The Cousin Who Opened the Door

Chapter 13 - The Cousin Who Opened the Door

The betrayal came, as betrayals often do, from someone already wounded.

Nico confessed before Adrian could break anyone.

He walked into the study at midnight, stitched side wrapped beneath a clean shirt, face pale, eyes exhausted. Two guards reached for him. Adrian lifted one hand and they stopped.

Nico looked first at me.

“I did not know Matteo would run.”

Adrian said nothing.

Nico swallowed.

“I opened the first security gate.”

The room became very quiet.

Vittoria sat near the fireplace with the posture of a woman waiting for a judge she did not respect.

“Why?” Adrian asked.

“My father.”

Carlo.

Alive, somewhere, perhaps victim, perhaps accomplice, perhaps both. The kinds of men surrounding me loved to categorize people as loyal or traitor. Real life had already shown itself to be messier.

“Matteo sent proof,” Nico said. “A recording. My father begging me to help him.”

“Where is the recording?”

Nico placed a phone on the desk.

Paul played it.

A man’s voice filled the room, hoarse and broken.

Nico. Figlio mio. Please. He will kill me if you don’t—

Then static.

Nico stared at the floor.

“I thought if I opened one gate, Matteo’s men would move him. I had trackers ready.”

“You thought you could outplay Matteo,” Adrian said.

“Yes.”

“And?”

Nico laughed once without humor.

“I remain myself, unfortunately.”

I looked at Adrian, expecting rage.

It was there. Of course it was. But grief stood with it.

He and Nico had grown in the same house, under the same portraits, taught by the same violent uncles how not to flinch. A betrayal from an enemy is a door closing. From family, it is a room collapsing.

Vittoria struck her cane once.

“Where did Matteo go?”

Nico shook his head.

“I lost him within six minutes.”

Adrian turned toward Paul.

“Find Carlo.”

“We’re trying.”

“Try better.”

Nico looked up.

“Punish me after we find my father.”

Adrian stepped closer.

“No. You do not get to schedule consequence like a dentist appointment.”

Nico’s eyes flashed.

“He is my father.”

“And Elena’s mother could have died tonight because you opened a gate for a man who has killed everyone inconvenient to him for twenty years.”

Nico looked at me then.

“I’m sorry.”

I surprised us both by believing him.

“I know.”

Adrian’s gaze cut to me.

“I did not say that makes it all right.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then why give him anything?”

“Because someday you may need someone to know the difference between forgiveness and permission.”

No one spoke for several seconds.

Vittoria watched me with unreadable eyes.

Then Paul’s phone rang.

He listened, face tightening.

“We found Carlo.”

Nico straightened.

“Where?”

Paul looked at Adrian.

“In a church basement in East Boston. Alive.”

Relief crossed Nico’s face so raw I had to look away.

“There’s more,” Paul said.

Of course there was.

“Carlo says Matteo is going after Elena’s mother. Not to hurt her. To get to the truck.”

“My father’s truck?” I said.

Paul nodded.

“Apparently the ledger was only half of it. Michael hid something in the engine block.”

My mother’s voice returned to me.

The truck still smells like smoke.

Adrian moved instantly.

“Cars. Now.”

This time, no one argued when I followed.

We reached my mother’s house twenty minutes later.

The garage door stood open.

The tarp lay on the driveway.

My father’s truck was gone.

So was my mother.

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On the wall, written in oil across the pegboard where my father’s tools used to hang, were six words.

ASK THE WOLF WHAT HE REMEMBERS.