Embers

Chapter 3: A Ghost Crawling Out of Hell

The bus ride to Palermo took seven hours.

I sat in the back row by the window, my hat pulled low over my face. The seat beside me stayed empty the entire trip. Behind me was the restroom, stinking of disinfectant and urine.

The driver was a heavyset man with sweat stains under his arms. We stopped three times along the way—once for gas, twice because someone was throwing up.

I didn’t throw up.

My stomach had already learned how to keep everything down.

Outside the window, the scenery slowly changed. Tuscany’s vineyards and olive groves disappeared behind us, replaced by barren hills and tired little towns.

By sunset, the sky had turned a dirty reddish-orange, like blood diluted with water.

I counted the cash in my hand.

Three hundred and twenty euros.

Together with the revolver in my pocket and my fake ID, that was everything I owned.

“Stay alive first.”

Old Enzo’s words still echoed in my ears.

“Then worry about the rest.”

He was right.

Stay alive first.

But for me, survival was never the goal.

It was only the first step.

Palermo’s bus station was chaos.

Even late at night, the place overflowed with people—street vendors, pickpockets, tourists fresh off ferries, and taxi drivers shouting over one another.

The air smelled like diesel fuel, grilled meat, and salt from the sea.

The second I stepped off the bus, a man selling lighters latched onto me like a parasite. He followed me half a block until I finally cursed him out in Italian.

Only then did he back off with both hands raised.

Vito Salvatore.

I repeated the name silently in my head.

My father had mentioned him before.

Years ago, they’d done business together. Later, my father went legitimate while Vito stayed in the underworld.

“He’s old-school,” my father once said. “A man who still believes in loyalty and honor.”

Then he’d laughed softly.

“The kind of rules only fools still follow.”

At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant.

Now I did.

I didn’t know if Vito would help me.

But I didn’t have anyone else left.

Enzo had given me an address hidden deep inside Palermo’s old district—the kind of place no map bothered to mark.

I asked three tobacconists, two prostitutes, and an old fish seller before I finally found the place.

A rusted green iron gate.

Most of the paint had peeled away long ago.

There was no sign.

Only a small peephole.

I knocked.

The peephole slid open.

A pair of suspicious eyes stared back at me.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Vito Salvatore.”

“Who wants him?”

I took a slow breath and removed my hat.

My shaved head gleamed pale beneath the streetlight. The scar near my temple was still pink and raw, twisting across my skin like a worm.

“Tell him,” I said quietly, “the ghost of the Fernández family is here.”

The peephole slammed shut.

Silence followed.

One minute.

Two.

Three.

I stood there without moving.

Palermo nights were hot and sticky. Sweat clung to my skin beneath my clothes.

Somewhere far away, music played. A steady drumbeat pulsed through the streets like a heartbeat.

Then the gate creaked open.

A young man stood there, barely twenty years old, acne scars covering his cheeks.

Beside him stood a heavier man in his fifties with graying hair, a thick beard, and an old knife scar stretched across the back of his hand.

He stared at me.

I stared back.

“You look exactly like your mother,” he said softly.

It was the first time anyone had mentioned my mother in four years.

My throat tightened instantly.

But I said nothing.

Vito shook his head slightly, like he was trying to clear away a hallucination.

Then he stepped aside.

“Come in.”

Vito’s headquarters was an old warehouse converted into something halfway between a business and a bunker.

Wooden crates were stacked all across the first floor. I had no idea what was inside them.

The second floor held an office furnished with a mahogany desk, a coffee machine, and a painting of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall.

He gestured for me to sit.

I did.

The acne-faced boy poured me a glass of water.

I left it untouched.

“Enzo told me you survived,” Vito said as he lit a cigarette. “I didn’t believe him.”

“Do you now?”

He studied me for a long time.

Not like I was a person.

Like I was a problem.

A dangerous one.

“Luca Rossi,” he finally said.

The name dropped heavily into the room.

Silence followed.

“You want revenge.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Then you came to the wrong place.”

Vito flicked ash into an empty Coke can.

“I can’t help you.”

“Enzo said you swore at the funeral—”

“Swearing revenge and surviving long enough to carry it out are two different things,” he cut in sharply.

“Do you even understand what Luca is now? He’s not just the head of the Rossi family anymore. He controls every major port on the East Coast. Politicians, judges, police officers—they all belong to him.”

His jaw tightened.

“Last year, another family challenged him. Three months later, every single one of them was dead. Men, women, even their dogs.”

He crushed out the cigarette and walked toward the window overlooking Palermo’s crowded skyline.

“I’m old,” he said quietly, his back still turned toward me. “I have a family. I won’t drag them into hell for the daughter of a dead man.”

I sat there silently.

I wasn’t angry.

I wasn’t desperate.

I just felt… detached.

As if my soul had climbed to the ceiling and was watching the three of us from above.

Slowly, I stood.

“So that’s your answer?”

Vito turned around, clearly surprised by how calm my voice sounded.

“I’m not asking you to fight for me,” I said. “I’m asking you to teach me.”

I stepped closer.

“How to shoot. How to kill. How to survive in your world.”

Another step.

“Give me one year. In one year, whether you help me or not, I’ll go after Luca.”

I stopped directly in front of him.

“But if you train me, I might actually live long enough to reach him.”

My eyes locked onto his.

“If you don’t, I’ll probably be dead within a month.”

I was shorter than him by nearly a head, yet somehow he still leaned back slightly.

“You owe my father,” I said quietly. “You know you do.”

Nobody spoke.

The acne-faced kid stood frozen beside the wall, barely breathing.

I picked up the untouched glass of water from the desk and drank it in one swallow.

Then I slammed the empty glass down.

“Answer me,” I said. “I leave tonight.”

Vito never gave me a direct answer.

Instead, he led me downstairs.

The basement held a shooting range.

Bullet holes covered the walls. Empty shell casings littered the concrete floor. The air smelled permanently soaked in gunpowder.

Vito unlocked a steel cabinet.

Inside sat rows of weapons—pistols, revolvers, rifles, even a sniper rifle taken apart piece by piece.

“You’ll stay here for now,” he said.

He shoved aside a pile of junk, revealing a narrow cot hidden behind a shelf.

“You eat with us. If you need something, ask Nino.”

Nino, apparently, was the acne-faced boy.

He nodded awkwardly at me.

“I don’t have a year to waste,” Vito continued. “You get six months. After that, whether you’re ready or not, you leave.”

I nodded once.

“One more thing.”

He paused at the doorway and glanced back at me.

“Never mention your father again. Not to anyone. From now on, your name is Isabella.”

His eyes darkened.

“Avi Fernandez is dead.”

“I know,” I replied calmly. “I buried her myself.”

He stared at me for a second longer before heading upstairs.

His footsteps faded away.

That basement became my home.

One cot.

One metal locker.

A tiny ventilation shaft that showed a sliver of sky.

There were no windows, so eventually I lost all sense of time.

But I didn’t care.

Every morning, I woke up and trained.

Until my hands blistered.

Until the blisters burst.

Until calluses replaced them.

Vito never trained me personally.

Instead, he assigned me to a man named Sandro.

Tall. Thin. Quiet.

The kind of man who smiled with yellow teeth and dead eyes.

He barely spoke.

Take apart the gun.

Put it back together.

Again.

And again.

Aim.

Fire.

Reload.

Repeat until the magazine was empty.

Then start over.

“Don’t force it,” Sandro murmured one day as he adjusted my grip. “The gun should feel like part of your body.”

My hands shook constantly.

Not from fear.

From weakness.

Sandro handed me a dumbbell.

“One hundred reps.”

Then another hundred.

Then another.

It took three months before my hands finally stopped trembling.

At night, I’d lie awake on the cot staring at the flickering bulb overhead.

And I’d think about Luca.

The way he slept beside me, breathing softly like a man with no secrets.

The way he’d pull me into his arms half-asleep and kiss my forehead in the dark.

Those memories cut into me over and over like knives.

But I never tried to escape them.

Because every stab reminded me of the truth.

That man never loved you.

That man murdered your family.

That man deserves to pay.

So every morning, I woke up and practiced shooting again.

Six months passed quickly.

On the day I left, Vito stood outside the warehouse holding an envelope.

“New papers are inside,” he said. “And the name of someone in New York. He owes me a favor.”

I took the envelope from him.

His fingers trembled slightly as he let go.

“Stay alive,” he muttered. “Remember?”

“Stay alive,” I repeated.

I didn’t look back.

Just like when I left Enzo behind, I walked straight down that gray road with a new pistol at my waist and fire burning in my chest.

Isabella was coming.

And Luca Rossi, sitting comfortably in his penthouse office thousands of miles away in New York, still believed he had already won.

He had no idea.

A ghost crawling out of hell was already on its way.