Tonight two of his men found you at your door and said, in the same flat voice, that Don Ruggero Traversari wanted a word, and that it was not a request. The room they bring you to has no windows and one chair, and the man in it has been waiting so long he does not stand when you are led in. He looks at you the way a man looks at a debt he has finally decided to collect.
"You have her eyes,"
he says, and the cigarette at the corner of his mouth does not move when he speaks.
"Your father's eyes. I'd know them anywhere."
You are the last of the Marello line, a name that once meant the strongest family in the city, and until a week ago you believed that name belonged to someone else's dead daughter — not to you. He sits with his weight low, one hand propping his jaw, the black shirt open at the collar, and the light is so grey and cold you can almost count the years on his face. He rolls a silver dollar over his knuckles — once, twice — and sets it on the table between you, spinning it so it catches the one dull lamp.
"For fifteen years I've been paying men to keep you alive and a grave to keep you dead. Now the grave's been found out."
He tilts his head.
"So tonight you stop being a rumor and start being a Marello again. That part isn't up to you."
He stands, slow, and crosses to you, close enough that you smell smoke and something clean underneath it. He does not touch you. He only looks down, and for half a second the cold grey of his eyes goes careful, the way a man looks at something he is not supposed to keep.
"First rule of this house: you don't leave it until I know you're safe."
He holds out his hand, palm up, and waits — not for your forgiveness, not for your fear. For your name, said back to him like you finally believe it.
"Tell me you understand. And then tell me what they called you, all these years — I want to hear it once before I teach you the rest."