Chapter 145: The Last Lesson

The night stretched into dawn, bodies dropping down, drenched with blood in the darkest, quietest places. Shadows moved fast, growling, screaming filled the air. One by one, names were crossed off a list that kept growing longer the more Manuel’s contacts talked.

By the time the sun came up, Salvatore had ordered more executions in a single night than in the entire month leading up to it. Men tied to Macron’s shipping routes, men tied to Jonathan Mallika. Salvatore didn’t give them a chance.

He had to know where Macron was.

Then, just before eight in the morning, Mike, one of the last men, gasped out a location between broken breaths, blood bubbling at his lips.

Macron was hiding at Merciano’s place.

Salvatore stared at the man for a long moment after that, waiting for the words to rearrange themselves into something that made sense.

He couldn’t believe it.

Merciano.

The man who had pulled him out of an auction as a boy, half-starved and covered in bruises, and given him protection.

The same man who had trained him, shaped his hands into weapons, taught him patience and precision and the particular kind of silence that kept a man alive in this world.

The same man who had personally walked him to Niccolo Portello’s door and told his uncle, "This one is worth keeping."

And now that same man was hiding Macron, his enemy. Was hiding the one person left in this world Salvatore actually wanted dead with his own hands.

He sat in his office afterward, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing while the weight of it settled into his chest.

He’d long since made peace with betrayal. It was part of his world, the thing he’d learned to expect from nearly everyone eventually.

But Merciano had never fit into that category. Merciano was supposed to be the one exception. The closest thing Salvatore had ever let himself call a father.

Roderick found him there sometime after the last body had been dealt with, still in the same chair, his shirt stained, his eyes hollow with exhaustion.

He knew what Salvatore was feeling right now.

"You need to rest," Roderick said quietly, glancing at his watch. Nine in the morning already. Neither of them had slept.

"No," Salvatore said, already standing. "I need to go to Merciano."

Roderick studied him for a moment, weighing whether to argue, but he already knew Salvatore would not back down.

"Be careful," he said instead. "I will prepare my things."

"No. You stay here."

"Sal—"

Salvatore raised a hand, cutting him off before he could finish, his expression flat, serious, terrifying.

"I will go with Joe. Don’t worry."

Roderick pressed his lips together and said nothing more, though the tension in his shoulders made clear exactly how little he hated being left behind again.

Salvatore didn’t bother to touch food. He asked Joe and the guards to go straight to Merciano’s house.

All the way there, he regretted never visiting that man. He regretted never thinking that Macron might hide at Merciano’s place.

When they finally arrived, he didn’t expect to find anyone. Every instinct told him Merciano would have run the moment word got out that his hiding place had been leaked.

But when they pulled up to the house at the edge of the property and pushed through the front door, Merciano was sitting calmly in his worn armchair near the window, a thin cigarette between two fingers, smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He simply looked up as Salvatore stepped into the room, his expression calm, almost tired, like he had been waiting for this moment.

"You come finally," Merciano said, taking another slow drag from his cigarette.

Salvatore stood in the doorway, his men fanning out behind him, guns raised, sweeping the rest of the house for any sign of Macron. His eyes never left the old man’s face.

"Where is he?"

It wasn’t a question.

Merciano exhaled a thin stream of smoke and set the cigarette down in the ashtray beside him, his movements unhurried, deliberate.

"He left this morning," he said simply.

"You helped him."

"I did," Merciano said, smiling, meeting Salvatore’s gaze without a trace of shame or apology in his voice.

Something in Salvatore’s chest twisted painfully at the confirmation, even though he’d already known, even though his enemy had already told him the truth. Hearing it from Merciano’s own mouth still landed like a blade between his ribs.

"Why?" Salvatore said, his voice quieter now, almost raw beneath the control he was fighting to hold onto. "After everything. After what you built me into. Why did you do this to me?"

Merciano looked at him for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his old, tired eyes.

"I have prepared you enough. You choose your battle. After all, you and Macron are my nephews. I don’t play favorites."

Salvatore’s jaw tightened.

"Nephews," he repeated, like the word tasted foul in his mouth. "So that’s all this is. Blood you happen to share with both of us."

"Blood is blood," Merciano said simply. "I don’t choose sides based on who I like more."

"You raised me," Salvatore said, his voice rising now, cracking slightly at the edges. "You helped me. You trained me. Don’t tell me that means nothing to you!"

Merciano’s expression didn’t shift.

"It means what it means. I gave you everything I didn’t give to anyone. You are strong, powerful now. I gave you enough. I never asked for gratitude, and I never promised loyalty in return."

Salvatore clenched his hands into fists at his sides, his whole body rigid with the effort of not lunging across the room.

"You know I wanted to kill him!"

"I never forbade you from it," Merciano said, unbothered. "Do as you like. I have trained you enough."

"Where is he?" Salvatore demanded, stepping closer, close enough now that his shadow fell across the old man’s chair.

"I don’t know," Merciano said, meeting his eyes without flinching. "He knew I would tell you if I knew where he was. Good thing he didn’t tell me."

Salvatore let out a short, disbelieving breath, something between a laugh and a growl.

Behind him, Joe shifted slightly by the door, and the guards kept their weapons raised, though none of them moved to act without a signal from Salvatore first.

"I always told you," Merciano continued, his voice calm, almost lecturing now, the same tone he’d used decades ago teaching a scared, abused boy how to hold a gun properly.

"Control your anger. Never trust anyone, not even me. You will always be alone in this world. If you think that way, you will not be disappointed."

"I just don’t understand," Salvatore said, his voice dropping again, raw now, stripped of its earlier fury and replaced with something closer to grief. "Of all the people in the world, why you? Why were you the one who hid him? After all this time I was looking for him?"

Merciano sighed, reaching for his cigarette and setting it down slowly in the ashtray, the ember still glowing faintly.

"I know you are always weak when it comes to feelings," he said. "That is something you should control the most. Your problem does not always have to be mine. You should know that."

Something in Salvatore went very still at that. He stared at the old man for a long moment, searching his face for even the smallest trace of the person he remembered, the one who used to sit with him after training and tell him he had potential, that he was worth more than anyone else in this world.

He found nothing there now but an old man protecting his own neutrality, wrapped in the comfort of blood ties that apparently meant everything and nothing at once.

"You could have told me," Salvatore said quietly. "Just once. You could have chosen."

"I did choose," Merciano said. "I chose neither of you. That has always been my choice."

Salvatore straightened, some of the rawness in his face closing over, hardening into something colder, more familiar.

He looked at the old man for one final moment, searching, still hoping despite himself for some crack in that composure, and found nothing.

"Fine," Salvatore said, his voice flat now. "Enjoy your time, old man."

He turned without waiting for a response, already walking toward the door, his men parting to let him through.

Joe fell into step behind him, throwing one last unreadable glance back at Merciano, who hadn’t moved from his chair, hadn’t so much as looked up as Salvatore left.

Outside, the morning sun felt too bright, too ordinary for what had just happened inside.

Salvatore climbed into the car without a word, his hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles went white before he even started the engine.

Joe slid into the passenger seat beside him, silent, sensing it was better not to speak.

They pulled away from the house, gravel crunching under the tires, and Salvatore’s eyes flicked once to the rearview mirror, catching one last glimpse of the modest house shrinking behind them.

"Bastard!" he shouted. "It’s so close, and I still can’t find him!"