POV: Matteo
The office was quiet. Too quiet for a house like this. I had the lights off except for the desk lamp, and even that felt too loud in the dark. Outside the night pressed against the windows like it wanted in. But I needed it shut out. I needed silence. I needed think.
I didn’t pace. Didn’t slam drawers or yell at the walls. I didn’t even smoke. I just sat there. Still. Focused. Letting my eyes scan the screen in front of me
Call logs. Shipment manifests. Digital records. Tiny lines of time that looked like nothing to anyone else. But to me, they were trails. Crumbs. Truth hiding in plain sight.
Aria’s face wouldn’t leave my mind. Her voice when she said my name before she passed out. Valentina’s hands shaking when she said she couldn’t remember. The fear that followed us like a second shadow. This war was crawling into every crack we had. If we didn’t kill it from the root, it would own us,
But I didn’t come here to panic. I came here to cut it out clean.
> The more damage you see, the more careful your hands get. That’s what no one tells you about surviving.
That’s why I didn’t let anger drive me anymore. Not like Enzo. He moved with fire. I moyed with glass. I looked at what everyone else missed. I watched patterns. I listened to silence.
That’s how you find ghosts.
I started connecting dates. When shipments failed. When phones went missing. When information leaked that only a few people could have known. I made lists. Circled names in red. Wrote notes in the margins of my thoughts.
There was a message in one of the flagged reports. I almost missed it. Just seven words.
> Already in position. Don’t make me wait.
It was sent from a burner to a number we hadn’t flagged before. The contact’s name was listed as a grocery store. Cute. But the timestamp was what hit me.
That message came in thirty–seven minutes before Aria collapsed. The same day Valentina was lured out. Same goddamn day.
I pulled location data. It came from inside one of our own warehouses. Not one in use, though. That place had been listed “under renovation” for five months. Nobody touched it. Nobody watched it. A perfect place to move in the dark.
I didn’t like perfect. Perfect meant someone planned it.
I checked the building access logs. We use key cards. Every swipe is recorded, even if no one checks it. And this time, someone had swiped in twice this
week.
Marco D’Angelo.
I stared at the name, My brain pulled his face up from memory. Quiet guy. Been around for years. Did his job. Didn’t speak much. Never made noise. Never stood out.
But then I started to remember.
> The ones who don’t talk much. They’re the ones who always survive the longest.
I picked up my phone and called Dante.
He answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“I’m sending you some coordinates.”
Chapter 219
“What for
“Tell Enzo later. Not now.”
“You found something?”
“No. I found someone.
Dante paused. “You sure?”
I slid open the drawer and took out my gun. Checked it. Clicked the safety off and on again. My coat was already draped over the chair. Sty USB drive was already goaded.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
But I didn’t leave yet. I sat down again. My fingers reached for the envelope I left at the edge of the desk. I opened it and pulled out the surveillance photo we got a few days ago. Printed. Old school.
Marco. Talking to someone in a black car. The image was grainy. The license plate was blurred. The face was turned away. But the posture was there. The stance. The jaw clenched just like I remembered.
I stared at it.
I didn’t blink.
Then I circled Marco’s head in red ink.
> I found him.
I said it out loud. Just once. To the shadows in the room. Then I folded the photo slowly and slid
Now it was time to go hunting.
it
into
my pocket.
Sometimes I think about what it means to lead, not in the way people talk about it at meetings or in books, but in the quiet moments when no one is watching and everything is breaking around you and you have to pretend your hands are steady even when they’re not, because if you falter, even for a second, the people below you will follow you straight into the ground without question, and I never asked for that kind of weight, but I carry it anyway. because someone has to, because Enzo leads with heart and Dante leads with instinct and I lead with the things I can’t say out loud, the numbers, the data, the patterns that don’t lie, and when I look around at this family, this house, this storm we keep surviving, I wonder how many of us even know what we’re fighting for anymore, because the lines got blurry a long time ago, and people like Marco slip through the cracks because we stopped paying attention to the quiet ones, the ones who never needed a spotlight to be dangerous, and maybe that’s the real enemy, not betrayal, but comfort, the kind that dulls your senses just enough to make you think you’re safe when you’re not, and now I can feel it, this pull in my chest like a warning, like something’s about to break for good if I don’t move fast enough, if I don’t cut clean, if I don’t do the one thing no one else is willing to do, even if it means losing what’s left of my soul to keep the rest of them breathing.
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