All Chapters of UNDER THE DON’S PROTECTION: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Luca’s POVThe bungalow on stilts had aged gracefully teak darkened by salt and sun, roof tiles replaced twice after monsoons, the garden now thriving with lemongrass, curry leaf, and bougainvillea that spilled over railings in cascades of purple and pink. Fifteen years had passed since Antarctica’s ice swallowed the last node. Time didn’t erase scars; it simply taught us how to carry them lighter.Mornings still began the same: coffee brewed on the deck Dante’s ritual now perfected, no burned pots in years while Rocco cast a line from the dock, cursing softly when fish ignored his bait. I sat between them tablet open to cooperative ledgers, sketching tide tables for the fishermen who now trusted my numbers more than the moon. The atoll community had grown: new families arrived, children ran barefoot across sandbars, a small school opened with Anya’s help. We were no longer outsiders. We were simply the three men who stayed quiet, steady, always willing to help fix a boat engine or ba

Luca’s POVThe Maldives atoll had been our haven for twenty-three years—long enough that the nightmares of auctions, viruses, and bloodlines had faded to whispers. But whispers have a way of growing louder when ignored. It started with a postcard blank except for coordinates scribbled in Katarina’s familiar hand: 40.7128° N, 74.0060° W. New York City. No message. Just a date: two weeks from now.Dante found it first pinned to the fridge with a fishing magnet. He stared at it over his morning coffee, face unreadable. Rocco back from his dawn swim, towel around his waist leaned in, eyes narrowing.“Trouble,” Rocco said voice low, certain.I took the card fingers tracing the numbers. “Katarina wouldn’t send this unless it was bad.”We hadn’t heard from her in years—postcards stopped after the last clinic opened. We assumed she’d gone deep underground, her network dismantled or evolved beyond need. But this… this felt like a summons.Dante set his mug down—hard. “We go. No choice.”Rocco’

Luca’s POVThe atoll hasn’t changed much in a decade. Same turquoise water lapping white sand, same salt breeze carrying the scent of frangipani and grilled fish. But we have. The lines around Dante’s eyes are deeper now—laugh lines mostly, carved from nights spent watching Elena chase fireflies with our youngest. Rocco’s hair has silver threaded through the dark, and he wears it like a badge, grinning every time someone calls him “silver fox.” Me? I still wake sometimes with the ghost of a vial in my hand, but the nightmares come less often. Mercy won that war.Elena—our Elena now—turned twenty-three that year we almost lost everything. She’s thirty-three today. She came back with us after Brooklyn, broken but not beyond repair. Katarina took her under her wing first: therapy sessions in hidden clinics, late-night talks about Sofia’s choices, about why rage feels like love until it doesn’t. Then she came to us. Not as a prisoner. As family.She calls me Uncle Luca still sometimes jus

Luca’s POVGdansk in late autumn is gray and wet—cold rain slanting off the Baltic, turning the old shipyard cranes into blurred iron ghosts. We arrived under different names, different faces: forged passports, subtle prosthetics, separate flights that converged at a safe flat overlooking the docks. No private jet this time. Too loud. Too traceable.Elena insisted on leading point. She’s not the girl from Brooklyn anymore. She moves like water now—quiet, inevitable. Mateo’s at her side, laptop bag slung low, already ghosting through whatever digital perimeter Irina’s people have set. Sofia (our Sofia, the surgeon) stayed back on the atoll with Katarina—backup medical if things go south, and someone to hold the future if we don’t come home.Dante, Rocco, and I trail her like shadows that never quite left. Old habits. Old promises.The target warehouse squats at the edge of the port—pre-war brick, windows boarded, a single loading door cracked open like an invitation. Inside: floodlight

FORTY YEARS AFTER THE FIRST AUCTIONMateo’s POVI’m thirty-five now, and the atoll still feels like the only place on Earth where time moves at half-speed. The house has become a living archive: walls lined with framed photos that span generations, shelves heavy with encrypted drives containing every network report since Katarina handed over the keys, and a quiet corner room that no one enters without invitation—Sofia’s old things, preserved exactly as they were the day she left this world.Nonno Luca turned eighty last month. We threw the party on the beach at sunset—lanterns floating on the water, music low and acoustic, everyone barefoot. He still runs every morning, though the distance has shortened and the pace is more deliberate. Nonno Dante sits with him now during those runs, just walking beside, no words needed. Nonno Rocco still sharpens knives on the porch at dawn, claiming it’s “meditation,” but we all know it’s habit etched into muscle memory.Mom—Elena—runs the network f