It started with a phone call at 2:17 a.m.
Lucia answered, groggy, her voice thick with sleep. Then she gasped.
Enzo snatched the receiver.
A gravelly voice rasped:
> "We have her. One wrong move, she dies. No police. No tricks. Come alone."
They had Alba.
---
The world fell silent.
Enzo stood frozen for a moment. His pulse roared in his ears like a war drum.
Lucia sobbed beside him. "No, Enzo… they wouldn't—he wouldn't—"
"They did," he whispered.
She knew who they meant.
Gianni. His brother. Blood of his blood. A serpent raised in the same soil.
Enzo walked to his old drawer, pulled out the silver case. The gun he hadn't touched in ten years lay inside, still polished.
He holstered it, kissed Lucia's forehead, and whispered,
> "If I don't return, tell her who I was. Not what they said I was."
Lucia clutched his shirt. "You're her father. You're the only truth she'll ever need."
---
He drove through the dead roads of Monteverde, the same ones he once ran on as a boy with muddy shoes and a hunger for more. But now, the hunger had changed.
Now, it was love.
Now, it was wrath.
He found them in the abandoned canning factory—Gianni, two thugs, and Alba… tied to a chair, gagged, eyes wide but dry. She didn't cry.
She had her father's eyes. She had his fire.
"You've made your point," Enzo said, stepping forward, empty hands raised. "Let her go."
Gianni chuckled, gun dangling at his side. "Always the hero, huh? Even now. But heroes bleed too."
"I'm not a hero," Enzo said quietly. "I'm a father."
---
What happened next was chaos.
Enzo lunged.
A gun fired.
A scream.
A shadow fell.
When the smoke cleared, Gianni lay bleeding, one leg twisted. The other two thugs were gone—cowards, not killers.
And Enzo?
Enzo was on the floor, bleeding from the stomach. The shot had hit him—but not before he'd shoved Alba to the ground, shielding her with his body.
She was untouched.
He was not.
She crawled to him, sobbing now, her tiny hands on his chest.
"Papà, no… please…"
His hand cupped her cheek, blood smearing her skin.
"Shh… Alba… you're safe now… That's all I ever wanted."
Lucia arrived moments later, running barefoot through the broken doors, collapsing beside them. Sirens echoed in the distance.
But Enzo… had closed his eyes.
---
He didn't die instantly. But something inside him did.
They took him to a hospital. He drifted in and out for three days. The city held its breath. Friends prayed. Enemies waited.
On the third night, he asked for Alba.
Lucia brought her to his side.
He looked at her—his light, his legacy—and whispered with his final breath:
> "Don't be like me. Be more than me. But never forget… whose daughter you are."
Then, Enzo Marino—once a poor boy from the dust of Monteverde, once a feared man of Naples, always a father—was gone.
---
They buried him in white.
No black suits. No mourning robes.
Only white roses.
For Alba.
For dawn.
For the man who walked through hell to build a heaven for his daughter.
---