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The box
publish date:
2025-12-06 19:21:05NICO POV
What in the ever-loving fuck was that?
I stood in front of the door long after the lock had sealed, my palm still resting against the cold metal like I might tear it open again. My pulse thundered violently in my ears, but it wasn’t just rage driving it. It was interference.
That wasn’t how liars reacted, at first, I’d been certain she was playing me. Falcone blood didn’t produce fragile women. A man like her father would have drilled survival into her from childhood and how to lie convincingly, how to cry without cracking, how to hold eye contact when threatened but when I told her Nikolai was dead that look had gutted her.
Shock had emptied her lungs and grief had hollowed her eyes so fast it startled even me. There was no calculation there, no delay and no mask slipping. It either she was telling the truth or she was dangerous in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I adjusted my suit jacket with unnecessary force and turned toward Damon, who stood at the surveillance wall, his reflection fractured across a dozen monitors.
“She’s lying,” he said instantly. Too fast and too sure. “I know.”
“Romano,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “That’s bullshit, you think a Falcone didn’t know who she was fucking? He was a Moretti and our name isn’t exactly subtle.”
“Maybe it was to her,” I said, though I didn’t know why I bothered. Damon laughed harshly. “Come on. Falcone Resources owns half the fucking East Coast. You don’t grow up in that family without knowing who the major players are.”
I stared at the screen instead of him, our families hadn’t crossed paths before Nikolai’s death. Not in business, not in territory, not in blood and that had never sat right with me. Power like ours always brushed shoulders eventually.
Unless someone made sure it didn’t. “They underestimated us,” Damon continued. “Thought money made them untouchable.”
Money did make people careless but being Mafia wasn’t about throwing weight around or scaring civilians. It was about order, about rules that had been written in blood and enforced the same way. Loyalty wasn’t optional and family wasn’t negotiable.
The Falcones played at legitimacy. We lived in consequence. “Falcone thought he could hide behind his boardrooms,” Damon growled. “Now his daughter’s paying for it.”
That word again, paying but why her?
Because it started with her, if she hadn’t clawed her way into Nikolai’s life, he’d still be breathing and my father would still be alive and I wouldn’t be wearing a crown I never asked for. “Enough,” I snapped.
The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. Damon fell silent, staring at me.
“We don’t know what happened yet,” I said, slower now, forcing control back into my voice. “All we know is Nikolai is dead and someone wanted it to look like the Falcones did it.”
I stepped closer to the monitors, Lila sat curled in on herself, knees drawn up, palms pressed to her face. Her shoulders shook, but not violently. It was restrained like she was holding herself together by sheer will.
That detail bothered me because most people broke louder. “She’s acting,” Damon muttered. “Look at her. Playing the victim.”
I watched her fingers tighten briefly against her temples and I knew that wasn’t acting. That was someone trying not to drown, I dragged my hand down my face, frustration coiling tight in my chest. “I’ll get the truth out of her,” I said. “One way or another.”
As if summoned by the vow, my gaze drifted away from the screen to the desk beneath it.
A folder lay half-hidden under a stack of financial reports. It hadn’t been there earlier or maybe it had, and I hadn’t been looking for it yet. I frowned and pulled it free there where photocopies of shipping manifest, shell cmpanies, offshore transfers routed through three countries before circling back to New York and one familiar name. My mother, just once no context and no explanation. A single transaction buried so deep it would’ve gone unnoticed by anyone not trained to hunt patterns.
My jaw clenched, coincidence was for idiots.
I closed the folder carefully and slid it back exactly where I’d found it, aligning the edges, erasing any sign it had been touched.
If this meant something, I needed it clean. Quiet. “Man,” Damon said suddenly, snapping me back. “You left the box in there.”
I looked up, “I know.”
On the monitor, Lila’s hands fell from her face. Her gaze lifted, unfocused at first then it landed on the plain brown box at the foot of the bed and her entire body went still. Fear sharpened into awareness, I folded my arms across my chest.
I’d planned to make her open it while I was still in the room to watch her reaction and to measure how deep the damage went but her mention of Romano had shoved me too close to losing control. Now patience would be the weapon, “She won’t touch it,” Damon said. “She’s terrified.”
“Everyone touches it,” I replied calmly. “Curiosity always wins.”
On the screen, she wiped her face with the sleeve of the threadbare nightgown. She shifted, folding her legs beneath her, posture guarded but alert.
She wasn’t praying, she was thinking as she reached for the box shen stopped suddenly.
A faint smile tugged at my mouth. “There it is.”
Damon leaned forward. “How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
She stared at the box like it might explode. Like it might confirm every fear clawing at her chest. Her fingers twitched and she pulled back again. When Damon brought her in, she’d looked like a spoiled rich girl polished, expensive, insulated. Now she looked stripped of illusion and smaller, yes but not broken.
Nikolai had always preferred women who folded easily as quiet, agreeable and safe but I never had. I preferred complexity, resistance and fire but watching her now, calculating, afraid and not collapsing, I realized something unsettled me more than any lie ever could.
If Lila Falcone was innocent then someone else was very guilty and whoever that was had played all of us.
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