Dubiou's pov:
The room smelled of power and secrets. Thick clouds of cigar smoke curled into the air like silent ghosts..No windows open, no light except for the golden dim hue from the antique desk lamp behind me. It cast a long shadow on the wall… a shadow that always looked bigger than I was. I liked it that way.
I leaned back in the leather chair—cold, high-backed, stitched with blood-colored thread. My black shirt clung tightly to my body, unbuttoned at the neck. Sleek black trousers. Polished black boots. Even my gloves were black.
Power always looked better in darkness.
My jaw clenched slightly as I took another puff from my cigar. The fire at the tip glowed like a devil's eye, then faded.
The silence was interrupted when the door creaked open.
"Boss," a deep voice said. I didn't turn.
I didn't need to.
I could hear the hesitation in his steps. Smelled the sweat on his collar.
"Call from Angelo," he said, extending the phone with both hands, like it was a sacred object. I didn't take it immediately.
Instead, I let the silence stretch… slow… uncomfortable… and then, I reached out with two fingers and plucked it from his trembling hands.
I answered with a puff of smoke still curling between my lips.
"What's the news?" I asked in my usual low, gravel-drenched voice.
"Boss… we have a problem," Angelo said. His voice was off. Nervous. Scared, maybe?
I squinted, staring at the ember of my cigar.
Go on.
"Luca knows Rose is alive. Somehow… he's on her trail. He's digging, and I think..no,I know he's close to tracing Facility 9."
There was a second of silence before I responded. My voice dropped into something darker, more animal than man.
"Double your men. No one leaves that place alive."
I stood, slowly.
"Especially not Rose."
I could feel the shift on the other end of the line. The stiffness and fear.
"Yes, boss. I'm on it," he managed, and the line went dead.
I handed the phone back wordlessly, and the man took it like he was touching fire. I didn't watch him leave.
Instead, I walked over to the tall mirror in the corner.
My own reflection stared back at me cold, unreadable. My black eyes weren't just voids… they were pits. The kind of eyes that knew what it meant to bury a man alive and sleep like a baby after.
A strange hum began in the walls. The silence after the call was louder than before.
I took another drag from my cigar, letting the smoke linger in my mouth before releasing it through my nose, like a dragon from a dark fairytale.
"Luca…" I murmured.
My son.
My greatest weapon.
And yet… still infected by that virus called love.
I couldn't allow it.
Love was the reason men failed.
Love made warriors hesitate.
Love softened hands that were trained to kill.
Rose is a disease.
A stain.
A weakness he can't afford.
I paced the room, something twisting in my gut—something old and familiar. Paranoia.
Someone was leaking information. Had to be.
That hospital, Facility 9 wasn't even on government records. We bought silence. Burned paper trails. Relocated bodies. Paid off inspectors. Yet Luca was sniffing around like a dog who caught scent of rot.
How?
There's a mole.
I lit another cigar.
The smoke kissed my lips like an old lover.
"Find him," I muttered under my breath. "Whoever's talking… shut them up."
Facility 9 wasn't just a hospital. It was a vault.
And inside that vault were the things I buried so deep, no man should ever find them.
Not even my son.
**************
Luca's POV
The rain poured like a curtain outside, but the cold sweat on my neck had nothing to do with the weather.
I sat alone in the front seat of my car, engine off, the wipers ticking back and forth like an impatient clock. My eyes were fixed on the old, rusting photograph I had just pulled from a cracked storage box hidden under floorboards in one of my father's old estates. A box marked only with a symbol I'd seen before but I couldn't place where.
The photo was grainy, old, probably over decades. Its edges were curled from time and humidity, and there were faint coffee stains at the corners. I could barely make out the faces… but then, something about it pulled me in.
A woman..beautiful, regal, seated in front of what looked like a hospital building. She wore a white doctor's coat, and her hair was tucked neatly under a nurse's cap. Beside her sat a little boy, no more than five. His smile was wide and innocent as he held a toy truck close to his chest, leaning into the woman's arm like she was his entire world.
I frowned, leaning closer. The woman… there was something hauntingly familiar in her posture, in the calm pride in her expression. The boy, though…
I blinked.
A shadow of doubt passed over me, then settled like a weight on my chest.
The boy had a small, distinct birthmark on the left side of his neck. It was shaped like a crescent moon.
I sat up straighter, heart pounding.
That same birthmark was on Dubious.
I had seen it countless times growing up, peeking out beneath his shirt collar when he adjusted his tie, or when he was shirtless in the boxing gym always there. I remembered once reaching out to touch it as a child, only for him to slap my hand away like it was sacred.
I swallowed hard. My thumb trembled as I ran it along the photograph again.
Could this boy… be my father?
And the woman, if the boy was Dubious...was she… his mother?
I leaned back against the seat, mind spinning.
Dubious had never spoken of his childhood. Not once. Not to me or to anyone, No family stories, No mention of grandparents or siblings. It was as if he had come into this world fully formed ruthless, powerful, and cold.
He was always the "King," the mafia patriarch, the man with no past and no weakness.
But this photo... this simple, quiet moment between a boy and his mother… it shattered that illusion.
I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture of the photograph, then opened Google Lens.
It took a few seconds before the AI brought up anything relevant. My breath caught as images began to flash.
Hospitals. Foundations. Old photographs.
Then one entry stood out.
Camille Dakota.
Founder of the Dakota Wellness and Psychiatric Institute, nearly seventy years ago.
I clicked it.
An old article loaded slowly, the screen flickering. The photo from the article matched the woman in my picture same features, same posture, same quiet strength.
It was her.
My pulse quickened.
But that was where the information stopped.
No further articles, medical board listings, Nor death record, No relatives. Nothing on her son.
It was as if someone had meticulously erased her from existence.
"Come on… come on…" I whispered to myself, scrolling faster, desperate to find even a shred of her story.
Then I found it.
Just one archived black-and-white image of the psychiatric hospital.
Facility 9.
Its gates tall and iron. The building behind it, old but massive. One of the last photos of it before the listing went completely dark.
But that wasn't all.
I zoomed in on the photo.
There, on the corner of the signboard—a symbol.
Faint. Faded.
A half-moon looped through a medical caduceus.
I'd seen that symbol before.
My breath caught.
Years ago, as a boy, I had once walked into Dubious' private office without knocking. He had been changing, and I caught a glimpse of a strange bangle on his wrist—silver, with the same exact symbol. I never saw it again, but it stuck with me.
At the time, I thought it was just another mafia trinket. But now…
What if that bangle was from Facility 9?
What if he wasn't just a patient there but the son of the founder?
What if he didn't leave that past behind but buried it?
Why?
Why would a man erase his own mother from history?
What happened in that facility?
And what connection did it have to Rose?
My hand clenched around the photo, now soaked with sweat.
I looked at the boy in the picture again the joy in his small face, the way he held his toy like it was everything he owned.
That wasn't the man I knew today.
Something happened.
Something so dark… it changed him into the monster I called father.
I placed the photo back in the envelope and started the engine.
If there was even a single chance that Facility 9 still existed…
I had to find it.
Not just to find Rose.
But to uncover everything
My father was not just a mafia lord.
He was a man running from his bloodline.
And I was getting closer.
Too close.
************
Hmmm there's more to the MORETTI'S family than just mafian business
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