Page 69 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
Silence settles over us like a shroud as we pull away from the curb, the old slaughterhouse disappearing behind us like a shadow folded into dusk.
The streets are quiet now.
Nuova Speranza has learned to bow its head at the right time. Shopfronts lower their shutters earlier.
Lights dim faster when the Salvatores move through the city's veins.
Cristiano glances at me. "Something on your mind?" he asks, voice too casual to be innocent.
I don't answer.
Because the scope of what could be said is far too much to be put into mere words, and if what that man said is true—if Aria isn't dead—then everything I thought I buried five years ago just clawed its way back to the surface.
Giovanni taps the steering wheel again. "Boss wants us at the villa tomorrow morning. Something about a port deal with the Hungarians. He wants us sharp."
I nod once, but my thoughts are elsewhere.
I will nod at Luca and tell him the Marzelli breach has been handled.
I will look Cristiano in the eye and pretend I am not turning over every name, every face, every possibility behind my calm expression.
It is all I can do to give myself more time to know where Aria is before she's found by the boss.
And if she's really out there, she's coming home, where she belongs, to me.
10
ARIA
Endless ribbons of a pale ocean stretch in front of us, with the sun melting across the surface in long strokes of gold.
I dig my toes deeper into the sand as my son runs ahead, his laughter rising in bursts every time the tide catches his heels.
He is still small enough to think the sea might chase him, and brave enough to taunt it when it turns away.
I watch him dart back and forth like a ribbon in the wind, his curls sticking to his cheeks, his arms flung wide as if he can fly.
No one here knows who I am.
That was the first rule.
The most important one.
My name, like everything else about the girl who had once belonged to the Lombardi family, had vanished the moment the car exploded outside Nuova Speranza.
Aria had died with that fire.
What remained was someone quieter, sharper, someone who had learned how to vanish in plain sight.
But it hadn't always been like this.
For weeks after the escape, my body moved without direction, held together by adrenaline and the weight of everything I couldn't afford to grieve.
Yarik left me at the port with a forged passport, a little cash, and a phone that would only work for a week before it burned out.
He said goodbye without a word, as if he'd already mourned me.
From there, I boarded a ferry that took me south, farther than I'd ever traveled on my own.
