Chapter 9 Simeone
Simeone
The blood on Flavio’s lip isn’t even dry when he dares to smile at me.
“You hit like you’re getting old, zio,” he says, dabbing at the cut with a silk handkerchief that costs more than most people make in a week. The casual disrespect in his voice makes my knuckles itch for round two.
I study my nephew across the marble expanse of my office, noting how he lounges in the leather chair like he owns it, like this entire empire I’ve built from ash and grief belongs to him by birthright.
Twenty-six years old and already carrying himself with the arrogance of a man who’s never faced real consequences for his actions.
“The blood says otherwise,” I reply, settling behind my desk with deliberate calm. “Along with the fact that you’re no longer harassing Loriana Parlato.”
His expression shifts at her name, something dark and possessive flickering behind his eyes. “Ah, the little bartender. Is she why you summoned me here like some common soldier? Because you’re fucking her?”
The crude language makes violence rise in my chest like a tide, but I’ve learned to channel rage into strategy over the years. Flavio has always been reckless with his words, thoughtless with other people’s property, cruel in ways that I attributed to youth and circumstance.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been blind to something far more troubling.
“I summoned you here because you haven’t listened to my orders and you kept on terrorizing an innocent woman for weeks. Vandalism, stalking, death threats—the kind of behavior that brings unwanted attention to our family name.”
“Our family name.” He laughs, the sound sharp and bitter. “You mean the empire that I’m supposed to inherit someday? The one you’ve spent twenty years building while keeping me at arm’s length?”
There’s venom in his voice that I haven’t heard before, resentment that runs deeper than typical young man’s impatience. I lean back in my chair, studying the nephew I raised from infancy with fresh eyes.
“At arm’s length? I’ve given you everything—education, protection, a place in this organization when you’re ready for responsibility.”
“When I’m ready.” His smile is sharp enough to cut glass. “I’ve been ready for years, zio. But you keep treating me like a child who can’t be trusted with real power. Like I’m not worthy of the Codella name.”
“Power is earned, not inherited. And lately, your actions suggest you’re not ready for either.”
“My actions?” Flavio’s voice rises, and for a moment, I see something in his face that reminds me of his father—my older brother Ulrico, who died on a mission I should have taken myself. “Everything I do is wrong in your eyes. Every mistake gets magnified, every success gets ignored.”
“Harassment isn’t a mistake, Flavio. It’s a choice. A pattern of behavior that shows a fundamental lack of respect for boundaries.”
“She was mine first,” he snarls, and there it is—the possessive entitlement that’s been driving his campaign against Loriana. “I was courting her properly, taking my time, being respectful of her innocence. Then you swoop in and steal her away like I’m nothing.”
The accusation hits me like a physical blow because there’s truth in it, even if his version is twisted by his own selfishness. I did want Loriana from the moment she walked into my office, and I did pursue her despite knowing she’d been involved with my nephew in the past.
But what he calls theft, I call claiming what was never truly his.
“You were cheating on her with her best friend,” I point out quietly. “In her own bed, on your birthday. Hardly the behavior of a man who valued what he had.”
Flavio’s face flushes with embarrassment and rage. “That was different. That was just sex. Loriana was special—I was saving her for marriage, treating her like the madonna she pretended to be.”
Madonna.
The word sits wrong in my mouth, carrying implications of ownership and objectification that make my blood heat with protective fury.
Loriana isn’t some pristine statue to be worshipped from afar—she’s fire and steel, passion wrapped in jasmine perfume, a woman who deserves to be claimed and cherished in equal measure.
“So you punished her for your own infidelity by terrorizing her business and threatening her safety.”
“I was trying to make her understand what she was throwing away.” His voice drops to something that might be pleading if it weren’t so entitled. “She belonged to me, someone who understood her value. Not with someone who would use her and discard her.”
The irony would be amusing if it weren’t so disturbing. Flavio speaking of using and discarding while describing his own systematic campaign to destroy everything Loriana had built independently.
“And when she refused to understand, you escalated to stalking and death threats.”
“I was protecting my investment.” The words slip out before he can stop them, revealing the business-like calculation underneath his claims of love. “Do you know how much time I put into that relationship? How much effort I wasted on her ridiculous need to ‘wait for the right moment’?”
He speaks about the woman I’ve claimed like she’s a stock portfolio that disappointed him. The casual dehumanization makes me want to reach across this desk and show him exactly why men fear the Codella name.
“She was never your investment, Flavio. She was a woman who deserved better than what you were giving her.”
“Better than me?” His laugh is bitter, cutting. “Like you? A man old enough to be her father, with enough blood on his hands to paint this entire office red?”
He’s not wrong about the blood, but the age comment hits differently when it comes from him. Twenty years separate me from Loriana—two decades of violence and loss and moral compromises that should make me unworthy of her innocence.
But when she looks at me, she doesn’t see an old man with questionable ethics. She sees something that makes her pulse race and her pupils dilate, something that made her pull me into her bed despite knowing exactly what I am.
“What I am isn’t the question,” I say quietly. “What you’ve become is.”
“What I’ve become?” Flavio leans forward, and for the first time since this conversation started, I see something dangerous flicker behind his eyes. “I’ve become exactly what you made me, zio. Hungry, ambitious, willing to take what I want instead of waiting for permission.”
The words chill me because they carry the ring of truth. I did raise him to be strong, to claim what he wanted, to never back down from a fight. But somewhere along the way, those lessons twisted into something darker—entitlement instead of strength, possession instead of protection.
“I taught you to be powerful, not cruel.”
“Did you?” His smile is sharp, predatory. “Then explain the Pirlo situation. Explain what happened to the dockworkers who tried to unionize. Explain the accident that killed Detective Lambert when he got too close to our shipping operation.”
Each incident he mentions is a carefully buried piece of my past events I handled with care to protect the organization. The fact that he knows these details, can recite them like a grocery list, tells me he’s been paying attention to my business in ways I never intended.
“Those were necessary evils to protect what we’ve built.”
“And this is mine.” His voice drops to a whisper that carries the weight of absolute conviction. “Loriana was my necessary evil, my way of establishing something that belonged to me instead of inheriting your scraps.”
The calculation in his voice makes my blood run cold. He’s not talking about love or even lust—he’s talking about possession as a business strategy, acquisition as a form of rebellion against my authority.
“She’s not property to be acquired.”
“Isn’t she?” Flavio tilts his head, studying me with the same intensity I’ve seen in mirrors for decades. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve done exactly the same thing. Claimed her, marked her, made it clear that anyone who touches her will face the consequences.”
He’s right, and the acknowledgment burns like acid in my throat.
I have claimed Loriana, have made her mine through possession and protection and the kind of sexual mastery that leaves marks deeper than skin.
The difference is that she chose to let me, chose to surrender to what burns between us despite knowing the cost.
But does that choice justify the price I made her pay? Her freedom, her peace, the clean slate of a life before I stained it with my sins?
“The difference,” I say carefully, “is that she came to me willingly.”
“After I softened her up with weeks of attention and courtship.” His smile is triumphant, like he’s won some argument I didn’t know we were having. “After I invested months in building her trust and breaking down her defenses. You just swooped in to collect the dividend.”
The mercenary language makes me want to put him through the window, but something else catches my attention. The casual way he talks about building trust and breaking down defenses—like seduction is warfare and women are territories to be conquered.
It reminds me of someone, though I can’t quite place who.
“Tell me about the bet,” I say suddenly, remembering something Loriana mentioned about his friends.
Flavio’s expression flickers, just for a moment, before sliding back into practiced innocence. “What bet?”
“The one you made with your friends about seducing her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But his body language says otherwise—the subtle tensing of shoulders, the way his eyes dart toward the door like he’s calculating escape routes. After twenty years of reading people’s body language, I know guilt when I see it.
“Giuseppe Longino,” I say, pulling a name from my mental files of Flavio’s associates. “Your friend with the radical politics and expensive gambling habits. Should I have Tiziano pay him a visit?”
“No.” The word comes too quickly, too sharply. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”