La Signora

Elise's POV

The briefing took two hours.

Marco laid everything out the way he always did — no softening, no editorializing, just facts in the order they happened and numbers where numbers were needed. I sat across from him in my father's war room with a glass of water I hadn't touched and I listened and I did not interrupt.

The Greco family had moved on a Vitale shipment eight days ago. Intercepted it clean — no violence, no bodies, just gone. Forty million in product, vanished. The message was not subtle. Don Savio Greco had been circling the Vitale empire for three years, waiting for a moment of weakness, and my father's declining health had given him one.

What Don Savio had not accounted for was me coming home.

"Who else knows about the interception?" I asked when Marco finished.

"Within our network? Everyone." He set down his folder. "Outside — it hasn't leaked yet but it will. These things always do."

"Then we move before it does." I turned to the map spread across the table — shipping routes, territories, contact points marked in red and blue. "The Greco family has three active supply lines running through the eastern port. I want eyes on all three by tomorrow morning."

Marco nodded slowly. "And then?"

"And then we watch." I stood up. "Don Savio wants us rattled. We don't rattle. We watch and we wait and when he moves again we already know where he's going."

Marco looked at me the way he had looked at me since I was twelve years old and used to sit in the corner of this exact room listening to briefings my father didn't know I was attending — like he was recalibrating something.

"Welcome home, Signora," he said quietly.

I picked up my water glass and finally drank.

—

My father was in his study when I found him that evening, sitting in the armchair by the window the way he did when he was thinking through something he hadn't decided to share yet. The city lights were coming on below. He looked tired in a way that was different from the tiredness of a long day — something underneath it, something structural.

I sat in the chair across from him and waited.

"The Greco situation is more serious than Marco presented it," he said finally.

"I know," I said. "I read between it."

He looked at me. "Don Savio has been in contact with three of our allied families. Feeling them out. Seeing who would stay loyal if the Vitale name weakened."

"Which three?"

He told me. I filed each name away without reaction, though one of them surprised me — a family that had sent flowers to my mother's funeral and sat at our table every Christmas for fifteen years.

"People protect their interests," my father said, reading my face.

"I know that too," I said. "I was married to Adrian Reeds for seven years."

A pause. Then something that was almost a smile crossed his face — brief, there and gone.

"You need to be seen," he said. "Not just within the network. Publicly. The allied families need to know that the Vitale succession is not in question."

"Arrange a dinner," I said. "Here. Two weeks. Invite everyone — including the three."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Keep your friends close," I said.

He nodded once. Then he reached into the side table drawer and produced a thin folder which he placed on the armrest between us without comment. I picked it up and opened it.

It was a personnel file.

Nico Ferrante. Age 32. Former military intelligence. Five years with the Vitale family. Current role: Senior Enforcer.

There was a photograph clipped to the inside cover. Dark eyes. A face that had learned not to give anything away and was very good at it.

"He will head your security detail," my father said. "Effective immediately."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"No," he agreed. "You need someone who can keep you alive while you rebuild. Those are different things." He closed the conversation by picking up his book. "He reports to you. Not to me."

I looked at the photograph for another moment. Then I closed the folder.

"Fine," I said.