Luca (The Conti Family #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Luca

I stand when my name is called.

The wood paneling in this courtroom has seen more confessions and lies than a church.

It smells like polish and old secrets. The benches creak from years of use, and the overhead lights have that cheap fluorescent buzz that used to make me grind my teeth during arraignments.

Eleven years later, the sound is the same. Everything else is different.

“Mr. Conti.” The judge peers at me over half-moon glasses. He’s new—new to me, at least. I knew the last one, the one who put me away. This one has a smoother face, but a strong voice when he says my name. “We’re here today on the Petition For Release. I’ve reviewed the file.”

Beside me, Roberto murmurs, “Hands on the table. Relax the shoulders.” He always sounds like he’s telling me where to hold a golf club, not my life.

That’s my little brother for you—law school, charm that cuts like a scalpel, and a suit so sharp it could open a vein.

He taps a legal pad with one finger. “Let me do the talking unless he asks you directly.”

I nod once.

Behind us, I feel my offspring before I see them. You know your blood by the way a room bends around their very presence.

Vito carries a storm wherever he goes—heat, impatience, his jaw set like concrete. Twenty-eight. He was practically a kid when I was put away, and this is the first time I’ve seen him in eleven years without glass between us. He’s carved out now, leaner, meaner, something hard in the eyes.

Nico stands a step behind, not as intense, but with a quiet energy, like a blade. At twenty-six, he doesn’t have the intensity that Vito has. Instead, he stands quietly, waiting, observing.

Caterina is to their left, dark hair pulled back, chin up. Fourteen when I was put away, imagine my surprise when she announced on one of her visits that she wanted to go to college. “To be an accountant, Papá,” she said. “For the family.”

Pride had filled my heart to hear her say those words. She stands now with a steel spine and eyes that command the respect of everyone in the room.

There’s a feeling of an empty space in the row, though, a gap so big that it wouldn’t fit in this courtroom.

People always leave a space for the dead. But Lucia isn’t dead. She’s just… gone. Erased herself from us and painted over with another man’s name. I taste her name like blood behind a tooth. Lucia. My oldest, my first born.

My pride, my curse.

The last time I saw her was in a courtroom just like this. She was swearing to tell the truth, eyes slick with betrayal. My little girl, who learned how to cut with words. My little girl, who helped them bury me.

“Counselors,” the judge is saying. “We’ll proceed with argument. Mr. Conti”—he means Roberto, but I still feel the riffle along my spine—“you may begin.”

Roberto stands like the room is a camera, and we’re already winning the frame. “Your Honor,” he says, “the Department of Corrections has certified Mr. Conti’s completion of all required programs. His record for the past four years shows no disciplinary actions—”

The words “four years” unlock something at the base of my skull. The courtroom blurs for a beat, and all I can see are gray cinderblock walls and a rich man’s cologne filling the room.

Nick Dixon’s money soaked the mortar of the prison when he bought it. The guards stopped looking me in the eye after the acquisition papers went through.

Favors dried up, comforts disappeared, friends turned their palms over to show nothing but skin. The way time slowed to a viscous drip and every day tasted like someone else’s victory.

He bought the place I ate and slept, and breathed, and then took my dignity as rent.

I keep my face smooth. Roberto is talking about good behavior like it was a choice. It wasn’t.

It was a weapon I turned inward and sharpened with patience. Keep your head above water, Dixon said all those years ago. And you can live out the rest of your sentence like a docile old dog.

So, I kept my head down. I counted the days. I learned the names of the men Dixon trusted. I learned his world while biding my time in a box I loathed. I learned how small I could make myself without forgetting who I am.

But I haven’t forgotten. No, I’m sharper than ever. Luca Conti forgets nothing. Certainly not the faces of his enemies.

“—the parole board recommendations, the letters of community support,” Roberto continues. “Mr. Conti has a verified residence with family, employment opportunities waiting, and substantial ties to the community. He poses no flight risk.”

He says it automatically, and I let him. That is his job: to render me into the most palatable version of myself that the state can digest and excrete back into the world.

On the other side of the aisle, a chair slides, a folder opens. For the first time, I look at the other side of the room.

The woman at the table is the one trying to hold me here, and of course, she’s beautiful. Life likes symmetry. I have learned to understand it and respect it. Tall, composed, a posture that exudes confidence and command.

Dark hair. Eyes I can’t name from this distance because of the way light sharpens the irises like glass—blue, maybe, or gray. With a mind like a blade between them. I can see that before she even opens her mouth to speak.

No wasted movement. No nervous tics.

I feel it like a pulse in my throat and a stiffening in my pants. Want. Crude, involuntary sexual want, the body reminding the brain that it is still alive.

It’s been a long time. Eleven years and four of them under the thumb of a man who thought purchasing prison concrete meant owning me. I’ve learned to control my hunger, all kinds.

But control isn’t absence. It’s mastery. I now feel the lust overwhelming my mind and try to push it back where it belongs—at least for the time being.

She clears her throat and stands. “Your Honor, the government opposes release.” Her voice is clear, low, slightly husky. No thoughtless words. Every one of them practiced and precise.

“The record reflects not just a history of violence but a sophisticated criminal enterprise over which Mr. Conti exerted command.”

I watch her mouth shape my name, the way she doesn’t look at me while saying I don’t deserve sunlight. Clever girl. She knows better than to feed a thing like me with eyes.

“Additionally,” she goes on, “there is credible information that—”

Roberto cuts in. “Objection to proffer. If the government has evidence, they should present it, not smear my client with unsubstantiated rumors.”

They go back and forth, steel blade against steel blade, and the judge lets them for a moment. I can read him now, the way his gaze slides to the gallery, the way he moves his eyes over everyone in the room.

He knows who I am. He knows who my family is. He knows his name will be in print after this hearing, whether he wants it or not.

When the prosecutor looks down at her notes, the curve of her neck pulls my eyes like a magnet. I let myself enjoy it for one second, the delicate line of it.

The way her pulse would jump against my teeth if I were a different man and she were a different woman, and we were in a different room.

Then I put it away. She is a problem, not a person. She is trying to keep me in a box. I don’t have the luxury of giving in to impulse. I’ve been starved too long to be stupid.

And yet I am not blind. I notice the shoes—four-inch heels, good leather, but not loud. I notice her suit—tailored, not flashy, revealing her womanly curves in a way that makes the stiffening in my pants become more insistent.

Someone taught her early that appearances are a weapon. She learned the lesson well. She sharpened it. She came into a room full of Contis and didn’t flinch. That earns a measure of respect, even from me.

Vito shifts behind me, restless. I don’t have to look to see it.

He’s never been good at standing still for too long.

He’s always primed for a fight, that one.

He thinks the world owes him, and that’s why he’s not ready to step into my shoes.

That’s why Giovanni, my other brother, has been handling business in my stead.

The world doesn’t owe us anything. But we take what we want. That’s our creed.

“Mr. Conti,” the judge says, and the shape of the room tilts toward me. “I see from the file that you completed anger management, conflict resolution—”

“Several times, Your Honor,” Roberto says. “By choice.”

The judge blinks at that. He wasn’t expecting it. “By choice?”

Roberto’s smile is all Sunday mass. “My client is a man committed to self-improvement.”

I almost laugh. Roberto makes the truth sound like a lie and the lie sound like a Sacrament.

I did take the classes. Not because I believed in their pamphlets.

Because I believe in discipline. Because I believe in knowing what you might do before you do it, and then deciding if it serves you or not.

Hitting a wall doesn’t. Hitting a man sometimes does. But paper trails matter. The judge reads them and thinks he knows your soul. Fine. Learn mine in bullet points and signatures.

“Your Honor,” the prosecutor says, and there’s a slight edge to them now. “With respect, classes do not erase the reality of Mr. Conti’s influence. The risk to the community isn’t his right hook. It’s his command. His network. His influence.”

Network. She says it like it’s a dirty word, and maybe in her world it is.

In mine, it means family members who don’t flinch.

People who answer the phone at 3:00 a.m. People who show up.

It’s the thing that kept me alive in the place bought by a man who hates me and loves my daughter. It means I am not alone.

Lucia’s name crosses my mind again, and I feel my mouth go dry. She is not here.