Chapter 9 Simeone #2
Flavio is quiet for a long moment, staring at his hands like they hold answers to questions he’s afraid to ask. When he finally speaks, his voice is small, younger than his twenty-six years.
“It started as a joke. Giuseppe said I’d never be able to get someone like her to notice me, because she is too pure, too independent, and too smart for someone like me. So I said I could make her fall in love with me within six months.”
The casual cruelty of it hits me like a physical blow. Loriana’s innocence, her careful trust, her decision to wait for someone worthy—all of it reduced to the terms of a casual wager between spoiled young men with too much time and too little conscience.
“And when you won?”
“When I won, I was supposed to... collect my prize. Publicly. Prove that her precious purity was just an act, that underneath all that independence she was just another woman who could be conquered by the right man with the right approach.”
Bile rises in my throat. The level of premeditation, the systematic destruction of her self-respect he’d planned—it’s psychopathic in its calculated cruelty.
“But you fell for her instead.”
Flavio’s laugh is bitter, self-mocking. “Did I? Or did I just get attached to the idea of owning something so perfect? Sometimes I can’t tell the difference anymore.”
The honesty in that admission chills me to the bone. Not because it’s unexpected, but because it sounds exactly like something I might have said at his age, back when I was learning to separate want from need, possession from protection.
That’s why you were so patient with her boundaries. It wasn’t respect, but rather strategy.
“The best investments require patience.” He meets my eyes with something that might be defiance or desperation. “Ask yourself this, zio—what’s the difference between my approach and yours? I courted her for months; you claimed her in a single night. Which of us really respects her?”
The question hits home because I’ve been asking myself the same thing since I walked out of her apartment. Did I seduce her or take advantage of her vulnerability? Did I offer protection or just trade one threat for another?
But there’s a crucial difference that Flavio can’t or won’t see.
“The difference is that I want her to choose me every day, not just surrender to me once.”
“And if she chooses differently?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with implication. We both know the answer, even if neither of us wants to say it out loud. I’ve claimed her too completely to let her go, marked her too deeply to accept another man’s touch on her skin.
“She won’t,” I say finally. “Because, unlike you, I understand the difference between taking and earning.”
Flavio’s expression hardens, and suddenly he looks less like the boy I raised and more like a stranger wearing a familiar face. “We’ll see about that.”
The threat is soft, subtle, barely spoken—but it remains suspended between us like incense in a chapel.
I lean forward in my chair, letting him see the predator that lives beneath my expensive suits and careful manners.
“Flavio. Let me be very clear about something. If you go near her again, if you so much as look at her sideways, I will forget that we share blood. I will forget the twenty years I spent raising you. I will forget every mercy I’ve shown you up to this point. ”
“And then what?” His voice is steady, but I can see the fear in his eyes now. Good. Fear keeps people alive in this business.
“And then I’ll remind you why they call me the Silver Devil.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, staring at me with something that might be hurt or disappointment or both. “You’d choose her over me? Over family?”
“This isn’t about her. It’s about my people showing me the respect and obeying my orders,” I say.
Flavio stands slowly, straightening his jacket with mechanical precision. “I understand, zio. Message received.”
But something in his tone makes my blood chill, a flatness that doesn’t match his words. I’ve heard that voice before, from other men who’ve made promises they had no intention of keeping.
“Flavio—”
“Don’t worry,” he says, moving toward the door with fluid grace that reminds me uncomfortably of myself at his age. “I won’t cause any more problems for your precious investment.”
The way he says investment makes my skin crawl, like he’s tasting something bitter. As he reaches for the door handle, he pauses, looking back over his shoulder with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Tell me something, zio. When you’re fucking her, do you ever think about your brother? About how he’d feel knowing his son’s woman was being claimed by his killer?”
The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs.
Because Flavio’s right—I did kill Ulrico, as surely as if I’d pulled the trigger myself.
I sent him on the mission that got him killed, chose to stay behind because someone needed to run the organization, made the decision that left my nephew fatherless and my brother dead.
“Ulrico died in service to this family,” I manage.
“My father died because you were a coward who sent him to do the job you were afraid to do yourself.” Flavio’s voice is soft, conversational, more devastating than if he’d screamed.
“But don’t worry—I won’t let his sacrifice go to waste.
After all, someone needs to carry on the family tradition of taking what belongs to the dead. ”
The door closes behind him with a soft click, leaving me alone with the echoes of his words and the sudden, terrible understanding that I may have been raising a monster all these years.
I reach for the phone, dialing Tiziano’s number with hands that shake with rage and something that might be fear.
“Put surveillance on Flavio,” I say when he answers. “Twenty-four hours. And double the security around Loriana.”
“Boss? What happened?”
I stare at the door through which my nephew just walked, seeing not the boy I raised but the monster I may have created. “I think I’ve been blind to who he really is. And if I’m right, Loriana is in more danger now than she’s ever been.”
I just realized that I have raised a soulless monster.