THE MAFIA’S FORGOTTEN SON

The Weight of Bread

CHAPTER 4

The morning sun had not yet risen over Milan, but the city was already awake—its veins pulsing with the low hum of traffic, the distant wail of a siren, the quiet stir of lives beginning anew. In the penthouse perched high above the chaos, silence reigned like a held breath.

Then came the soft knock at the door.

Adrian didn’t turn from the floor-to-ceiling window where he stood, barefoot, wrapped in a black robe, watching the sky bleed from indigo to gray. He knew who it was.

“Enter,” he said, voice low, unshaken.

The door opened, and in stepped Calvin Carroll—lean, sharp-eyed, dressed in a tailored charcoal suit that whispered of quiet authority. His dark hair was cropped close, his posture rigid with discipline. He carried a tablet in one hand and a manila folder in the other. But it wasn’t the documents that defined him—it was the scar that ran from his left temple down to his jawline, a jagged reminder of the night Adrian had pulled him from the mouth of death.

Ten years ago, Calvin had been a boy of nineteen, stranded in Milan after fleeing a broken home in Marseille. He spoke just enough Italian to survive, but not enough to stay safe. He’d taken work as a courier for a low-level syndicate, unaware he was carrying encrypted messages tied to a DeLuca hit. When the job went sour, the men he worked for decided he knew too much.

They dragged him to an abandoned warehouse near the docks. They beat him. They broke two fingers. And they were about to put a bullet in his skull when he appeared—calm, silent, a shadow in a tailored coat.

Adrian didn’t speak. He shot the first man in the knee. The second in the shoulder. By the time the third turned, Adrian had the gun at his temple.

“Who sent you?” he asked.

They told him. And Adrian made them wish they hadn’t.

Then he knelt beside Calvin, pressed a cloth to his bleeding temple, and said only this:

“You don’t die today. But if you do, it won’t be because I walked away.”

Calvin had sworn himself then and there—not to the law, not to money, but to the man who had looked into his eyes and seen a soul worth saving.

Now, he stood at the edge of Adrian’s world, the only man who knew the truth of who Adrian had been—and who he still was.

“The safe house is secured,” Calvin said, voice calm, measured. “Elena’s sources have confirmed the Valenti accountant will be moving funds through a shell company in Lugano next week. Marco is in place. Dante has already breached their internal servers—just waiting for your word.”

Adrian nodded, still staring out at the city. “And the team?”

“Loyal, silent and ready.”

A pause. Then, softer: “You’ve built it, Adrian. The foundation is set.”

Adrian turned at last, his dark eyes unreadable. “Foundations can be buried. We haven’t even begun to dig.”

Calvin didn’t flinch. He never did. “Breakfast is ready. As you requested.”

Adrian exhaled, slow, deliberate. “Then serve it.”

The dining room was small, intimate—nothing like the grand halls of the DeLuca estate he’d once known. No crystal chandeliers, no silver platters carried by silent servants. Just a simple oak table, two chairs, a single lamp casting a warm glow over the polished wood.

Calvin had prepared it himself: thick slices of pane nero, dark and dense, toasted at the edges; a bowl of olives soaked in rosemary and garlic; a wedge of aged pecorino; and a small plate of cured meats—prosciutto di Parma, thin as paper. Beside it, a carafe of red wine, though neither of them would drink.

Adrian sat across from Calvin, his posture perfect, hands folded in his lap. He watched as Calvin poured water into two glasses, placed a napkin beside each plate, adjusted the salt shaker by a quarter inch.

“You still do that,” Adrian said quietly.

Calvin paused. “Do what?”

“Align the salt. Like it matters.”

A faint smile touched Calvin’s lips. “It does. Small things keep the chaos out.”

Adrian looked down at the bread. The scent rose to him—warm, earthy, alive. And with it, like a key turning in a rusted lock, memory flooded in.

He was eight years old. Rain lashed the windows of a crumbling apartment in Genoa, where the walls sweated and the floorboards groaned underfoot. His mother, Isabella, sat at a rickety table, her hands trembling as she tore a single loaf of stale bread in half. One piece larger than the other.

“Mangia, tesoro,” she whispered, pushing the bigger half toward him. “You need your strength.”

He looked at her thin wrists, the hollows beneath her eyes, the way her dress hung loose on her frame. “You eat too, Mama.”

She smiled—soft, broken, beautiful. “I ate earlier.”

He didn’t believe her. But he ate. Slowly. Each bite like guilt in his throat.

Later that night, he woke to the sound of her coughing in the other room. He crept out, peering through the cracked door. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, counting coins—dirty, bent lira—her fingers shaking. There weren’t enough. Never enough.

Then the knock came.

A man’s voice, rough, impatient. “Isabella. Time’s up.”

She stood, straightened her dress, wiped her face. “Go back to bed, Adrian. Mama has to work.”

He didn’t understand then. Not really. But he saw the fear in her eyes. Saw how she glanced at the knife on the dresser. Saw how she touched the locket around her neck—his father’s crest, the only thing she hadn’t sold.

The next morning, she didn’t come home.

He waited. All day. All night. Then, on the third day, she returned—bruised, silent, her dress torn. She didn’t speak. Just held him, sobbing, whispering, “Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, mi dispiace…”

And still, she gave him the bread.

Adrian blinked. The memory shattered like glass.

He was back in the penthouse. The wine carafe glinted. The olives glistened. The bread sat untouched on his plate.

But his hands were clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

He could still smell the mildew of that apartment. Still hear the echo of his mother’s cough. Still feel the weight of that half-loaf in his small hands—her sacrifice, her love, her ruin.

She had done unspeakable things to keep him alive.

She had sold her body, her dignity, her soul—because the DeLuca name had been stripped from them, because his father had called him a bastard in front of the entire family, because a single act of passion between a Don and a seamstress had made them both outcasts.

“You are not my blood,” his father had said, the day they were cast out. “And you will never be part of this family again.”

They had been thrown into the dark with nothing.

And yet, Isabella had loved him fiercely. Unconditionally. Even when she was starving, she fed him first. Even when she was broken, she held him like he was the only thing that mattered.

And when she died—three years later, in a fire accident, no one but Adrian at her side—she had whispered only one thing:

“Don’t let them win, Adriano. Don’t let them make you nothing.”

Adrian rose from the table.

No word. No gesture. Just movement—swift, silent, controlled.

Calvin didn’t stop him. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even look up.

He understood.

Some wounds don’t bleed. They burn.

Adrian walked to the window, pressing his palm against the cold glass. His breath fogged the surface. Outside, the city stretched before him—its towers, its lights, its lies. The same city that had crushed his mother. The same city that had erased his name.

And now, he stood at its peak.

But what did it mean?

He wore Armani. He dined on Parma ham. He had a team, a plan, a war at his fingertips.

But none of it erased the image of his mother, kneeling before a stranger, begging for mercy so her son could eat.

None of it brought back the years she’d spent in silence, in shame, in pain.

None of it changed the fact that she had died alone—except for him.

And he—Adrian Morgan, the undefeated lawyer, the man who never lost—had been powerless to save her.

Behind him, Calvin remained seated.

He didn’t touch his food either.

Instead, he reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a small, worn photograph—faded at the edges, creased down the middle. It showed a younger Adrian, maybe nine, standing beside a woman with dark curls and tired eyes. Isabella. She was smiling, one hand on Adrian’s shoulder, the other clutching a loaf of bread like it was a treasure.

 Someone had taken it the last time they’d seen her alive.

He hadn’t shown it to Adrian. Not once.

But he kept it. As a reminder.

Of where they came from.

Of what they were fighting for.

Not power.

Not revenge.

But justice—the kind that didn’t exist in courtrooms or contracts.

The kind that lived in the silence between a mother’s last breath and her son’s first tear.

Minutes passed.

The sun climbed higher.

Adrian finally turned from the window.

His face was composed. Cold. The mask back in place.

But his eyes—those endless, fathomless eyes—held something new.

Not pain.

Not rage.

Purpose.

He walked back to the table, picked up his phone, and tapped a single command into the encrypted line only his team could access.

“Meet at the safe house. 18:00. Bring everything we have on the Valenti financial network. We’re not waiting.”

Then he looked at Calvin.

“We start tonight.”

Calvin nodded. “They won’t see it coming.”

Adrian’s voice was quiet, but it cut like steel.

“They already have.” He glanced at the untouched bread. “And they’ve been afraid ever since.”

He turned and walked out, leaving the meal behind—uneaten, unacknowledged.

But in the silence that followed, the weight of that table, that bread, that memory, lingered like a vow.

Some men fight for power.

Some fight for revenge.

Adrian DeLuca fought for the ghost of a woman who had given him everything—so he could give her name back to the world.

Even if it burned the city down to do it.