Page 154 of The Cost of Silence

“She reminded him,” Matteo says, “every day of who he could be.”

“And he still died with blood on his hands,” Domenico snaps. “Because he owed me. Because he never paid me back for what I built.”

“What you built?” Adi’s brows go up. “You didn’t build this on your own. You rode his coattails and then got offended when he wanted out.”

“He couldn’t have taken that step without me,” Domenico snarls. “My contacts. My muscle. My willingness to do what had to be done.”

“You mean killing people who got too close?” Matteo says. “Like Isabella’s father?”

My breath stops.

Nico’s hand finds the small of my back, steady.

Inside, Domenico doesn’t even bother to deny it.

“He was a footnote,” he says. “A lesson. You boys were children. You didn’t understand the stakes. Enzo did. He knew what it would cost to break from the old guard. The Mafia, the unions, the politicians who liked their envelopes thick. He knew if he called me out, it wouldn’t be my body in the street; it would be all of ours. And worse, it would have broken his wife’s heart.”

“So he protected you,” Adi says, voice quiet now. “A man who would kill an innocent to make a point.”

“He protected you,” Domenico corrects. “From the fallout. He kept the old men from tearing you apart before you could learn how to stand. He made his own bargains. He wasn’t the hero you keep painting him as. He was one of us.”

“And you’re proud of that,” Matteo says.

“Of course I am.” Domenico spreads his arms, encompassing the warehouse, the river, the city beyond. “This is legacy. This is what you’re so eager to throw away. You sit there in your glass tower and pretend that a board of weak men and weaker women run your company. But when things got difficult, who did your father call?”

“Rossi,” Adi says.

Domenico’s mouth twists. “He called me first. When the unions threatened his ships. When the Bratva came sniffing around his warehouses. When certain board members whispered about replacing him with someone who still believed in the old ways. I smoothed it all out. I kept your seat warm. And when he died, did you come to me? Did you ask for my counsel? No. You shut the door in my face and pretended you’d made it here without me.”

“You also tried to undermine him at every turn,” Adi says. “You took kickbacks from his enemies, you ran side deals through shell companies, you used his resources for your own gain.”

“That’s called being efficient,” Domenico snaps. “I kept us alive. You boys would be a smear on the dock without me. And this is how you repay me? You cut me off. You freeze me out. You sit on top of the empire I helped build and tell me I should be grateful for scraps.”

“You were cut off because you couldn’t stop,” Matteo says. “Papà gave you chances. You spat on every one of them.”

Domenico’s eyes glitter. “He gave me nothing that wasn’t mine first. I’ll take back what Enzo abandoned and rule it properly.”

“And that’s why you went to Orlov,” Adi says, nodding toward the Russian. “Why you used him to leak to the press, to stir up trouble, to send men to our doors. Why you picked Isabella as a target.”

“She was useful,” Domenico says. “A sharp little knife. A ready audience. I dangled a story in front of her, and she did exactly what she was built to do. It was almost too easy.”

“You didn’t use her,” Adi snaps. “You built a trap around her and waited for us to walk into it.”

“You killed her father,” Matteo says. “You trapped her into writing a story that nearly destroyed us. You kidnapped her and tried to burn her alive. You know what that makes you?”

“Efficient,” he repeats.

“A dead man.”

Nico steps through the warehouse door like a ghost, the light behind him cutting a hard line around his shoulders. I follow half a step behind, staying in his wake, my heart thundering.

All eyes swing to us.

Domenico’s face shifts, shock, anger, something like weary amusement, all in a flicker. “Ah,” he says. “The prodigal finally arrives. I was beginning to think you’d lost your nerve.”

“Apparently not,” Nico says.

His hand is loose at his side, but the gun is already there, held low but ready. Matteo and Adi don’t look surprised; they must have heard our approach, counted the footsteps, trusted it was us.