The jet hummed quietly above the clouds, cocooned in a hush that felt almost holy. Amara sat by the window, her profile lit by the sun over the Mediterranean. In her hands was the cassette — matte black, still warm from too many replays. She hadn't told Matteo she listened again this morning, just before they left Naples. She hadn't needed to.
He knew.
Across from her, Matteo Castagna — mafia prince of the Neapolitan underworld — was uncharacteristically still. No laptop, no calls, no polished cruelty. Just him, and the silence between them. His tie was undone, shirt sleeves rolled up, forearms scarred from a lifetime of violent inheritance. The world called him king. His enemies called him ghost. But here, at 39, he looked like a man finally done pretending his sins were someone else's.
They had been lovers for months. But something shifted the night she played the tape.
He'd found her that night pacing barefoot, whispering prayers in her father's tongue. Not because she believed they'd be heard — but because someone had to remember the old names. Her voice was cracked. Her eyes were fire.
And Matteo had said nothing. He'd just stood behind her, and watched the world change.
Now, he finally spoke.
"You haven't slept."
She didn't answer.
"I've seen that look before," he added. "On my father. The night he took Palermo."
Amara glanced at him, brow lifted.
"Same eyes. Same silence. Same need to burn something down."
She held his gaze for a moment, then returned to the clouds.
"I'm not going to Nigeria to burn things down," she said softly.
"No?"
She turned to him fully this time.
"I'm going to bury something. And then I'll decide what lives."
They landed in Port Harcourt under the veil of rain and humidity. A black bulletproof SUV waited on the tarmac, flanked by men who looked like former militants but walked like monks.
"I called in a few favors," Matteo said, shrugging.
Amara gave him a sharp look. "You don't have favors in the Delta."
"I do now. Money makes gods where prayers fail."
She couldn't argue with that.
The roads from Port Harcourt to Obuama were veins of history and hazard. Between the cracked tarmac and oil-warped villages, Amara felt time folding in on itself. Here, the ghosts weren't stories. They were people with machetes and memories. Shrines tucked into forests. Children born speaking in riddles.
At a checkpoint near Degema, an officer squinted at their tinted windows, then suddenly waved them through.
"Didn't ask for bribe," Matteo noted. "Is that a good sign or a bad one?"
"Depends on which gods he thinks we serve."
Obuama had changed.
The rivers had grown thinner, the oil flares taller. But the shrine — her grandfather's grotesque imitation of holiness — was still there, perched like a vulture above a poisoned creek. It hadn't aged well. Mottled concrete, red ochre faded by rain, carvings of crocodiles with chipped teeth. The air smelled of diesel and old blood.
Ebiere had once called it a "lie built in brick."
Now, it might be the only truth left.
They stepped out together, their boots sinking slightly in the mud. A boy emerged from behind the shrine, barefoot, holding a lantern though it was still daylight. His eyes — milky white, blind — met Amara's.
"You came," he said.
Amara stiffened.
Matteo reached for his sidearm.
But the boy smiled. "The ghosts told us. She walks with the river."
He turned and began walking. No explanation.
Matteo leaned close. "This normal?"
"In Obuama?" she replied. "This is practically a welcome party."
---
The boy led them through the shrine — past broken statues, past walls with graffiti written in ancient Ibani, past a rusted gate with her grandfather's name still carved into brass.
At the center: a stone basin filled with stagnant water. Around it, bones. Some animal. Some not.
The boy pointed.
"She's under."
Amara stepped forward.
Matteo grabbed her wrist. "You don't know what's in that water."
"I know exactly what's in that water," she said, voice low.
She knelt. Reached in.
The water was freezing, wrong for this climate. Her fingers brushed stone… then something softer. A pouch, oilskin. She pulled it out, shaking with effort. It reeked of metal and age.
Inside: pages wrapped in salt cloth.
A list. Names. Coordinates.
And at the bottom — a sigil she hadn't seen since childhood. Her family's true mark, older than the Diri-Owei name, erased from history by wealth and shame.
Matteo stood behind her now. Silent.
She passed him a name from the list.
He whistled softly.
"My uncle?" he asked. "My uncle?"
She nodded.
"Then it wasn't just your family," he murmured. "It was all of us."
That night, they slept in a fisherman's hut offered by a faceless ally of Matteo's. Amara lay awake, listening to the river sing in the dark.
"You really think Ebiere is alive?" Matteo asked quietly.
Amara turned to him, face shadowed by the moonlight.
"She has to be. That scar in the photo… no one else has that. Not after the refinery fire."
"You still call it a fire."
"She still calls it survival."
He reached out, brushing her wrist.
"When this is over — this list, this hunt — what then?"
She didn't answer at first.
Then, quietly: "Then I decide who I want to be. Without my grandfather's ghost. Without the lies."
"And me?"
She met his gaze. "That depends."
"On?"
"On whether you came to protect me…" she whispered, "or to bury your family's sins."
Matteo didn't flinch.
"Maybe both."
Amara looked away.
"But I came," he added. "And I'm still here."
She turned back to him.
And kissed him.
Not like before — not wine-soft, not curiosity. This kiss was memory and grief and fire. She tasted the bloodline in his mouth, and he tasted the storm in hers.
Outside, the river whispered.
Inside, something ancient began to wake.