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“I know.”
“You held my fucking chin, Costa. You told me I had the strongest heart in the house. And the whole time you were running intelligence to Giovanni — mapping Romeo’s movements, logging Santino’s confessional schedule, documenting Dante’s psych evals. Every one of us. Every fucking one.”
“I know what I did.”
“Then you know why Santino wanted to gut you in this chair. And why Dante wanted to take you apart piece by piece with that diagnostic shit he does until you gave up every password and every node and every piece of the architecture you helped that man build.”
Costa’s right hand twitches. The same twitch Santino got. But his left hand is shaking too now — both of them, flat on the table, trembling like the concrete underneath us is shifting.
“They asked the wrong questions,” Costa says. Barely a whisper.
“Yeah.” I lean forward. “They did.”
Silence. The ventilation hums. The light buzzes overhead — one of those industrial fixtures that makes everybody look like a corpse. Costa’s eyes are wet. Not crying. Just — full. Decades of serving a king who asked him to betray the people he loved, and the bill sits across from him, wearing Zina’s eyes.
“Santino asked who. Dante asked how. Romeo asked why.” I plant my hands on the table. “Nobody sat down and asked what the fuck Giovanni was actually building.”
Costa’s mouth opens. Closes. His jaw works like he’s chewing on something that won’t go down.
“What was he building, Costa?”
The question hits the concrete walls and doesn’t come back. No echo. Just the hum and the light and the man across from me falling apart in real time — not from pressure, not from the blade or the machine or the Bishop’s silence. From the fact that the nine-year-old boy with the strongest heart in the house just asked the only question that matters.
And Costa is terrified of the answer.
The Gauntlet
Costa breaks.
Not the way Santino wanted — no blade, no confession extracted through pressure and scripture. Not the way Dante mapped — no systematic dismantling, no diagnostic precision cracking the physician’s defenses one layer at a time.
Costa breaks because he’s scared.
“They’re firing,” he says. His hands are shaking so hard the table vibrates. “The nodes. They’re firing in sequence. You feel that? You see what’s happening out there?”
“I see it.”
“Then you know.” Costa’s eyes lock on mine. Wet. Desperate. The eyes of a man who’s been sitting in a concrete box for seven months watching a dead king’s machine start grinding gears from the inside. “Giovanni showed me the sequence. Twenty years ago. Sat me down in his study — the one with the locked doors, the one your brothers weren’t allowed inside — and he drew it out. Seven nodes. Seven trials. A specific order. And when I asked him what happens when the last one fires, he looked at me and said, ‘Then we find out who my sons really are.’”
My hands go still on the table.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Costa?”
“The Shadow Network.” Costa leans forward. His wrecked voice gains something — urgency, terror, the specific pitch of a man who has been carrying a secret since before I was born and the weight of it is crushing his chest. “It was never a weapon. None of it. Not a single fucking node.”
“Seven nodes designed to destroy this family from the inside and you’re telling me—“
“I’m telling you what Giovanni told me.” Costa’s fist hits the table. Weak — the man has no strength left — but the sound cracks through the room like a gunshot. “The marriage contract. Node one. You think that was an attack on Romeo? It was a test. Would he submit to his father’s arrangement or would he choose his own path? Would he obey or would he be strong enough to burn the contract and marry Nova on his terms?”
I stare at him.
“Romeo burned the contract,” I say.
“Romeo passed the test.” Costa’s chin drops. “Your father designed the trial to measure independence. Romeo proved he had it. Giovanni knew he would. Giovanni was counting on it.”
The concrete walls feel closer. The ventilation hums louder.
“And you,” I say. “The mole. Node two. You telling me that was a fucking test too?”
