The scotch was two hundred dollars a glass and tasted of smoke and ash. Riccardo De Luca savored it, rolling the liquid over his tongue as he stared out the armored window of his office.
The city below was a glittering web of light, a kingdom he had seized, bled for, and now commanded. Yet, for all its sprawl, it had proven infuriatingly adept at hiding one man. A ghost. A chef.
His cousin.
A low growl rumbled in his chest. For weeks, his men had been turning the city upside down. They had shaken down old contacts, leaned on informants, and employed every digital and physical surveillance tool at their disposal.
The results were pathetic. Alessandro ‘Sandro’ De Luca, the true heir, had vanished as if he’d never existed. He had left behind a successful restaurant and a life of quiet anonymity, evaporating into the night.
It was a maddening, infuriating insult. Riccardo had built an empire on order and control, on the principle that no one was beyond his reach.
Yet Sandro, the soft-hearted fool who chose a whisk over a weapon, had slipped through his fingers. The thought gnawed at him, a constant source of paranoia that soured the taste of his expensive scotch.
A discreet knock echoed on the heavy oak door.
“Enter,” Riccardo commanded, his voice flat.
Vico Moretti stepped inside, closing the door with a quiet click that seemed to signal the room’s descent into a vacuum. Vico was a thin man with a weasel’s face and eyes that perpetually darted, cataloging threats and escape routes.
He was not a soldier, but an investigator, his weapon a relentless ability to sift through the mundane details of people’s lives until he found the one thread that, when pulled, would unravel everything. He clutched a leather portfolio to his chest like a shield.
“Don De Luca,” Vico began, his voice raspy. He never made eye contact for more than a second.
“Report,” Riccardo said, not bothering to turn from the window. The city lights reflected in his dark eyes, making them look like polished obsidian.
“Tell me you have more than whispers and dead ends, Vico. My patience is not an infinite resource.”
“We do, Don De Luca. We have… a pattern.”
That got Riccardo’s attention. He turned slowly, his large frame seeming to suck the air from the room.
He moved to his desk—a vast expanse of polished mahogany that had belonged to his uncle, Sandro’s father—and settled into the throne-like leather chair. He steepled his fingers, the picture of cold authority.
“A pattern. Elaborate.”
Vico took a hesitant step forward and opened the portfolio on the desk, his hands trembling slightly. He laid out several documents: financial summaries, surveillance reports, and a printout of a magazine article.
“As we know, Alessandro was living under the name ‘Alessandro Luca.’ He kept to himself. No vices, no women we could find, no close friends outside his kitchen staff. His life was the restaurant. He was a ghost long before he disappeared.”
Riccardo grunted. “I know all this. This is not a pattern; this is a failure.”
“Yes, Don De Luca. But something changed,” Vico insisted, pointing a bony finger at the article. “This.”
Riccardo’s eyes fell upon the page. It was a restaurant review, the headline bold and unforgiving: La Fiamma Nascosta: A Masterclass in Technique, A Failure of the Heart.
He saw the author’s name and photograph. Juliette Monroe. A sharp, intelligent face framed by dark hair, with eyes that looked like they missed nothing.
“A food critic,” Riccardo said, his voice dripping with contempt. “This is your pattern? A woman who didn’t like his pasta?”
“The review was published three days before he vanished,” Vico pressed on, his voice gaining a sliver of confidence as he laid out his facts.
“It was brutal. It called his food ‘soulless.’ According to kitchen staff we spoke to—discreetly, of course—Luca was enraged. He arranged a meeting with her the next day. They argued, loudly. The staff described it as ‘intense.’ The day after their argument, a quiet break-in was reported at Juliette Monroe’s apartment. Nothing of value taken. The police report is attached. Twenty-four hours after that, Alessandro Luca clears out his accounts and disappears.”
Riccardo remained silent, his gaze fixed on the woman’s photo. He could almost smell the ink on the page, the cheap perfume of mass-market journalism. It was all so… civilian. So trivial.
“And the critic?” he asked, his voice a low thrum.
Vico took a deep breath. “She’s gone, too.”
The air in the room grew heavy, charged with Riccardo’s sudden, absolute focus.
“Her editor at Metropolitan Taste magazine filed a missing persons report yesterday,” Vico continued, speaking faster now.
“She missed a major deadline. She’s not answering her phone, her texts, or her emails. Her super let the police into her apartment. Her overnight bag is gone, a few changes of clothes. It looks like she left in a hurry. Her car is still in its designated parking spot.”
Riccardo leaned forward, the leather of his chair groaning in protest. He picked up the photograph of Juliette Monroe, studying her face.
The pieces were there, scattered and seemingly unrelated. A scathing review. A furious chef. An argument. A warning break-in—he recognized the method; it was clean, a message, not a robbery.
And then, two people, linked only by a shared animosity, vanishing on the same night.
His men had been looking for a ghost. A lone wolf. They were searching for the Alessandro he remembered—the quiet, solitary boy who retreated into himself.
But that wasn’t who he was anymore. He had built something. He had a restaurant, a reputation. Pride.
And this woman had wounded it.
A slow, cold smile spread across Riccardo’s face. It wasn’t a smile of humor, but of dawning, predatory clarity.
He finally understood. He had been looking for a reason for Sandro to run—a threat, an old loyalty resurfacing. He had been looking for a sign of a capo-in-exile. He should have been looking for a weakness.
“He didn’t run from me, Vico,” Riccardo said, the realization settling into his bones like a shard of ice. “He ran with her.”
Vico blinked, the implication washing over him. “Don De Luca?”
“My cousin,” Riccardo mused, his voice a soft, dangerous whisper, “was always a romantic. His father indulged it. Art, music, food. He always believed in passion, in connection. He thought it was a strength. His father thought it made him human.”
Riccardo let out a short, sharp laugh devoid of warmth. “I always knew it made him weak.”
He pictured it perfectly. The critic’s words cutting Sandro deeper than any blade ever could, because they hadn’t attacked his body or his family name, but his soul—the one thing he’d tried to cultivate in his new life.
She had seen through his meticulously crafted facade and called him empty. He would have been drawn to that, like a moth to a flame that promised to burn him.
He would have confronted her, and in their anger, he would have found a spark. A connection.
And when he realized Riccardo was closing in, he hadn’t just fled. He had taken the one person who had gotten under his skin. He was protecting her.
The paranoia that had been eating at Riccardo for weeks finally subsided, replaced by a feeling of immense, chilling power. He was no longer hunting a ghost in the fog.
He had found the ghost’s anchor to the mortal world. He had a name. He had a face.
He stood up, the chair scraping against the floor. He walked back to the window, no longer seeing a city that hid his cousin, but a hunting ground teeming with opportunity. The scent was no longer cold. He was on the trail.
“Vico,” he commanded, his reflection a dark silhouette against the glittering skyline.
“Yes, Don De Luca?”
“The manhunt for my cousin is over.”
A flicker of confusion crossed Vico’s face. “Sir?”
Riccardo turned, his eyes burning with a renewed, vicious purpose.
“Our priority has changed. I want to know everything about Juliette Monroe. I want to know her favorite coffee shop, the name of her childhood pet, every friend she’s ever had, every lover she’s ever scorned. I want her entire life mapped out, from the day she was born until the moment she disappeared. Find her friends, her family. Lean on them. Let them know how desperately we want to ensure her safety.”
The implied threat hung in the air, thick and suffocating.
“We are no longer looking for Alessandro De Luca,” Riccardo said, his voice dropping to a near hiss.
“We are going to find his woman. And when we do… he will crawl out of whatever hole he’s hiding in and come to me.”
He finally had a name for his cousin’s weakness. And he would use it to rip Sandro’s carefully constructed world to shreds, one piece at a time.