Vittoria (Feretti Syndicate #10)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Vittoria

The hallway stretches ahead of me, familiar and suffocating all at once. Everyone's retreated to their corners of the compound. Pietro to his office, Lorenzo somewhere with Sophia, Nico vanished like smoke the second the meeting ended.

And me? I'm heading to my room to do what I always do.

Work. Code. Pretend the world outside these walls doesn't exist.

My phone buzzes in my hand.

I glance down, expecting another security alert or maybe Mamma asking if I've eaten. Instead, Amanda's name lights up the screen with a text that makes me stop dead in my tracks.

Amanda: Babe. Nexus tonight. You in?

I stare at the message like it's written in a foreign language.

Nexus. The club everyone's been talking about for... how long now? Two years? Three? It opened right around the time my world collapsed, when Riccardo's blood was still fresh and I couldn't breathe without feeling like my lungs were filled with glass.

I never went.

When was the last time I went to a club?

I scroll through my mental calendar, searching for the last time I dressed up for something that wasn't a family obligation. The last time I danced. The last time I let myself be young and stupid and alive.

Nothing. A blank space where memories should be.

Two years of funeral and grief and burying myself in code because at least algorithms make sense. At least firewalls don't betray you. At least security systems don't die and leave you hollow.

My thumb hovers over the keyboard.

Say no. You always say no. It's easier that way.

But something shifts in my mind. Something rebellious and tired and desperate for anything that isn't this. The same walls. The same grief. The same careful distance from everything that might make me feel.

I type before I can talk myself out of it.

Vittoria: Why not.

Send.

The three dots appear immediately. Then disappear.

My phone rings.

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with Vittoria Sartori?" Amanda's voice explodes through the speaker before I can even say hello.

A laugh bubbles out of me. "What? I can't say yes to a night out?"

"Babe, you haven't said yes to anything in two years.

I've been asking you to come out every single weekend and you always have an excuse.

Work. Family stuff. 'I'm tired, Amanda.'" She mimics my voice, high-pitched and dramatic.

"Are you dying? Is this a bucket list thing? Oh my God, are you pregnant?"

"Dio mio, Amanda." I press my free hand to my forehead, still laughing. "I'm not dying. I'm not pregnant. I just—"

I pause, leaning against the cold wall of the hallway.

"I need this," I admit, and the words feel like pulling teeth. "I need a night out. I need to do something stupid and dance and not think about—"

Death. Grief. The curse. The suffocating weight of loving people who will inevitably leave me.

"—everything," I finish lamely.

Silence on the other end. Then Amanda's voice comes back, softer now. "Vic. Are you okay?"

"I'm going to go nuts in there tonight," I say, forcing brightness into my tone. "I need this. I need to remember what it feels like to be a normal twenty-four-year-old who hasn't forgotten how to have fun."

"Oh my GOD." Amanda's squeal nearly shatters my eardrum. "Okay, okay, okay. I'm picking you up at ten. Wear something hot. Like, hot hot. That black dress you wore to your brother's engagement party—"

"The one Mamma said was too short?"

"That's the one. You looked incredible and you know it."

I do know it. That dress made me feel like someone else entirely. Someone who wasn't carrying the weight of dead men on her shoulders.

"Ten o'clock," I confirm. "Don't be late."

"Babe, I've been waiting two years for this. I'll be early."

She hangs up before I can respond, leaving me standing alone in the hallway with my phone pressed to my chest and a feeling blooming in my ribcage.

Hope. Or maybe recklessness. Hard to tell the difference these days.

I push off the wall and continue toward my room, my steps lighter than they've been in months.

One night. Just one night of being someone else.

What's the worst that could happen?

The black dress clings to me like a second skin as I make my way through the compound's main corridor. Amanda wasn't wrong. This thing barely covers my ass. But that's sort of the point tonight. Be someone other than the grieving sister who spends her nights staring at code until her eyes burn.

I almost make it to the front door.

Almost.

"Where the hell do you think you're going dressed like that?"

Bruno's voice cuts through the quiet. I turn to find him in his wheelchair at the end of the corridor, blocking the path to the east wing. Even seated, he radiates menace. His dark eyes rake over me from heels to hemline, and his jaw tightens with what looks a lot like fury.

I pause. Study him for a moment.

The brother I grew up with. The golden boy, the one who laughed at Sunday dinners and snuck me gelato when Mamma wasn't looking. That Bruno died in a hospital bed two years ago. The man who woke up from that coma wears his face but carries a stranger's cruelty behind his eyes.

"I'm going out," I say simply.

"No." His fingers drum against the wheelchair's armrest. "You're not."

My spine stiffens. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me, Vittoria. It's after ten. That dress is indecent. You're staying here."

Indecent. I want to laugh. I want to scream. I want to ask him who he thinks he's talking to, because it certainly isn't his little sister who he used to let win at cards just to see her smile.

"Bruno—"

"What's going on?"

Pietro materializes from the shadows of his office doorway, whiskey glass in hand. He looks between us with the assessment that's become second nature since he took over as Don. A position he never wanted. A crown that should have been Bruno's.

Should have been.

Maybe that's the root of all this bitterness.

"She's trying to leave," Bruno says, jerking his chin toward me. "Looking like that. At this hour."

Pietro's gaze sweeps over my dress. His expression doesn't change but I catch the slight tick in his jaw.

"I won't be alone," I say before either of them can start the lecture. "Elio's driving me. He'll be with me the whole time."

This shouldn't even be a conversation we're having.

I've been going out with bodyguards since I was fourteen years old.

Every boy who's ever looked at me twice knew exactly whose sister I was.

Knew that making a move meant answering to five overprotective brothers and an entire criminal empire.

It's not like I've ever been unprotected.

They know this. Both of them.

Bruno wheels closer. "It's different now. The Morellis are making moves. The Russians are sniffing around our territory. You can't just—"

"I can." I meet his glare with one of my own. "And I will."

For a moment, I see a flash of the brother who once threatened to break a boy's kneecaps for making me cry at prom. But it twists into something uglier. Meaner.

"You're being stupid," he growls.

The words land like a slap. My throat tightens.

Pietro sets his glass down on a nearby table. The soft clink of crystal against wood is somehow louder than Bruno's accusations. He looks at me and whatever he sees makes something in his expression soften. Just a fraction. Just enough.

"Elio's one of our best," Pietro says quietly. Then he nods. Once. Permission granted.

I don't need his permission. I'm twenty-four years old, for God's sake. But I'm grateful for it anyway. Grateful that someone in this family still sees me as capable of making my own choices.

"Thank you," I murmur.

Bruno makes a sound of disgust. "You're making a mistake."

I don't answer him. Can't. Because if I open my mouth right now, I'll say something I can't take back.

Something about how the real mistake was believing he'd come back to us whole.

Something about how I visit him every week even when he treats me like dirt, even when his cruelty makes me want to cry, because underneath all that bitterness is still my brother.

The one who woke up from a coma to discover he'd lost everything—his legs, his brother, his position, his future.

I understand his anger. I do.

But understanding doesn't make it hurt less.

I turn away from both of them and push through the front door into the cool night air. Elio's already waiting by the black Porsche, and he opens the back door without a word.

As I slide inside, I catch a glimpse of Bruno through the compound's window. Still watching. Still furious.

He wasn't like this before. Before the wedding. Before the bullets. Before he spent six months trapped in his own body while Pietro shouldered a burden that was never supposed to be his.

Bruno woke up to a world that had moved on without him, and he's been punishing everyone for it ever since.

Especially himself.

I look away. Pull out my phone. Text Amanda that I'm on my way.

Tonight, I'm going to dance. I'm going to laugh. I'm going to pretend, just for a few hours, that my family isn't fractured beyond repair.

Tomorrow, I'll go back to being the good sister. The loyal daughter. The one who holds everyone's secrets and pretends not to notice when they're falling apart.

But tonight?

Tonight, I'm just Vittoria.