Page 90 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
The silence doesn't shift, but I swear the walls move in.
I unfold it slowly, eyes scanning the list of names, even though my vision tunnels before I see the first one.
Aria Lombardi.
The name does not belong here.
The ink stares back at me.
Crisp. Final.
Like it has always been waiting to bleed through the paper.
I knew this was coming. I've known it since Marco told me she's still alive.
And yet, I hoped. I hoped I wouldn't be the one tasked with killing her.
My throat closes around the syllables, and all I can hear is her voice, five years ago, low and trembling in the dark, asking me if I would ever choose something beyond this life.
My hands do not tremble. But the list is shaking, because the world I have built my life around has just carved a mark into the only name I ever allowed to mean something to me outside of duty.
I feel Giovanni's presence tighten at my side, not because he knows, but because he feels the way the tension has changed.
Marco shifts in his seat. Luca does not. He watches me, and his face gives away nothing, but the silence tells me everything I need to know.
He knows.
He has known.
Maybe not at the beginning.
Maybe not when she first vanished.
But over time, you can see cracks in armor that even steel cannot hide.
You can hear a man's restraint in the pauses between his kills.
You can tell when silence means something.
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
Luca lifts one brow. "There a problem, Enzo?"
The paper crinkles in my hand. I smooth it.
"No," I say, the lie sitting rough behind my teeth.
He nods. Not at me, but to the room.
The meeting, the silence, the performance—it all resumes its rhythm, as though nothing in this world has changed.
But I am no longer standing in a study. I am standing at a cliff's edge, and I am staring at a name that should never have been written. Not on this paper. Not in that ink. Not with that seal. I look at it again. Then I fold the paper, slowly and cleanly, the way I always do, and replace it in the envelope.
14
ARIA
My breathing evens out, but my mind refuses to quiet.
