Page 65 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
He can even lose a brother.
But a wife is different.
A wife is family in the truest, most public sense of the word.
If she disappears and there is no response, then the foundation crumbles.
People begin to ask questions.
People begin to make moves.
Luca started with the Lombardi family's offshore holdings.
Their accounts in Zurich and Luxembourg were frozen through quiet channels, favors called in from men who owed him more than money.
Then came the business pressure.
Construction was halted across five sites in Naples, Palermo, and New Jersey.
Licenses were withdrawn.
Inspectors appeared overnight.
Politicians once loyal to the Lombardis no longer returned their calls.
Every joint venture was reevaluated, then dismantled.
Contracts were revoked, land deals stalled, charitable foundations shuttered for audit.
What had taken the Lombardis three generations to build was disassembled in less than six months.
Their sons were the first to run.
The two youngest left under new documents, slipping into Northern Europe before the pressure turned into charges.
The eldest remained, insisting he could hold the family together, but he was forced to sell off properties to cover legal costs and settle internal debts.
Allies pulled away.
No one wanted to be standing too close when the house finally collapsed.
The old man, once a fixture at every public function, every gala, every backroom negotiation that mattered, withdrew entirely.
He stopped appearing in the press.
He no longer attended council dinners or received visitors at the estate.
His name remained on the legal documents, but the force behind it had been broken.
What remained was title without power, weight without leverage.
And yet, the peace held.
Because of Aria, or rather, the absence of her.
It was the nature of unspoken politics that kept his hands from closing entirely around what little remained of the Lombardi name.
Aria, for all her fire, had been little more than a pawn as far as her family was concerned, a daughter offered up in silence, her body and loyalty exchanged like currency.
