wants whatever keeps this family breathing. And I need one of them — just one — to tell me there is a path that includes Nova and survival on the same road.
The silence answers.
