Page 89 of From Italy With Love

The documents spread across my desk blurred together, black ink bleeding into white paper until the words lost all meaning. I had been sitting here since the meeting ended, since the last of my whiskey burned its way down my throat and did nothing to dull the edge of what I was reading.

Layer after layer of corruption. Names I recognized. Names that should have stayed buried. Financial records that traced back decades, connecting dots that formed a picture so vast and so damning that even I—who thought I had seen the worst of what men could do—felt something cold settle in my chest.

The Society wasn’t just an organization. It was a plague, infecting everything it touched.

I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking beneath my weight, and pressed my fingers against my temples. The clock on the mantel read 5:47 AM. The city beyond my windows was dark except for scattered lights—probably other insomniacs, other people carrying burdens too heavy to sleep with—and I thought about Salvatore. About the young man who’d walked into my house all those months ago with desperation in his eyes and a pregnant wife he would have done anything to protect. About the way he’d looked at Madigan, as if she were the only thing in the world worth saving. About how he’d trusted me when he had no reason to, when trusting anyone in this world was a death sentence. I’d promised him that I would keep them safe. Promised him that if he gave me time, if he let me work my connections and gather my resources, I could give him the life he wanted. The family he deserved.

My phone vibrated against the desk, the sound too loud in the silence.

I didn’t want to answer it. Something in my gut, that instinct that had kept me alive in this business all these years, told me not to answer it, that whoever was on the other end of the call was going to change everything. That once I picked up the phone, there was no going back to the relative peace of sitting here with my documents and my whiskey and my carefully constructed plans.

But I answered anyway. Because that was what I did.

I answered the call no one else wanted to take.

“What?” My voice sounded rough even to my own ears.

“It’s Rurik.” His Russian accent was thicker than usual. His words clipped. Controlled. The way people sounded when they were trying very hard not to fall apart. “A video was delivered to Maxim a little while ago.”

I closed my eyes. “Tell me.”

“Salvatore Valentinetti is dead.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only sit there with the phone pressed against my ear and feel the world tilt sideways.

“Who?” The word came out strangled.

“Ivanovich killed him on Petrovitch’s order. What they did to him… it was bad, Sinclair. Really fucking bad. They⁠—”

“I don’t need details,” I cut him off because I couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t listen to what they did to my friend. Couldn’t add those images to the collection of sins already haunting me.

“Sinclair—”

“Thank you, Rurik. I’ll be in touch.”

I disconnected before he could say anything else. Before he could offer condolences that would only make this worse. Before the reality of what I had just been told could fully sink in.

Salvatore was dead. The man I’d promised to protect. The man who’d trusted me with his wife and his son, and his future. The man who’d deserved better than to die at the hands of monsters.

Dead.

I set the phone down carefully, my hands steady despite the tremor running through my chest. Years of practice. Years of learning how to compartmentalize, how to function when everything inside me was screaming.

There was a knock at my door.

I knew who it was before Rowen opened it. My oldest friend. The one person in this world I trusted without reservation. He wouldn’t be here this early in the morning unless— and that was when I remembered my promise to Salvatore. He wanted to see his wife after the re-opening of the Gentlemen’s Club. I gave him my word that she would be waiting for him.

Rowen stepped inside, and behind him—Madigan.

She was wearing jeans and an oversized sweater, her red hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. No makeup. Dark circles under her eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights. She looked younger than her years and infinitely fragile, like something that might shatter if she breathed too hard. And the moment she saw my face, the moment our eyes met across the room, I watched her stumble back. Not dramatically, like in the movies where people collapsed and wailed.

It was quieter than that.

More devastating.

Like every bit of hope, every desperate prayer she had been holding onto for the past years drained away in an instant, leaving behind nothing but raw, animal grief.

“No.” The word was barely a whisper. “No, please⁠—”