The air in the cellar was cold, heavy with the ghosts of forgotten vintages and the sharp, coppery tang of fresh fear. Dust motes danced in the single beam of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a scene of quiet, methodical brutality.
This was Riccardo De Luca’s sanctuary—not the sprawling office with its polished mahogany and views of the city, but this stone-walled tomb beneath one of his legitimate shipping warehouses. Here, truth had a way of fermenting, uncorking itself under pressure.
Riccardo sat on an overturned wine crate, the pristine fabric of his charcoal Brioni suit a stark contrast to the grime around him. He swirled a glass of Barolo, a 1985 vintage his uncle, Antonio, had laid down decades ago.
A legacy he had inherited. A legacy he had taken.
“Memories are heavy things, Leo,” Riccardo said, his voice a silken murmur that did little to warm the chill. “I am simply here to help you unburden yourself.”
Across from him, tied to a heavy oak chair, was Leonardo Vozzi. Leo’s face was a roadmap of a life lived in service to the De Luca family—the real one, in his eyes.
His white hair was matted with sweat and blood from a gash above his eye. His hands, once strong enough to snap a man’s neck, were now swollen and purple, bound tightly behind his back.
But his eyes, though clouded with pain, still held a flicker of defiance. He had been Antonio De Luca’s man, through and through.
“There is nothing to tell,” Leo rasped, his voice a dry crackle. “The family you speak of… it died with Antonio.”
Riccardo’s smile was a thin, predatory slash. He took a slow sip of the wine, savoring its complexity on his tongue.
He appreciated things that were earned with time and patience. He had been patient for years, waiting in the shadow of his brilliant, charismatic cousin. Alessandro. The true heir. The golden boy.
“Loyalty is an admirable quality, Leo. Truly. But when the man you were loyal to is ash, it becomes… a liability.” He set the glass down with a delicate click.
“I have consolidated your former employer’s assets. I have streamlined operations. I have done what my uncle, in his sentimentality, could not. I have made this family strong. Unchallenged. Yet… there are whispers. Loose ends.”
He rose and walked slowly around the chair, his polished leather shoes silent on the packed-earth floor. He trailed a finger along Leo’s bruised shoulder, making the old man flinch.
“Ten years ago,” Riccardo continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush, “there was a fire. A tragedy. My uncle, his wife… everyone believed their son perished with them. A clean slate. A necessary, if unfortunate, reset.”
Leo’s jaw was set like granite. He stared at the damp stone wall ahead, refusing to meet Riccardo’s gaze in the small, cracked mirror hanging nearby.
“But ghosts have a way of clinging to old houses, don’t they? Whispers of survivors. Of loyalists who spirited someone away in the chaos. I’ve spent years silencing those whispers, Leo. Tying up every last thread. And you… you are the last thread.”
Riccardo’s frustration was a low hum beneath the surface of his calm. For years, he had ruled with an iron fist, purging anyone whose loyalty was even remotely questionable.
He had built an empire on the foundations of his uncle’s, but it always felt like he was living in a borrowed suit.
The title of Capo felt hollow as long as there was even the slightest possibility that the true heir, the one with the untainted bloodline, was still breathing somewhere. It was a gnawing paranoia, a constant itch under his skin.
He gestured to one of his men, a hulking brute named Marco, who stood impassively in the shadows. Marco stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.
“I am a busy man, Leo,” Riccardo said, his tone shifting, the silkiness replaced by tempered steel.
“I have legitimate businesses to run, partners to meet. This is… distasteful. A distraction. So, I will ask you one more time. Who else survived the fire? Where did they go?”
Leo spat a wad of bloody saliva onto the floor.
“Go to hell, Riccardo. You are a butcher, not a capo.”
The insult landed, and for a fleeting moment, Riccardo’s mask of control fractured. The rage was a flash of heat in his dark eyes.
He gave Marco a sharp, curt nod.
The first blow was a sickening crunch as Marco’s fist connected with Leo’s ribs. The old man grunted, his body seizing in the chair, but he didn’t scream.
Riccardo watched, his expression unreadable. He felt nothing for the old man’s pain.
It was a tool, a means to an end. This was business. The most important business of his life.
His mind drifted back to the night of the coup. The smell of gasoline and fear. The satisfying roar of the flames consuming the old estate, erasing the past.
He had made sure the story was perfect: a rival family, a brutal retaliation, a tragedy that left him as the sole remaining De Luca to pick up the pieces. It was a masterpiece of deception. But a masterpiece with a single, potential flaw.
Marco’s work was brutal and efficient. The sounds echoed in the small space—dull thuds of flesh on flesh, the sharp crack of bone, the ragged, wet gasps of Leo fighting for air.
Still, the old man held on. His body was failing, but his will was a fortress.
Riccardo sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment.
“You see, Leo? This is what I mean by sentimentality. You are dying for a ghost. For a memory. For a boy who probably burned to death a decade ago. It’s pointless.”
He stepped closer, crouching so he was eye-level with the broken man. Leo’s head was hanging, his breathing shallow.
“I have men checking every record,” Riccardo confided, his voice almost gentle.
“Every hospital, every orphanage, every John Doe that has turned up in the last ten years. But it would be so much simpler if you just gave me a name. A city. Anything.”
Leo’s head lolled to the side. A faint, gurgling sound came from his throat.
For a moment, Riccardo thought he was gone. He was about to give the signal to Marco to finish it when the old man’s eyes flickered open.
They were no longer defiant, only filled with a profound, weary sadness.
He was looking past Riccardo, at a memory. Perhaps of his uncle, Antonio, laughing, a glass of this very Barolo in his hand.
A whisper, so faint it was almost lost in the damp air.
“…il cuoco…”
The cook? Riccardo’s brow furrowed. What nonsense was this? The ramblings of a dying man.
“What did you say?” he demanded, grabbing Leo’s chin and forcing his head up. “Speak clearly.”
Leo’s eyes focused on him, and a shadow of the old fire returned, a final act of defiance. It was not a plea, but a curse.
“Alessandro…”
The name struck Riccardo like a physical blow. It was a ghost’s name, a name he hadn’t allowed to be spoken in his presence for a decade. A name he had tried to burn from the annals of the family.
He felt a sudden, sharp cold pierce the rage, a deep, primal fear he hadn’t felt since he was a boy living in his uncle’s shadow.
The ghost was real.
Leo’s lips moved again, a final, ragged breath. “He was always better than you… In the kitchen… in everything… The true flame… Alessandro…”
And then the light in Leo’s eyes went out. His body went slack, his head falling heavily onto his chest. He was gone.
Riccardo stood frozen for a long moment, the whispered name echoing in the profound silence of the cellar. Alessandro.
It wasn’t just a ghost; it was a judgment. The old man’s final words twisted the knife. Better than you.
The same words his own father had thrown at him. The same sentiment he saw in the eyes of the old guard he’d replaced.
He turned away from the body, his movements stiff. The Barolo on the crate now seemed obscene, a stolen pleasure.
His paranoia, once a low hum, was now a screaming siren in his mind. Alessandro was alive.
His cousin, the rightful heir, the boy who could charm everyone with a smile and cook like an angel, was out there. A walking, breathing threat to everything Riccardo had built.
“Marco,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “Clean this up.”
He walked to the stone stairs, his mind racing. The hunt was no longer for whispers and rumors. It was for a person. A man.
Where would a boy like Alessandro go? A boy who loved the warmth of a kitchen more than the cold steel of a gun. A boy who hated the violence of their world.
He would hide. He would build a new life, something simple, something clean. He would become a nobody.
Riccardo reached the top of the stairs and shoved the heavy cellar door open, emerging into the dusty warehouse. The afternoon light filtering through the grimy windows seemed too bright, too real.
He pulled out his phone and dialed his chief of intelligence.
“Dante,” he said, his voice hard as diamond. “Scrub all current low-priority surveillance. I have a new directive.”
“Yes, boss?”
Riccardo paused, the name feeling foreign and powerful on his tongue.
“I want you to find a ghost. His name is Alessandro De Luca.” He said.
“He was twenty when he disappeared. He would be thirty now. He has a talent… for cooking. I want every five-star kitchen, every culinary school, every noteworthy restaurant from here to the West Coast turned inside out.” He continued.
“I want to know about every rising chef who appeared from nowhere in the last ten years. Cross-reference them against missing persons, unidentifieds, anyone with a blank past. Use all of our resources.” He continued.
“Financial, digital, human. I want to know where he eats, where he sleeps, and who he speaks to.”
“Understood, boss. Is there a timeline?”
Riccardo looked back at the closed cellar door, picturing the dead man inside. He thought of the name—Alessandro—and felt a possessive, obsessive fire ignite in his gut.
This ghost would not haunt him for long.
“Your timeline is now,” Riccardo snapped. “Find him. Find my cousin.”