Chapter 3 The Devil You Know
She made the decision at 3 a.m.
Lying in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the old house creak and settle. Wood groaning, guards walking outside, that thick heavy silence of people who didn't trust each other. She was done crying for now.
Ivy left her a weapon. The least she could do was learn how to use it.
She sat at her mirror and put on her makeup like armour. In the mirror... her mother's cheekbones, her father's cold eyes. A face made from two people who destroyed each other. She used to hate looking at herself. This morning she looked at it differently.
You survived this fucked up house for twenty-four years. You can survive a little longer.
She tucked Ivy's note inside her bra, right against her skin, and went looking for Marco.
He was outside her door like always. Back straight, hands relaxed, face blank. Never looked surprised to see her.
"I need coffee. Walk with me."
He walked with her.
She had spent the night thinking about the cameras. She knew the blind spots. The east corridor between the library and the old conservatory... fifteen-foot gap, no coverage. Camera broke two years ago. Her father's team never noticed.
She turned into it like it was nothing. Taking the long way to the kitchen.
She stopped at the window overlooking the east garden. Marco stopped beside her.
"She used to call me every morning," she said, keeping her voice light even though her chest was so tight she had to concentrate to breathe evenly. "Seven o'clock exactly. Even if we saw each other the night before. Ivy."
She felt the air change around Marco. Not a sound. His attention sharpening like a knife.
"She was careful," she continued, still looking at the garden. "Never did anything without a reason." She turned and looked him straight in the eyes. "She left me a note before the gala."
Marco's face didn't show surprise.
It did something she didn't expect... like he was finally letting go of something heavy he'd been carrying for a long time. Like he had been waiting for exactly those words.
"How much do you know?" she asked.
His jaw moved. He looked at the garden then back at her. "Enough. Not everything."
"Then we have a problem."
"We have more than one." He glanced at the ceiling... clocking the camera gap. "Not here. Your studio. Twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes later she was on the worktable when he came in.
First time he actually stepped inside instead of standing at the door. He closed it behind him and pulled a cheap burner phone from his jacket. Cash bought. Disposable.
He put it on the table and unlocked it.
Financial records. Big money moving between two company names she didn't recognise. But the amounts... she grew up in this family. She knew exactly what those numbers paid for. Blood. Silence. Death.
"Two companies," Marco said, standing across the table. Close enough to talk low. Far enough to keep space between them. "Both sent money three days before the gala. Both paid different accounts I've been trying to trace for weeks."
"Two companies. Two payments."
"Two shooters."
Dead quiet.
"Someone hired two different shooters for the same night."
"One to scare. One to kill." Flat voice. Tight jaw. "They didn't know about each other. The scare shot was always going to miss. The kill shot—" He stopped. Jaw flexed hard. "Had different orders."
Ivy. The bullet that wasn't meant for her. Wrong place. Wrong second.
Gia pressed her thumb hard into the table edge until it hurt and breathed through the sharp pain in her chest.
"Who controls the companies?"
"Don't know yet. One is clean, hard to find. The other is sloppy... someone made a fast panicked decision." He paused. "The danger isn't from one person, Gia."
Her name. Just Gia.
She filed it somewhere she wasn't ready to look at yet.
"Three weeks you've been doing this," she said. "While still working for my father."
"I haven't been reporting to your father."
The words hit hard.
"You're his head of security."
"I know what I am."
"He thinks you're—"
"He thinks what I want him to think." Marco turned the phone in his hand once. Almost restless. First time she'd seen that. "Your father told me to watch you six months ago for his own reasons. What I found changed everything."
"Changed it how?"
Dark eyes. Serious. "The threat to your life is not from outside. It never was."
She stared at him. This man had just quietly destroyed every assumption she had about him. Not her father's loyal dog. Not her enemy. Something worse... a man fighting his own secret war inside these walls with his own rules.
She reached into her blouse and pulled out Ivy's note. Placed it on the table between them.
He read it without touching it.
His face stayed calm but his eyes went heavy... something old and painful moving through them, gone just as fast. Jaw tight like a man pressing down hard on something that wanted to surface. Knuckles slightly white against the table.
Whatever he was carrying had been sitting on him long before tonight.
"She came to me," he said. "Four days before the gala. Said she saw something she shouldn't have. I told her I would handle it."
The silence after that hurt. They both knew he hadn't.
"I didn't handle it fast enough," he said.
Flat. No excuse. No softening. Not the first time he had failed to protect someone... she could hear it in those three words. The weight of something carried long before Ivy.
"No," she said. "You didn't."
She wasn't going to make it easier. He didn't look like he wanted easy.
She slid the note across. He took it. Fingers didn't touch.
Neither of them moved.
She looked at the burner phone and understood clearly what she was stepping into. If her father found out she was investigating her own family she wouldn't be sent away. She would disappear... quietly, efficiently, the way her mother had.
She looked at Marco.
He was already looking at her. In his eyes... for a second, the same calculation. The same acceptance of what getting this wrong would cost. Not fear. Something heavier. A man who had already decided the risk was worth it and was living inside that decision.
Neither of them said it. They didn't need to.
"So what do we do?" she asked.
"Find who controls the second company. Find how the shooters are connected. Do it without anyone in this house knowing we're looking."
"Together."
"You're already in it. Pretending otherwise gets you killed."
She nodded.
He picked up the phone and the note and moved to the door. Stopped at the threshold. Hand on the frame.
"The note says start with S," he said.
"I know."
Pause. "My name—"
"I know your name." Steady. "Santino."
He turned his head slightly. Not fully. "It's not me."
"I know." And she did. A man secretly fighting the family he worked for wasn't protecting them. He was protecting something else. She just didn't know what yet.
He left.
Thirty seconds alone in the studio. Enough to feel how fucking alone they both were — and how strange it was that the only person she had right now was him.
Then her phone buzzed.
Sofia's private number.
I'd like to have tea. Just us. My sitting room, four o'clock. Come alone.
Every instinct said tell Marco.
But Sofia picked this time on purpose. She wanted to talk without him around.
Start with S.
She typed back: I'll be there.
Sofia's sitting room. Pale roses, soft afternoon light, working hard to look gentle. Sofia already seated when she walked in... hands folded, pearls on, but her face was different today. Less fake. More like a real woman.
That made her more dangerous.
She sat down and took the tea she had no plans to drink.
Sofia looked at her for a long moment. Something dark moved behind her eyes. Then she set her cup down and spoke.
"Your mother is alive, Gianna. I know where."
The light didn't change. The roses didn't move.
Her face didn't move either.
But deep in her chest... right where Ivy's note had been pressed all morning... something cracked open that she had kept sealed for fifteen years. The fear she had never said out loud. That her mother hadn't left. That she had been taken. That one day the same thing would happen to her.
Finding her mother wasn't just about reunion.
It was the only proof that survival was possible in this family.
She set her teacup down very carefully.
And waited to find out what the price would be for knowing the truth.