Chapter 23
Simeone
Zero percent.
Flavio is not my brother’s son. Not family.
Not blood. I thought the rage from this knowledge would have eased by now, but I am angrier than I was the day I found out.
And what hurts me the most is that I have nothing left of Ulrico.
No matter what Flavio did, I was willing to just discipline him, and then turn right around to clean up his mess.
But this new revelation has stripped me of every piece of my brother I had left.
The crystal tumbler explodes against my office wall, amber whiskey streaming down the mahogany paneling like tears I’ll never shed.
Twenty years of believing I owed something to Ulrico’s memory.
Twenty years of cleaning up messes for a boy who carries another man’s genes while wearing my brother’s name like stolen armor.
The second glass follows the first, then the third. By the time I’ve destroyed every piece of crystal in reach, my office looks like a war zone, and my knuckles are bleeding from where I punched the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
But the rage won’t break. Won’t bleed out. Won’t do anything but burn hotter with each breath.
I sink into my chair and reach for the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan—the same kind of drink Ulrico and I opened the night before his last mission.
The whiskey tastes like regret and lost time, each swallow carrying the weight of every lie I’ve swallowed, every excuse I’ve made, every moment I’ve let sentiment override sense.
The irony cuts deeper than any blade: I’ve spent over two decades protecting what I thought was my brother’s legacy while the real legacy—my own blood, my own child growing in Loriana’s womb—got threatened to be destroyed by my misplaced loyalty.
“Bastardo maledetto,” I curse into the empty room, my voice echoing off walls that have witnessed more confessions than any cathedral. “Twenty-six fucking years.”
The bottle grows lighter as the afternoon bleeds into evening.
Each drink reveals another layer of the deception—how carefully orchestrated it must have been, how perfectly timed.
A grieving woman showing up at Ulrico’s funeral with claims of pregnancy, playing on my guilt and need to honor my brother’s memory.
She played me like a violin, and I danced to her tune for over twenty years.
The door creaks open behind me, but I don’t turn around. Only one person in this house would dare enter my office without permission when I’m in this state.
“Don’t,” I say quietly, sensing her hesitation in the doorway. “Whatever comforting words you’re planning, save them. I’m not in the mood for pity.”
“Good,” Loriana’s voice comes from closer than expected, and I realize she’s already crossed the room. “Because I wasn’t planning to offer any.”
I finally look up to find her standing beside my desk, taking in the destruction with those intelligent brown eyes that see too much. She’s wearing one of my shirts over her nightgown, her hair loose around her shoulders, looking like everything pure in a world gone to hell.
“You look like you’ve been through a war,” she observes, settling into the chair across from me with the fluid grace that never fails to make my pulse spike.
“I have.” I gesture to the DNA report with my glass. “Over twenty years of fighting the wrong battle for the wrong reasons.”
She reaches for the paper, scanning its contents with the quick intelligence that first drew me to her. When she sets it down, her expression is carefully neutral.
“How do you feel about it?”
The question catches me off guard. Not sympathy, not platitudes about family meaning more than blood, just a simple request for truth.
“Like a fool,” I admit, the whiskey loosening my tongue more than I intended. “Like I’ve wasted twenty years of my life on a lie so elaborate I never thought to question it.”
“Have you? Wasted it?”
I study her face, looking for judgment or disappointment, finding only that steady attention that makes me want to tell her things I’ve never spoken aloud.
“Flavio’s not the only lie I’ve been living with,” I hear myself saying. “The biggest one is about the night Ulrico died. About why he died.”
Her silence is deliberate—no prodding, no reassurance, just a patient retreat into her chair’s embrace. The space between us fills with something heavier than quiet: the accumulated weight of everything I’ve never said aloud.
“It was supposed to be me,” I finally say, the words tasting like ash and whiskey. “The mission that killed him—I was supposed to go. Should have gone. Would have gone if I hadn’t been called away.”
The memory unfolds like a nightmare, sharp and vivid despite twenty-six years of trying to bury it.
“We’d received intelligence about a rival family meeting at the docks.
High-value targets, minimal security, perfect opportunity to eliminate a threat before it grew.
Ulrico volunteered, but it was my operation. My responsibility.”
“But you didn’t go.”
“No.” The admission burns worse than the whiskey. “I had reports to file, meetings to attend, empire-building bullshit that felt important at the time. So I let my older brother walk into what should have been my grave.”
I drain my glass and immediately refill it, needing the burn to keep the words coming.
“They were waiting for him. Not for the meeting—for us. Someone had leaked our plans, set us up perfectly. But they were expecting me, not Ulrico. When he walked into that warehouse, they hesitated just long enough for him to realize it was a trap.”
“He fought back?”
“He tried. But it was three against one, and they had the advantage of surprise. The bullet that killed him was meant for my head, stellina. He died because I was too fucking comfortable in my office to do the job myself.”
The silence that follows is absolute, suffocating. I wait for her to say something—anything—about duty and family and the impossible choices men like me face. About how I couldn’t have known, how it wasn’t my fault, how guilt won’t bring him back.
Instead, she stands and moves around the desk, her bare feet silent on the Persian rug. Without a word, she takes the glass from my hand and sets it aside, then perches on the arm of my chair.
“Tell me about him,” she says quietly. “Before that night. What was Ulrico like?”
The request surprises me more than any accusation could. “Why?”
“Because you’ve spent two decades drowning in how he died. I want to know how he lived.”
Something cracks open in my chest, a fissure I’ve kept sealed with guilt and whiskey and the weight of responsibility.
“He was everything I wasn’t,” I say slowly.
“Honorable where I was ruthless. Patient where I was impulsive. He believed in doing things the right way, even when the wrong way was faster.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He was. The best of us.” I lean back in my chair, feeling the warmth of her body beside me like an anchor.
“When our father died, everyone expected Ulrico to take over. Firstborn, natural leader, respected by every family in Sicily. But he didn’t want it.
Said the business needed someone with sharper teeth and a harder heart. ”
“So he chose you.”
“He pushed me forward. Stood beside me when others questioned my age, my methods, my right to lead. Never once tried to undermine me or take what he could have claimed by birthright.” The memory tastes bitter now, tainted by years of misplaced guilt.
“I repaid his loyalty by sending him to die in my place.”
“You made a decision based on the information you had,” she says simply. “Leaders delegate. That’s not cowardice—it’s strategy.”
“Strategy that got my brother killed.”
“Strategy that built an empire he believed in enough to die protecting.” Her hand settles on my shoulder, warm and steady. “Do you think he’d want you to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for surviving?”
The question hits like a physical blow because I know the answer. Ulrico would have knocked me on my ass for wallowing in guilt instead of living the life his sacrifice made possible.
“He’d tell me to stop being a self-indulgent coglione and get back to work,” I admit.
“Smart man.” She slides from the chair arm into my lap, her weight settling against me like she belongs there. “What else would he tell you?”
I consider the question seriously, trying to hear my brother’s voice through guilt and whiskey-soaked regret. “He’d say the past is written in stone, but the future is still blank paper. That I can’t change what happened, but I can choose what happens next.”
“And what do you choose?”
The answer comes easier than it should, crystallizing out of the chaos like truth from lies. “I choose to stop letting dead ghosts and living lies control my decisions. I choose to protect what actually matters instead of what I think I owe.”
“Your family,” she says, and the possessive satisfaction in her voice makes something warm unfurl in my chest.
“My family.” I frame her face with hands that smell like whiskey and violence, noting how she doesn’t flinch from either. “You and our child. The only legacy that actually matters.”
“And Flavio?”
The name tastes like poison, but the rage has turned into something colder, more useful. “Flavio is no longer my problem to solve. Whatever claim he thought he had on my protection died with this report.”
“He won’t give up easily.”
“No. He’ll escalate, probably try to leverage whatever information he has about our operations. But he’s not family anymore—he’s just another threat to contain.” I lean closer, breathing in the jasmine scent that’s become my salvation. “And I’m very good at doing that.”
She doesn’t lecture me about violence or mercy, doesn’t try to appeal to sentiment I no longer feel. Instead, she studies my face with those intelligent eyes that see everything.
“What do you need from me?”
The simple question, offered without judgment or conditions, breaks something open inside me. Not the guilt—that will take time to heal. But the isolation, the sense that I’m carrying this burden alone.
“Stay exactly where you are,” I say, my arms tightening around her. “Remind me what I’m fighting for instead of what I’m fighting against.”
“I can do that.” She settles more comfortably against me, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder like it was designed to fit there. “For as long as you need.”
We sit in the gathering darkness, surrounded by the wreckage of my rage and the weight of lies finally exposed. But for the first time since I opened that DNA report, the fury feels manageable. Useful.
Because she’s right—the past is written in stone. Ulrico is dead, Flavio was never family, and I can’t change any of it. But the future is still blank paper, waiting for me to write our story.
The story that could have been ours—written in honesty instead of half-truths, in moments we wanted instead of moments we endured, in love that felt like freedom instead of a sentence.
The one where I stop being haunted by dead ghosts and start building something worth living for.
“Stellina?”
“Mmm?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not trying to fix me. For just... being here.”
Her laugh is soft, warm against my throat. “You don’t need fixing, Simeone. You just needed to remember who you really are underneath all that guilt.”
“And who am I?”
“You’re the Silver Devil,” she says simply. “The man who built an empire from nothing. The man who protects what’s his with absolute ruthlessness. The man who claimed me completely and gave me everything in return.”
“Even if that man has blood on his hands?”
“Especially because he has blood on his hands.” She lifts her head to meet my gaze, and the heat in her eyes makes my breath catch. “I didn’t fall in love with a saint, Simeone. I fell in love with a mobster who chooses to be gentle with me.”
“You love me?” The words slip out before I can stop them, vulnerable and raw.
“Completely. Irrevocably. Probably unwisely.” Her smile is sharp, dangerous, absolutely devastating. “But then again, I’ve never been accused of making smart choices where you’re concerned.”
“No,” I agree, pulling her down for a kiss that tastes like whiskey and promises and the future we’re going to build from the ashes of everything that came before. “Thank God for that.”
The DNA report lies forgotten on my desk as I carry her to our bed, where we write one more chapter of our real story with hands and mouths and whispered confessions that wash away years of guilt with something infinitely more powerful.
Truth. Choice. Love.
The only legacy that actually matters.