Chapter 30

I sat cross-legged on the floor of the study in the Valente penthouse, surrounded by stacks of documents I'd smuggled out of the Santoro Family's private archives before Tavio's people could seal them. The room smelled of old paper and the faint trace of Dominic's cologne — something dark and resinous that had seeped into the leather of every chair. Beniamino was on the sofa across from me, scrolling through an encrypted laptop, his thumb running absently along the edge of the touchpad the way he always did when he was holding something back. Dominic paced by the floor-to-ceiling windows, phone pressed to his ear, his voice a low murmur I couldn't quite catch — something about a shipment reroute, a name I didn't recognize, the kind of conversation that ended with silence instead of goodbye.