Chapter 2 - What Nico Saw
The wine cellar smelled of damp stone, dust, and old oak.
Roman descended first.
Elena followed.
Matteo came behind them with four guards.
Nobody spoke.
A hidden door behind a rack of imported Barolo opened into the old tunnel.
Roman had used it twice in twenty years.
Victor had shown it to him.
That memory felt poisonous now.
Every lesson Victor had taught him was beginning to look different.
Every favor.
Every warning.
Every enemy Victor said couldn't be trusted.
What if the man had spent twenty years designing Roman's reality?
They reached a junction.
One tunnel led beneath the hotel.
Another toward an abandoned restaurant.
Matteo crouched beside the floor.
“Fresh marks.”
A metal case had been dragged recently.
Roman looked at Elena.
“Stay behind me.”
She gave him an exhausted look.
“Do you know how many times you've said that tonight?”
“Not enough.”
They continued.
Thirty yards later, they found a room.
Empty.
Except for ash.
A steel barrel smoldered in the center.
Documents had been burned.
Roman approached.
Matteo grabbed his arm.
“Hot.”
Roman looked through the fragments.
Paper edges.
Numbers.
Names.
Mostly destroyed.
Elena crouched.
“Roman.”
“What?”
She pointed beneath a metal cabinet.
Something blue.
Roman pulled it free with a cloth.
A charred book cover.
Blue leather.
His pulse changed.
“This is it.”
Elena whispered, “The ledger?”
“Part of it.”
Most pages were gone.
But one survived.
A handwritten list.
Four dates.
Three names.
And beside the last:
N. MARINI
Elena stopped breathing.
Roman read the line beneath.
Observed transfer—Pier 44. Liability unresolved. V.S. handling.
Victor Solerno.
Elena grabbed the page.
“Liability?”
Roman hated the word.
People turned into accounting terms.
Problems.
Risks.
Loose ends.
“Nico was a liability.”
Her voice cracked.
Roman looked at her.
“We don't know what Victor did.”
“My brother died three days after this date.”
“I know.”
“He was twenty-five.”
“I know.”
“He had been clean for four months.”
Roman hadn't known that.
Elena looked at him.
“He wasn't perfect.”
“I never said he was.”
“Everyone did.”
Her eyes burned.
“They said addict. Screwup. Weak. It made his death convenient.”
Roman understood.
Once a person had a reputation, people stopped asking questions.
Victor probably counted on that.
A guard called from deeper inside.
“Boss.”
They moved.
At the far end of the chamber was a second door.
Open.
Beyond it, a staircase led to an alley.
Victor had escaped.
But not empty-handed.
A security camera above the exit had been smashed.
Roman looked at Matteo.
“Get traffic footage.”
“Already working.”
Elena stood still.
Roman noticed.
“What?”
She held the charred page.
“Adrian said Nico saw something connected to your father.”
Roman nodded.
“This could be it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“If Victor called him a liability, why connect it to Giovanni?”
Roman stared.
Good question.
Then Elena said:
“Maybe Nico didn't see Victor commit a crime.”
She looked at Roman.
“Maybe he saw evidence Victor had already betrayed your father.”
That possibility struck like ice.
Giovanni Duca's murder had been blamed on Carlo Moretti.
A rival.
A war followed.
Eleven people died in eighteen months.
Roman personally ordered two retaliations.
He had spent half his life believing Moretti killed his father.
Victor had been the one who brought him proof.
A witness.
A weapon.
A story.
What if—
Roman turned away.
“No.”
Elena watched him.
“You've thought of something.”
“No.”
“Roman.”
“My father's murder started a war.”
“Yes.”
“If Victor lied about who killed him…”
He couldn't finish.
Because then everything Roman had done afterward rested on manipulation.
Matteo said softly:
“Boss.”
Roman looked at him.
Matteo's face was grim.
“I was nineteen during the Moretti war.”
“I remember.”
“My brother died.”
Roman knew.
Paolo.
Shot outside a social club.
Matteo had joined Roman permanently after that.
“If Victor manufactured the conflict…”
Matteo couldn't finish either.
Then Elena's phone buzzed.
Everyone froze.
Roman took it.
Unknown number.
One message.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET THE DOCTOR DIE QUIETLY.
A second arrived.
A photograph.
Elena entering the upstairs office earlier that night.
Taken from the hallway.
Someone had been watching.
Third message.
ASK ROMAN WHAT HAPPENED TO CARLO MORETTI'S DAUGHTER.
Elena looked at Roman.
“Who is Carlo Moretti's daughter?”
Roman didn't answer quickly enough.
Her expression changed.
“Roman.”
“Her name was Sofia.”
“What happened?”
“She disappeared during the war.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen.”
Elena stared.
“Did you hurt her?”
“No.”
Immediate.
True.
“I never saw her.”
“Then why would Victor tell me to ask?”
Roman's mind raced.
Carlo Moretti had surrendered after Sofia disappeared.
Victor claimed Carlo believed Roman took her.
Roman denied it.
Carlo didn't believe him.
Two days later, Carlo was found dead.
Officially suicide.
Roman had never been comfortable with it.
Victor told him guilt destroyed Carlo.
Roman had accepted that.
Another story Victor provided.
Another convenient ending.
Elena whispered:
“Victor controlled what everyone believed.”
Roman looked at her.
“Yes.”
She understood before he wanted to.
“Your father.”
“Nico.”
“Moretti.”
“Maybe all of it.”
Roman felt sick.
Not physically.
Morally.
His power had always rested on certainty.
This man betrayed us.
That man attacked us.
This family owes us.
That family cannot be trusted.
But what if certainty had been manufactured?
What if Roman had inherited not his father's empire—
but Victor's script?
He took the flash drive from his pocket.
“Whatever Adrian died protecting is on this.”
Matteo asked:
“Where do we open it?”
“Not here.”
“Duca house?”
“No.”
Roman looked at Elena.
“Our house may be compromised.”
She nodded.
For the first time, there was no argument.
Roman knew one place Victor would never expect.
“St. Catherine's.”
Matteo frowned.
“The convent?”
“My aunt.”
Roman's father's younger sister, Teresa, had become a nun forty years earlier.
She despised organized crime.
She also despised Victor.
Roman had ignored her warnings for decades.
Perhaps it was time to stop.
They left through another exit.
At the street, Roman stopped.
A black sedan was waiting.
His driver opened the door.
Roman stared at him.
Trusted?
Maybe.
He turned to Matteo.
“We walk two blocks.”
Matteo understood.
Elena almost smiled.
“Paranoid already?”
Roman looked at her.
“Learning.”
They reached a taxi line.
Roman Duca, feared crime boss, climbed into the back of a yellow cab with his blood-stained wife.
The driver looked in the mirror.
“Rough wedding?”
Elena laughed unexpectedly.
Roman looked at her.
First genuine laugh all night.
“Something like that,” she said.
They drove toward Queens.
Halfway there, Elena whispered:
“You never asked.”
“What?”
“Why I married you.”
Roman looked toward her.
“I know why.”
“My father's debt.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
The rumor.
Of course.
“Elena.”
“My father owed you money, yes.”
“I erased it.”
“After the wedding.”
“Correct.”
“But I didn't marry you because you forced me.”
“I never said I forced you.”
“You also never corrected anyone who thought you did.”
Roman looked away.
Fair.
Elena continued.
“I married you because Adrian contacted me eight months ago.”
Roman went still.
The timing.
Exactly when negotiations happened.
“You knew something about Victor before we married?”
“Not enough.”
“What did Adrian say?”
“That Nico's death connected to the Duca organization.”
Roman's face hardened.
“So you married me to investigate me.”
Elena looked wounded.
“At first.”
The words landed hard.
“Eight months.”
“Roman—”
“You slept beside me while investigating whether I killed your brother.”
“I never thought you personally killed him.”
“But you thought my family did.”
“Yes.”
Roman turned toward the window.
For the first time that night, Elena reached for him.
He moved his hand away.
Her face fell.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Convenient.”
“Adrian told me he finally had proof.”
Roman laughed bitterly.
“So our marriage really was an arrangement.”
Elena stared at him.
“At the beginning.”
He looked at her.
“And now?”
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
That hurt more than it should have.
Then the taxi stopped.
St. Catherine's stood behind iron gates.
Roman got out.
Elena followed.
Before they reached the entrance, a nun in her seventies stepped outside.
Sister Teresa Duca.
She took one look at Roman.
Then at Elena's bloody hands.
Then at Matteo and the guards.
She sighed.
“I asked God for a peaceful evening.”
Roman almost smiled.
“Aunt Teresa.”
She stepped aside.
“You'd better come in.”
Inside, after the gates locked, Roman handed her the charred blue ledger page.
Teresa looked at it.
Her face changed immediately.
“You found this.”
“You know it?”
“Yes.”
Roman's heart began pounding.
“Did my father keep the ledger?”
“Yes.”
“Did Victor have access?”
“Yes.”
“Did Victor kill him?”
Teresa looked at her nephew for a long time.
Then she said:
“Roman, your father wasn't murdered because of a war with Carlo Moretti.”
Silence.
“Then why?”
“Because Giovanni discovered Victor had been building his own empire inside yours.”
Roman felt the world tilt.
“And before your father could expose him…”
Teresa looked toward Elena.
“…Victor made sure Giovanni died and convinced his grieving son to blame the wrong man.”
Roman closed his eyes.
Twenty years.
Twenty years of loyalty.
Twenty years of blood.
May you like
Built on a lie.
And somewhere in New York, Victor Solerno knew Roman had finally started to understand.
