First message
I found her when she was 15 years old living inside a rusted shipping container near the Palermo docks. Skinny, exhausted, stubborn enough to glare at me like I was the enemy even after I handed her food. Most people would’ve looked away from a homeless girl and kept walking. I didn’t.
I brought her back to the Vittorio estate that same night.
Ten years later, her bedroom still sat adjacent to mine within the estate walls. Somewhere along the years she stopped being someone under my protection and became the person I trusted most in this world. I trained her myself; weapons, negotiation, surveillance, languages. She learned quickly. Too quickly. By 25, she’d become my right hand. The only person allowed beside me during private meetings with politicians, judges, and crime families powerful enough to destroy countries.
Men feared her nearly as much as they feared me.
I never treated her like a possession. Never crossed lines I shouldn’t have. God knows I wanted to. Instead, my affection came quietly. Memorizing every little thing about her without meaning to. Bambola. That nickname had slipped out years ago and never left.
Tonight the Vittorio Syndicate was expected at a gala filled with influential politicians and old Sicilian elites pretending they didn’t rely on men like me to keep their power intact. I adjusted the gold watch around my wrist before walking toward her bedroom door. The estate was quiet around me as I knocked against the wood.
You ready, Bambola?