I Walked Past the Mafia Boss in That Black Dress Again

The location Rafael sent was an abandoned church in Pilsen.

Not the neighborhood in the Czech Republic.

The one on Chicago's Lower West Side, where old brick buildings remembered every immigrant family that had ever prayed inside them.

Ciro wanted to come.

The doctor said no.

Ciro said something in Italian that made the doctor reconsider his career choices.

I said, "If you tear those stitches, I will personally put you back in bed and Saurin will hold you there."

Saurin, standing behind me, nodded once.

Ciro stared at both of us with deep betrayal.

"I employ you."

"You do," Saurin said. "It has been exhausting."

Ciro looked at me.

"You are not going alone."

"I am taking Saurin and six men."

"Eight."

"Six."

"Eight."

"Seven."

"Fine."

I turned toward the door.

"Lea."

I stopped.

His face had lost color since the attack, but his eyes were sharp.

"Come back."

Two words.

No order inside them.

No strategy.

Just fear.

I walked back, bent down, and kissed him once.

"I will."

The church had no cross left on the roof and no glass in half the windows.

We entered through a side door just after midnight.

Rafael stood near the old altar.

Sofia sat on a wooden pew with a blanket around her shoulders.

The red coat lay on the floor beside her.

Up close, she looked nothing like the cold figure in the parking garage.

She looked tired.

Not ordinary tired.

Years tired.

The kind of tired that settles behind the eyes when a person has spent too long surviving instead of living.

Rafael stood protectively between us.

I understood.

I also did not care.

"Your brother says you have answers."

Sofia studied me.

"You look like Enzo."

My chest tightened.

"You knew my father?"

"He saved my life once."

Rafael turned toward her.

"You never told me that."

She smiled sadly.

"There are many things I never told you. That was the point."

She looked at me again.

"Your father discovered my father and Vittorio Vale were laundering money through Argent. Not small amounts. Hundreds of millions. Drugs, weapons, political bribes, stolen port contracts. The Compact was supposed to end that network by dividing control and forcing each family to audit the others."

"So they killed him."

Her eyes dropped.

"Yes."

The word hit harder than suspicion.

Saurin stood very still beside me.

"Can you prove it?"

Sofia nodded.

"I heard them plan it. I was nineteen. I confronted my father. Two weeks later, my car exploded in Portugal."

Rafael's face twisted.

"He did that to you?"

"He staged it. He told me I could remain dead or die for real. After that, I worked for him off the books. When he died, Vittorio inherited the arrangement."

"Nine years," Rafael whispered.

"I tried to reach you twice. Both times someone around you died afterward. I stopped trying."

Rafael looked like a man being asked to mourn and celebrate the same person at once.

I understood that too.

"Why follow me in Lisbon?" I asked.

"Vittorio wanted to know whether you had your father's records."

"I didn't even know records existed."

"That became obvious."

I almost smiled despite myself.

"You could have told me."

"I could not tell anyone without exposing myself. So I did the only thing I could. I kept interfering."

Saurin's eyes narrowed.

"The break-in on Rua do Alecrim."

Sofia nodded.

I remembered that night.

Someone had forced the rear entrance of my building, then left without taking anything. Police called it an interrupted burglary.

"That was you?"

"No. I called the police before they reached your apartment."

Brin had insisted we move hotels for a week.

"The man who followed me in Madrid?"

"Vittorio's. I punctured his tire."

"The fire alarm at the maritime office?"

"There was a device under your car."

My skin went cold.

Four years of random inconveniences rearranged themselves into a pattern.

Ciro had sent me away to protect me.

Sofia had protected me because of a debt to my father.

Brin had followed me because Saurin asked.

And I had spent four years thinking I was alone.

The irony was almost insulting.

"Why shoot at us in the garage?"

Sofia's mouth tightened.

"Mercer's team was behind you. I knew if I shouted, they would move. I fired wide at Ciro because he was the only person in that garage arrogant enough to move toward gunfire instead of away from it."

Saurin made a small sound.

"Accurate."

I looked at him.

"Do not encourage her."

Sofia reached beneath the blanket and took out a brass key.

"Your father left something in Lisbon."

I stared at it.

"Where?"

"Inside the original Vale Maritime office. Not the building you used. The one before the expansion."

I frowned.

The old office was a narrow warehouse near Alcantara, now used for archived shipping records.

I had been there dozens of times.

"What?"

"A ledger. Not paper. An encrypted drive. Enzo gave it to my father as leverage. My father hid it in a private vault when Enzo died. Years later, I moved it before Vittorio could find it."

"And you left it in a building owned by Ciro?"

"Because Vittorio searches enemies. He rarely searches property he thinks he controls."

Rafael laughed bitterly.

"That sounds like him."

Sofia held out the key.

"The vault requires this and Moretti biometric authorization."

I did not take it immediately.

"My biometric authorization?"

"Your father's instructions. It was updated when you became legal trustee at twenty-one."

I finally took the key.

It was warm from her hand.

"What is on the drive?"

"Payments. Recordings. Names. The order to kill your father. The order to fake my death. And something Ciro will not enjoy seeing."

My stomach tightened.

"What?"

"A transfer authorized by his father, Marco Vale, two days after Enzo died. Twenty million dollars to a Swiss account controlled by Vittorio."

Saurin swore under his breath.

I stared at Sofia.

"Ciro's father paid Vittorio?"

"Or Vittorio made it look that way. The ledger may tell us which."

At 4:30 that morning, I walked back into Ciro's bedroom.

He was awake.

Of course he was.

He sat against the headboard in a white shirt, bandage visible beneath the open collar, a file spread across his lap.

His eyes found me first.

Then the key in my hand.

"What happened?"

I told him everything.

He listened without interrupting until I reached his father.

Then he looked toward the window.

Dawn had begun whitening the sky.

"Twenty million," he said.

"Yes."

"My father spent eleven years telling me Vittorio was dangerous but necessary. He never told me he paid him after Enzo's death."

"We do not know why yet."

"I know my father."

His voice was flat.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Do you?"

He looked at me.

"Apparently less than I thought."

There was something in his face I recognized because I had worn it for two days.

The look of a person discovering that the dead had not finished lying.

I touched his hand.

He turned his palm beneath mine and held on.

"I am going to Lisbon," I said.

His fingers tightened.

"No."

"We need that drive."

"Saurin can get it."

"It needs my biometric authorization."

"We can solve that."

"Ciro."

"You were shot at twice in forty-eight hours."

"You were shot."

"Grazed."

"You lost enough blood to argue with a surgeon about grammar."

"He used the wrong tense."

I stared at him.

He had the decency to look slightly ashamed.

"I am going," I said. "Saurin is coming with me. We will use the Vale jet, land under a corporate manifest, retrieve the drive, and return before Vittorio knows I left."

"He will know."

"Then we make sure what I bring back is worth the risk."

Ciro looked down at our joined hands.

"I hate this."

"I know."

"I spent four years keeping you away from this."

"And now I am here."

He looked at me again.

"That is the problem."

I leaned closer.

"No. That is the part you still do not understand."

"What?"

"You do not get to love me only when I am somewhere safe enough not to challenge you."

The word love hung between us.

Neither of us had said it before.

Not exactly.

His eyes changed.

I almost took it back.

Not because it was untrue.

Because it was too true.

Ciro lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against my knuckles.

"Come back from Lisbon," he said.

"Then what?"

His gaze held mine.

"Then I stop wasting time."

I boarded the plane three hours later.

Lisbon greeted me with rain.

For four years, the city had been my exile.

That morning, for the first time, it felt like a witness.

The old Vale Maritime warehouse smelled of salt, paper, and dust.

Saurin disabled the alarm while I found the office described by Sofia.

Behind a wall cabinet was a steel panel.

The brass key fit.

A scanner lit green beneath my thumb.

Then a second lock clicked.

Inside the vault was a black case.

No money.

No jewels.

One encrypted drive.

And a photograph.

I picked it up.

My father stood beside a younger Ciro outside our old family restaurant.

I had never seen the picture.

Dad's arm was over Ciro's shoulder.

On the back, my father's handwriting read:

He is not his family. Remember that.

My eyes burned.

Saurin looked away, giving me privacy he pretended not to notice I needed.

I put the photograph in my coat.

We took the drive to Vale Maritime's secure conference room and connected it to an isolated computer.

The password prompt appeared.

One hint.

LEANDRA'S FIRST WORD.

I laughed through tears.

My first word had not been Mama.

It had not been Papa.

According to a story my father told at every birthday until I was sixteen, I had pointed at his espresso and demanded, "Mine."

I typed MINE.

The files opened.

There were hundreds.

Payments.

Audio recordings.

Scanned contracts.

A folder named ENZO.

I clicked it.

The first document was an instruction from Vittorio to Adrian Mercer.

DATE: DECEMBER 14.

TARGET: ENZO MORETTI.

METHOD: TRAFFIC COLLISION. NO FIREARMS.

STATUS REQUIRED: FATAL.

My vision blurred.

Saurin's hand landed on the back of my chair.

"We have him."

I opened the next file.

A bank transfer.

Twenty million dollars from Marco Vale.

But underneath it was an attached recording.

I pressed play.

Ciro's father's voice filled the room.

"You will take the money, Vittorio, and you will disappear. You told me Enzo was a threat. You did not tell me you ordered his death. If you come near the girl, I will burn every Vale account to the ground before I let you use her."

Then Vittorio laughed.

"You already helped cover the accident."

"To stop a war. Not to save you."

"History will not care about the distinction."

The recording ended.

I sat back.

Ciro's father had paid Vittorio.

But not as a partner.

As a bribe to leave.

A cowardly choice perhaps.

A compromised one.

But not murder.