Page 111 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince
Told his girlfriend it was a family emergency.
Left behind a dog-eared note and an apartment key that no one came back to collect.
Silvano was loyal.
Not creative.
Not clever enough to scheme—but loyal enough to be used.
The photo is timestamped forty-eight hours after he disappeared.
Salerno Port.
He’s boarding a private ferry.
But he isn’t alone.
The man beside him is half-turned.
His build is lean, tall, wrong in that subtle way people are when you’ve seen them before, but not in the daylight.
Scar on the right hand.
Knuckles worn.
A shape I almost recognize, but can’t quite place.
I fold the pages.
Slide them into my jacket.
I light a cigarette I won’t smoke, and let the match burn too long before flicking it into the oil-slick gutter.
Something is bleeding through the bones of this city, using our old roads, our dead names, our retired networks.
When I return to the estate, the east gate opens slowly.
One of the newer guards stands at the post.
He’s young.
Tries too hard not to look nervous.
Nods when I pass.
I don’t return it.
Luca is already waiting just inside.
He doesn’t speak until the doors shut behind me.
Then he looks up from the tablet in his hands and says, without preamble, "Valentina’s isolated the access strings. Half of them route to junk—cut protocols. The others connect to a decommissioned Rossi logistics shell. One that stopped reporting activity four years ago."
I hand him the photograph.
He takes it.
Studies the faces.
