Page 75 of From Italy With Love

September 23rd

Dearest Madigan,

God, I miss touching you. I miss the feel of your skin under my hands. The taste of your mouth. The way you used to arch into me when I kissed your neck. I miss the way you’d whisper my name when we made love. I miss everything about being with you.

The physical ache of missing you is almost unbearable sometimes. It’s like a constant hunger that nothing can satisfy.

I’ve made more progress. It won’t be long now. Maybe a few more months. Maybe less if I push harder. And I’m willing to push as hard as it takes.

Henry is running everywhere now.

You’re missing so much, and I hate you for that, but God help me, I can’t stop loving you, Madigan. I love you so much it’s destroying me. But I’ll let it destroy me if that’s what it takes to bring you home.

I’ll burn myself to ashes if it means you and Henry can be together again.

That’s what love is, isn’t it?

Being willing to sacrifice everything for the people who matter most.

You matter most.

You always have.

You always will.

Come home to me, baby.

Please.

Just come home.

CHAPTER TWENTY

New York City, December 31, 2018

The mansion looked the same as it always did. Imposing, elegant, wrapped in winter darkness as the distant sounds of the city prepared for midnight. New Year’s Eve. A night for endings and beginnings, though I’d stopped believing in either. The stone façade was illuminated by strategically placed lights that made the entire structure look like something out of a gothic novel, all sharp angles and deep shadows. Frost clung to the iron gates, and my breath made small clouds in the frigid air as I approached.

I had come with files. Evidence. Names and numbers and connections that would help Sinclair dismantle the Society piece by piece. Months of work condensed into documents that proved what I had suspected all along—the organization was vulnerable. Cracking. Ready to fall if Sinclair pushed hard enough. The leather briefcase in my hand felt heavier than it should, weighted with the significance of what was inside. Each page represented hours of surveillance, careful documentation, and painstaking verification.

This was what I had been working toward.

This was how it all ended.

Sinclair met me at the door himself, which was unusual. No butler. No security detail visible. Just him, looking older than I remembered, his eyes carrying a weight I didn’t understand. His suit was immaculate as always, but there was something different about his posture. Something defeated. The lines around his mouth seem deeper, carved by more than just time. He was wearing a dark burgundy tie I had never seen before, and there was no champagne glass in his hand despite the celebration happening elsewhere in the city.

“Salvatore.” He clasped my hand, holding it a moment longer than necessary. His grip was firm, but there was a tremor in it, barely perceptible. “Come in.”

I followed him through the familiar halls, my mind already organizing the information I needed to share. The deception. The ties to the biker world, and mainly the Golden Skulls. It was all connected. There were cracks that Sinclair could exploit, and I hoped he did. My footsteps echoed on the marble floors, mixing with the ticking of the grandfather clock in the entrance hall. The paintings on the walls—old masters, probably worth more than most people made in a lifetime—watched us pass with their frozen expressions. Everything was exactly where it had always been, and yet something felt fundamentally different.

Wrong, maybe. Or just final.

We reached his office, and I started pulling out files before I had even sat down. My fingers were already on the clasps of my briefcase, eager to spread everything across his massive mahogany desk and begin the work of strategic planning. There was so much to discuss, so many moving pieces to coordinate.

“I’ve made significant progress,” I began, spreading documents across his desk with methodical precision. Each folder represented weeks of careful investigation, surveillance, and strategic manipulation. “There’s a man in Boston, in O’Malley’s organization with a gambling problem who has agreed to provide internal communications and watch Kelley. He gave me a recording of Kelley talking about planning to remove⁠—”

“Salvatore.” Sinclair’s voice cut through my momentum like a blade. Gentle but firm. The kind of tone that demanded attention without raising volume.

I looked up from the papers, my train of thought derailed. “What? What’s wrong?”