Page 40 of Knight
By the time I reach the garage door I've run out of bullshit.
The strategy is real. A judge won't enforce a marriage pact against a man who is already married. The logic holds up in every courtroom and every backroom sit-down from here to Palermo. Santino will see the architecture of it. Even Fabio will have to acknowledge the elegance.
But I know what's driving this. And it isn't elegance.
Giovanni married Zina because he couldn't let her go. He dressed it in strategy — legitimize Guido, consolidate the household, control the narrative. Beautiful logic. Impeccable reasoning. And underneath all of it, a man so consumed by a woman that he rewrote his entire empire around keeping her close.
It ended with a snake in a gift box and a king dying on his knees believing the woman he loved had murdered him.
I am my father's son.
The thought scrapes through me like glass dragged across bone. I grip the car keys hard enough that the teeth bite into my palm and the pain is grounding in a way I desperately need right now because my mind is spinning too fast and the brakes don't work.
This is what Giovanni felt. This specific momentum — the certainty that moves faster than caution, the hunger that rewrites risk assessments in real time, the absolute fucking conviction that she is worth whatever comes next. He felt this for Zina. And it killed him.
I know the cost.
But the alternative. The alternative.
Marry Valentina Marchese. Stand at an altar in a suit that costs more than Nova's annual rent and say vows to a woman picked out by a man I helped put in the ground. Honor theword of the King — the same king who had Dante by the throat with his feet off the floor while I watched from the doorway and decided to call the Vescari because someone had to do something and I was seventeen and stupid and desperate and the only option I could see was the one that opened every wrong door.
I honored his word once. I honored it by trying to save my brothers from him. And it got him killed.
Honoring it again — with my body, my name, my future — while Nova goes back to her fourth-floor walk-up and her shutoff notices and her life where I was just another man who showed up and disappeared — that is a circle of hell built specifically for me. Custom fitted. Engraved with the Rivas crest.
I will burn in a lot of places for a lot of things.
That particular fire I refuse.
The garage is cold. My car sits under the overhead light like a confession waiting to happen. I slide behind the wheel and the letter crinkles against my chest — the Marchese ultimatum pressing into my ribs like a second skeleton.
What I'm about to do will make Nova a target. Her siblings become leverage. Her name gets entered into a ledger kept by men who settle debts with funerals. I am about to drag a twenty-year-old woman who counts tips by touch into the most violent game in this city and the only thing I can offer her in return is a man who doesn't deserve her and a war she never asked for.
I turn the engine over.
The King's watch ticks against my wrist.
I pull out of the garage and aim the car toward Delancey.
The Call He Makes First
I'm on the expressway when I pull my phone from my pocket and hit Santino's name.
He answers on the second ring. Midnight and the man answers on the second ring because Santino Rivas has not slept through a phone call since the night the King died. None of us have.
"I'm going to marry her."
The words come out flat. Calm. Like I'm ordering a drink instead of detonating my entire life.
Silence.
The expressway hums beneath my tires. A truck passes on my left throwing orange light across the dashboard. The city skyline sits ahead of me like a jaw full of lit teeth and I drive straight into it while my brother processes what I just said.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
I don't fill the gap. He needs the silence and I owe him that much because what I'm telling him isn't a question. It's a notification. I'm not calling for permission. I'm calling because Santino is the only person on this earth who will understand exactly what this costs and exactly why I'm paying it anyway.
He chose Pia over the collar. Over God. Over the identity he'd built for a decade. He shed everything he was to keep the woman he wanted. If anyone in this family has the right to hear this first, it's him.
