Page 9 of Beautiful Evidence

"Is that a threat?" I snip before I scoff again and snort out a laugh. "Because I'm sure by now, you know who my father really is and what he's capable of doing." I stare directly into his eyes and his words slice down my spine in a cold chill.

"No. It’s a warning."

"I don’t respond well to warnings," I say coldly. Though inside, my stomach is roiling now. If he's warning me, maybe he isn't working with my father. I can't name all the criminal families in Rome, but I know the Costas aren't the only ones.

He steps closer, and his fingers lift and graze the side of my jaw like he's moving a hair or smoothing my tears away. It's a soft, gentle touch that warms me down to my chest, then creeps into my belly and settles it. The goosebumps I should feel fly to my stomach to join the butterflies dancing, and before I think, I act.

"Don’t touch me," I snap, slapping his hand away.

Vinny chuckles and winks at me before saying, "Ciao, Bella. Try not to dream of me tonight."

I push past him, spine straight and chin high. My steps echo off the courtyard stones. I don’t look back, but I'm not foolish enough to believe he's left me alone. Whoever sent him to intimidate me would be very disappointed if he did, and so I know every time I leave my apartment from now on, he'll be there. At least until the public prosecutor has their suspect and the case moves on from my docket.

Later, I lock the door to my apartment behind me and double-check every window, even though I know he’s long gone—or at least pretending to be. The lights stay off as I step into the kitchen, unspooling my scarf and tossing my bag onto the counter. I don’t bother eating. I’m too keyed up. My fingers twitch like they’re still bracing for another shock. I've had a few today already.

I head to the bathroom and splash water on my face. My hands tremble with nerves and my mind replays the conversation with Luca and then the one with Vinny—whose name I'm sure is Vincenzo or something stupid. I think of all the things I should have said to both of them but couldn't conjure up in the moment.

When I finally peel off my clothes and sink into bed, the sheets are cool against my skin, but my jaw still tingles where he touched me. I press the side of my face into the pillow, willing it to erase the memory, but it doesn’t help.

His touch lingers like heat after a flame, seared into nerve endings I can’t shut off.

I bury my face in the blanket and squeeze my eyes shut.

And I hate that I want to feel it again.

6

VINCENZO

The safehouse sits on the edge of the city, tucked between a row of empty buildings with nothing to mark it from the outside. Inside, everything is sterile—metal, screens, and silence. I’ve spent too many nights like this, lit only by the glow of a dozen monitors. Rome is a lot like New York City—never truly going to sleep, but Alessia does. It's where she is now, curled in her bed with her creamy skin covered in a white satin sheet, her light snoring coming across the airwaves.

Her apartment flickers across the main monitor. The monitor shows high-definition footage streaming in real time, captured through the network of bugs I installed throughout her apartment last week, long after Gordo’s original wiring was removed when she remodeled. She hasn't found my handiwork, or maybe she did and gave up trying to fight it, like the rest of Gordo Costa's legacy.

She hasn’t moved in nearly ten minutes—no tossing or restlessness, no sudden shifts. Just the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Her hair spills across the pillow like ink, tangled from being unbrushed, and I itch to run my fingersthrough it. Even in sleep, she’s beautiful. I study her face and see how much she looks like Gordo and even Emilio. How she thinks she can evade being recognized is beyond me.

She hasn’t told anyone about what she knows. Not a single detail has slipped past her lips. She hasn’t said a word about the strange symbol carved into Matteo’s chest, a detail that should have raised questions immediately—one I only know because it's Gordo's trademark. She also hasn’t breathed a word about the bloodwork she ran—not the official results and definitely not the second set I saw her process in secret in that old university lab. She’s calculating and deliberate—smart in ways that make people like her unpredictable and hard to manage. That’s what makes her dangerous—she got her wit from her father.

I switch feeds on the surveillance system, letting the screen shift with a soft flicker of static. I switch to camera three, which is aimed directly at her laptop screen, zoomed close enough to catch the details. It’s encrypted with decent protection, but I’ve broken into tighter systems for far less compelling reasons.

She’s logged into a private research drive. It’s not the kind of drive the university IT department monitors or archives. It exists off the books, private and hidden for a reason. It’s something older, probably predating her employment, and it feels personal—designed to keep certain work separate from official records. Maybe it's hers, a homemade NAS or something, but definitely crackable.

I lean forward, fingers skimming keys as I slice through the firewall. It takes less than two minutes to break in and mirror the data. The files reveal mitochondrial chain analyses, detailed cross-referenced alleles, and a partial male DNA profile connected to a third, unidentified genetic strand. It makes mewonder who it is and why she went to such great lengths to hide it.

It belongs to someone unknown, a ghost in the system with no official trail. The DNA doesn’t belong to Matteo, which means she found it on him—probably defensive—and it can’t be found in any official government registry or database.

"Fuck," I mutter under my breath. I rub the heel of my palm against my jaw, staring hard at the screen as if sheer will might change what I’m seeing. If she matches that to Gordo, we're sunk.

This confirms what Emilio was afraid of. There was a third man in the room when Matteo died—one the government hasn’t identified. One who could tie the scene to our larger network. If that profile leaks to the wrong hands, the task force doesn’t just have a corpse. They have leverage.

Gordo got sloppy. He let he fucker touch him, and not just touch him, but draw blood.

I tap the mic. "We have a problem," I say, knowing Emilio won’t appreciate the understatement. I lean back in the chair and crack my neck. The tension settles in like a weight across my shoulders.

"Go on," he growls through the static. His voice buzzes through the earpiece like gravel, and I hear the edge to his voice.

"She found a second profile—unmatched DNA. If Greco gets her hands on that, it opens the 416-bis case." I click through the mirrored files again, double-checking the markers just to be sure I haven’t misread the data.

There’s a beat of silence before Emilio speaks again. "Bernardi?" he snaps. The name alone sounds like a loaded weapon coming from his mouth.

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