Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 26

Three months of weaponized grief have taught me that widowhood—even the technical kind—is the ultimate invisibility cloak.

I drift through the Caruso mansion like a professional ghost, draped in black fabric loose enough to hide the subtle curve that's started to assert itself at my waistline. The morning sickness that nearly betrayed me in the first trimester has finally released its grip, replaced by this bone-deep exhaustion that I wear like expensive perfume.

"Poor thing," the associates' wives murmur when they visit, watching me arrange flowers at Salvatore's memorial with trembling hands. "So young to carry such loss."

Marco can't come near me without looking like the monster everyone secretly suspects he might be. A grieving daughter-in-law is untouchable—even by her own husband. He knows this trap he's built for himself: he can't announce his father's death was necessary without admitting he orchestrated it, and admitting that would be signing his own death warrant. The other families would tear him apart for breaking the cardinal rule—family is sacred, even when it's poison.

So we perform this elaborate dance where I mourn the father he murdered, and he has to pretend to grieve alongside me. It's almost beautiful in its perversity.

Tonight, the mansion sleeps while I work in the study that still smells like Salvatore's cologne—cedar and smoke and the faint copper scent of violence. The micro-engravings on his signet ring aren't just decorative; they're a roadmap to an empire built in languages only money speaks. Each carved flourish translates to different offshore accounts, different vaults of secrets that Marco doesn't know exist.

Three months of following paper trails has made me fluent in forensic accounting. The laptop screen burns my retinas at three AM, rows of numbers that tell stories about where bodies are buried, metaphorically and literally. But tonight, the spreadsheets finally reveal what I've been hunting—an anomaly that screams louder than any confession.

Two million dollars. Every month. Flowing out of accounts like arterial spray.

"What are you?" I whisper to the screen, following the money through seventeen different banks, each transfer designed to muddy the trail.

The payments don't go to soldiers or suppliers or any of the hundred legitimate illegitimate expenses that keep a crime family operational. They funnel into a shell company with a name that makes my skin prickle: Caronte Holdings.

The Ferryman. Someone has a classics degree and a sick sense of humor.

The first payment—two million exactly—processed at 11:47 PM, the night before Salvatore's Mercedes became a Viking funeral. The timing is too surgical to be coincidental. Someone got paid, then someone got dead.

I dig deeper, using codes from the ring that unlock doors Marco doesn't know exist. Communication logs he thought he'd deleted resurface like corpses in spring—nothing truly disappears in the digital age, it just gets buried deeper, waiting for someone with the right keys and enough rage to resurrect it.

The messages read like a subordinate prostrating himself before a deity:

Marco: Need to discuss timeline adjustment

Caronte: Timeline is set. Changes cost extra.

Marco: Price is acceptable. How soon?

Caronte: Tomorrow night. The route you provided is perfect.

My stomach turns, the baby inside me shifting as if sensing my rage. Marco didn't just hire an assassin—he provided the route, the timing, every detail needed to turn his father into ash.

But the messages after Salvatore's death shift tone dramatically. The predator becomes prey:

Marco: Agreed amount was two million total

Caronte: Execution fee was two million. Silence costs extra.

"Blackmail," I breathe, the word tasting like vindication and venom. "You hired an assassin who became your parasite."

I pull up the Caruso family expenses, cross-referencing every Tuesday for the past three months. There it is—Marco leaves the house at midnight, returns by three AM, and two million dollars vanishes from accounts he thinks are secret. He's hemorrhaging money to keep his father's murder quiet, bleeding out slowly while pretending to run an empire.

The irony is delicious enough to choke on. Marco killed the king but became a slave to the kingslayer.

My hand drifts to my stomach, where the next generation of this cursed bloodline grows in ignorance of its legacy. The child could be Marco's—those dutiful attempts at husbandry before everything changed. Or it could be Salvatore's, conceived during those three desperate nights when careful became a language neither of us spoke.

The uncertainty should torment me, but it doesn't. Either way, this child will grow up knowing their mother hunted monsters and won.

I lean back in Salvatore's chair, letting its leather embrace me while I study the evidence spread across multiple screens. Caronte isn't just an assassin—they're a professional ghost who specializes in making powerful men disappear. The kind of killer who doesn't leave fingerprints or faces on security cameras, who exists only in whispered warnings and untraceable payments.

But everyone makes mistakes. Even ghosts leave echoes.

I pull up the shell company registration for Caronte Holdings, following its trail through Delaware, the Caymans, Switzerland. Each jurisdiction adds another layer of legal protection, another wall between the killer and consequence. But buried in the Swiss documents, barely visible in the legal boilerplate, is a single anomaly—a required disclosure of beneficial ownership that lists an address.

Not a real address. Not yet. Just a PO Box in Zurich that requires another key to unlock. But it's a thread, and threads can be pulled until everything unravels.

The sunrise bleeds through the study windows, painting everything in shades of vengeance and possibility. I close the laptop, slip the ring off my thumb and kiss it—a promise to a dead man that his death won't go unanswered.

Footsteps in the hallway make me straighten, schooling my features into appropriate grief. One of the housekeepers enters with my morning tea, her eyes soft with the particular pity reserved for young widows.

"You should rest, Mrs. Caruso," she says gently. "Don Salvatore wouldn't want you making yourself sick with sorrow."

"I find work helps," I reply, gesturing to the legitimate paperwork I keep visible—charity donations, funeral arrangements, the mundane administration of death. "It keeps my mind occupied."

She nods, understanding what she thinks she understands, seeing what I need her to see—a grieving woman, not a hunter gathering ammunition.

After she leaves, I stand at the window where Salvatore used to watch the sunrise, planning the day's violence with mathematical precision. The city sprawls below, indifferent to our small tragedies, our large betrayals.

"I know who killed you," I tell his ghost, my reflection in the window looking like someone I've never met—sharper, harder, carved from grief into something useful. "I know how Marco did it."

The baby moves again, a flutter that feels like agreement or warning. I place my hand over the spot, making promises I intend to keep.

"I'm going to find this Caronte," I whisper to the child who might have Salvatore's eyes or Marco's smile. "I'm going to find them, kill them, and then execute your uncle or father for murder."