Chapter 6
Vincenzo
The Vici house is always too quiet now.
I stand in the doorway of Valentina’s room, my hand gripping the frame.
It looks exactly as my sister left it seven weeks ago, the bed neatly made with a pale purple comforter, textbooks stacked on the desk, and a half-finished sketch of a raven pinned to the corkboard above her dresser.
She was learning to draw our family symbol. She never got to finish it.
I can’t make myself cross the threshold. Can’t disturb the careful arrangement of her things, because that will destroy the illusion that she might walk through the door at any moment.
The door to Marco’s room is closed. I haven’t opened it since the funeral. My parents’ room at the end of the hall is the same, untouched and frozen in time. The entire house is a mausoleum, every room a shrine to the dead.
Thank God for Aunt Sofia.
She moved in three days after the massacre, showing up with two suitcases and a fierce determination not to let me drown alone in this grief.
She didn’t ask permission. Just arrived, claimed a guest room, and started making sure I ate, slept, and didn’t completely lose my mind.
Without her, I think I would have. This house is too big and too empty, and the silence would have swallowed me whole.
I force myself to turn away from Valentina’s room and walk down the hallway. My boots thud heavily on the hardwood floors, each step echoing through the empty space. Moonlight streams through the tall windows, casting long shadows that make the house feel even more hollow.
Downstairs, a light is on in the kitchen.
Of course it is. Sofia never sleeps when she knows I’m out.
She’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, probably with a book she’s not really reading, waiting to make sure I come home alive.
I should feel guilty for worrying her, but instead, I feel like my skin is on fire.
Something is crawling beneath my flesh, trying to claw its way out.
Rage and guilt are all tangled together, and they’re choking me.
I destroyed Adora’s photograph.
The realization hits me again, fresh and sickening.
I ripped apart a picture of her family. Her dead mother.
Tore it into pieces while she screamed and begged me to stop.
I didn’t realize what I was doing until it was too late.
I watched the light die in Adora’s eyes as the fragments fell like snow around her.
Your mother raised you better than this.
I can already hear Sofia saying it, her voice full of disappointment. And she’d be right. Mom would be ashamed of what I did tonight.
But Mom is dead, because Adora Montoni led her into a trap.
I push open the kitchen door, and sure enough, Sofia is there.
She’s not at the table, though. She’s at the stove, her back to me, stirring something in a small pot.
The scent of warm milk and honey fills the air.
It’s a drink she used to make for me and her sons when we were children and couldn’t sleep.
It smells like home and every warm memory I’ll never experience again.
“Sit,” she says with a glance over her shoulder. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”
I sink into a chair at the kitchen table, the same table where my family used to gather. Marco would steal food off Valentina’s plate. Dad would read the newspaper. Mom would pour coffee and plan her day.
Now there’s just me. And Sofia, who’s trying so hard to fill the void even though she’s drowning in her own grief. Dante was her son. Dad was her brother. She held tight to her younger son Matteo’s hand at the funeral, her face a mask of devastation that I’ll never forget.
It’s my family’s fault her eldest child is dead, yet here she is, taking care of me. Making sure I don’t destroy myself along with everyone else. I don’t know how she wakes up every morning in this house of ghosts and chooses love.
Sometimes I catch her standing in bedroom doorways, just like I stand in Valentina’s. She never goes in either. Never disturbs their things, as if they might need them when they come home.
“I heard you come in twenty minutes ago,” Sofia continues. “You’ve been standing in the hallway ever since. In front of Valentina’s room?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out flat and dead.
“You go there when something’s eating at you.” She turns off the stove and pours the warm milk into a mug. Her eyes are sharp and knowing, taking in my disheveled hair, the tension in my shoulders.
Sofia sets the mug in front of me and sits down across the table. “Tell me what you did tonight.”
I stare at the mug. The steam rises in lazy curls, and I want to knock it across the room. I want to flip the entire fucking table and watch it break.
“I did what needed to be done,” I say, my voice rough and bitter. “I’m planning what’s next for the Vicis.”
What a joke. Like I have any plan beyond killing Agnello and trying not to think about his daughter’s tears.
“Vincenzo.” Her voice is gentle but unyielding. “I’ve known you since you were born. Don’t insult my intelligence by lying to me.”
Her gentleness is worse than anger. It makes me feel like she caught me doing something shameful.
Which I suppose she did.
“I went to the Montoni mansion,” I finally say, forcing the words through my clenched jaw. “To kill Agnello.”
“Did you?”
I picture Adora sobbing on her knees, her hands shaking as she tried to gather the pieces of her mother’s face. The sounds she made, broken and hopeless, echo inside my skull.
I did that to her.
Before I can answer, the back door opens. My cousin Matteo walks in, his jacket damp from freezing rain, his face drawn with exhaustion.
“Ma,” he says, kissing Sofia’s cheek. Then he looks at me, taking in my disheveled state. “Christ, Vin. You look like shit.”
“Thanks, cuz. Good to see you too.”
Matteo pulls out a chair and sits down heavily. Sofia rises without a word and pours him a glass of whisky.
He gets liquor, and I get hot milk? I must seem really unstable.
“I’m glad you’re both here,” Matteo says, accepting the glass and taking a long drink. “We need to talk.”
“About?” I ask.
“Things are bad, Vin. Worse than I thought.” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “The Dervishis hit one of our warehouses tonight. Took everything. Guns, ammunition, the whole shipment we were supposed to deliver to the Lucanias.”
I should feel something at this news. Rage. The need for retaliation. The cold calculation of how to hit them back harder.
But I feel nothing. I’m still back in Adora’s bedroom, watching her sobbing on her bedroom floor.
“How much did we lose?” I ask, because it’s what I’m supposed to ask.
“Half a million in weapons. Plus the trust of the Lucanias, who needed those guns yesterday.” Matteo leans forward, his voice urgent. “Rafiel is furious. If we lose the Lucanias, we lose our last major ally in this city.”
Sofia watches me carefully before turning to Matteo. “And what did you say to Rafiel?”
“I told him that Don Vincenzo would handle it personally.”
I look up sharply. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” Matteo’s voice rises with frustration. “That’s what you are, Vin. You’re the last Vici who has any claim to lead this family, and the men need a leader. Not a ghost haunting an empty house.”
“Matteo,” Sofia says warningly.
“No, Ma. He needs to hear this.” Matteo turns back to me, his eyes blazing.
“It’s been seven weeks of you obsessing over Agnello Montoni and doing fucking nothing while our territory falls apart.
The Dervishis are moving in on our businesses.
Our soldiers are restless. Half of them think you’re too broken to lead. ”
“As soon as Agnello is dead—” I begin.
“And when will that be?” Matteo demands. “You took one shot at him last week, and it wasn’t even him. What about tonight? Were you at the Montoni mansion again, not killing Agnello?”
The question hangs in the air.
Sofia is still watching me with those too-knowing eyes. “What’s going on, Vincenzo? I feel like there’s something you’re not sharing with us.”
“I— It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?” Matteo challenges me.
“Because his death is not enough,” I shout, slamming my fist on the table and making the mug and glass jump. Some of the hot milk slops over the rim of the mug. I love Sofia, but I don’t need fucking milk.
I need revenge.
Death is too good for that piece of shit. He should suffer even one tenth of the agony we have before I end his worthless life.
“I’ll discover what Don Agnello really cares about, and I’ll take it from him,” I growl through gritted teeth. “I’ll make him suffer before he dies, and I’m going to do it through his daughter.”
Matteo stares at me. “Wait. Adora Montoni is back? I thought she disappeared.”
“She was hiding,” I say. “From her father. She ran away after the massacre.”
“And you found her?”
“She found me, in a laundromat being tortured by Dervishis.”
Sofia leans forward, surprise etched on her beautiful face. “What are you talking about, Vincenzo? Tell us everything.”
So I do. The words spill out of me. The laundromat. The Dervishis. How Adora gave me a knife when she could have run. The balcony. Pietro’s death. The hungry, desperate kisses that I keep telling myself mean nothing. How I demanded that Don Agnello still wed her to me.
And finally, tonight. Invading her bedroom and destroying her photograph.
“There was a picture on her dresser,” I say, my voice hollow. “A family portrait. Adora with her mother, her grandmother, her brother, and her fucking father. Everyone smiling and happy.” I look down at my hands. “I destroyed it. Ripped it to pieces while she begged me to stop.”
The silence that follows is damning.
Sofia has gone very still. Very quiet. It’s worse than if she yelled.
“You hurt that poor girl?” she says finally, and each word lands like a blow.
My restraint shatters.