Chapter 23 Matteo #2
The words punch the air out of my lungs. I set my glass down slowly, my fingers tightening around the armrest until the tendons strain.
“What?” The word is a growl before I can stop it. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Then he blinks and realization dawns across his face like a slap.
“You didn’t know,” he says again, softer this time.
“How could I?” My jaw tightens. “You chose to live out here, off the grid. We don’t see you unless you want to be found.”
There was a time the three of us—Marcello, Valerio, and I—would take a booth at the club every Friday, the whole world bowing beneath our feet. But life evolves. Responsibilities shift. Families come first. The crown weighs heavier every year.
“I know.” He drags a hand through his hair, the gesture exhausted, defeated. “I just… fuck.”
His eyes go to the window, to the vineyard glowing under the soft afternoon sun, and for a heartbeat I see a father instead of a man raised by blood and iron.
“What happened?” I ask.
He exhales, long and hollow. “She was leaving ballet. Luca was driving her home. There was a storm and he lost control, or so he thought. Something had been placed in the road. The car didn’t skid. It crashed exactly where they wanted it to.”
A coldness curls through my veins.
“When the vehicle stopped, they dragged them both out.”
He swallows. “They tortured Luca in front of her, trying to force him to give up the location of one of my warehouses.” His voice falters despite himself. “She was just there. Watching. For God’s sake… she’s seven.”
“We tracked her through a device hidden in her ballet bag. If I hadn’t put it there… God knows where she’d be now. When we reached her, she was covered in blood. Not hers. His.”
My stomach twists. No child should ever carry a memory like that. No father should ever have to say those words aloud.
“She doesn’t sleep unless she’s in my arms,” Marcello says, voice scraped raw. “She wakes screaming. She barely eats. She hides from everyone. My own daughter flinches when a door shuts too hard.”
The afternoon sun pours through the windows, bathing the room in warm gold, as if the world dares to pretend everything is fine. But Marcello’s grief carves through the light, heavier than the shadows it tries to chase away.
“I know the life I inherited,” he goes on, staring past me for a moment as if looking into a world he no longer believes in. “I know the duty placed on my shoulders the day I was born. But a time comes when a man has to choose what he’ll protect—his empire or his blood.”
He turns his gaze back to me, eyes sharp with a truth I’ve avoided for years.
“Duty or heart, Matteo. Which will you choose?”
The quiet that follows is suffocating. I can hear my own pulse, steady and unsteady all at once, pounding like it’s trying to answer before I do.
“You kept your family safe,” he says. “You shut the door on Giacomo and made sure it could never be opened again. But tell me… how can you guarantee your wife and your son will stay safe? How do you protect them from the ghosts of men like him?”
I swallow hard. The truth sits on the back of my tongue—bitter, heavy, dangerous.
“I… I don’t know.”
I’ve never admitted uncertainty in front of anyone. But Marcello is not anyone. He’s a brother forged in blood and survival. “There’s no way to guarantee a leech like him stays buried. All I can do is be ready the second he tries to crawl back into the light.”
I’ve been keeping tabs on the man. Last I heard, he was seen in Belarus with some unsavory company.
Marcello exhales, slow and tired. “And that is exactly why I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t live a life where my daughter’s safety depends on whether a rival syndicate decides to leave us alone.
I can’t wake up every morning wondering if Marta will make it home from her Pilates class. I won’t gamble with them anymore.”
Something shifts in my chest. A warning. A realization.
“What are you saying?” My fingers tighten around my glass, knuckles whitening. “Are you leaving the brotherhood?”
He nods, steady and certain. “My forefathers will have to forgive me. That’s why I called you here. I want you to buy me out.”
My breath halts.
“You can take my supply chain. My ports. My distribution routes. My territory. Every man under my command will become yours.”
He inhales deeply, as though releasing a century of inherited oaths. “I’ll take what you give me and I’ll build a new life in Italy. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe. Somewhere my children can grow without learning to read danger the way we read newspapers.”
For a moment, I can’t speak. The weight of what he’s offering is staggering.
“If you take this deal,” he continues, “you won’t just run New York, Matteo. You’ll own it. You’ll be the most powerful man on the entire East Coast. Your father dreamed of this. Your name will reshape the world you rule.”
This is the opportunity of a lifetime. It will secure my legacy and my bloodline. This is all my father ever wanted for me. All he could have ever hoped for me to become.
But then—
“What about Antonio?” I ask quietly. “If he grows up and wants to return, to inherit what you built… what then?”
Marcello shakes his head without hesitation. “I won’t let him. He deserves a chance at a life untouched by bloodshed. If he wants a legacy, I’ll build him a new one—one not soaked in fear and violence. I’m giving him the choice I never had.”
The man is resolved. The kind of resolved that doesn’t waver, doesn’t tremble, doesn’t leave room for negotiation.
“If this is what you want,” I say quietly, “then I’ll buy you out. Do what you must for your family. Protect what is sacred to you.”
And just like that—with one sentence, one decision—another fate locks into place.
His.
Mine. My family’s.
A fate I may one day look back on with pride… or regret so deeply it carves a hollow through my ribs.
Marcello lifts his empty glass, a wry smirk tugging his mouth. “To you missing my face.”
I snort. “More like good riddance. May Italy welcome you with open arms, old man.”
He laughs, that deep rumble of his easing some of the tension between us. Conversation shifts into lighter things—memories, jokes, small comforts—but underneath it all, a low thrum of unease coils in my gut.
What he’s offered is a good deal—an incredible deal—but still my heart refuses to settle.
This throne he’s giving me will make me a king. But kings are simply the largest targets on the field. And I know exactly what happens to men who sit too high for too long.
Still—I was built for this. I’ve been shaped, sharpened, hardened since the day I first held a gun. I will take the crown. And I will carry the weight.
Lunch passes in gentle waves. The boys storm back inside, laughing, their feet pounding across hardwood floors. Our wives linger in the kitchen, drinking the wine we abandoned, their voices soft and warm drifting through the halls.
Marcello and I remain outside on the back porch, papers and territory boundaries spread across the table between us. A transition of this size requires precision, and though he is my friend, I cannot afford sentiment when structuring an empire.
We talk until the sun hangs low, lazy and golden, draping itself over the vineyard like it’s reluctant to leave.
Marcello rises with a stretch, joints cracking faintly. “It’s getting dark,” he mutters. “I should go get Maria. She wandered near the tree line a little while ago.”
Before he can move, his phone erupts in his hand. He glances down, curses under his breath.
I stand from my chair. “I’ll get her. Take the call.”
“You sure?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’ll bring her in.”
He gives a grateful tilt of his head and disappears inside, where Beatrice and Marta sit in a pool of warm kitchen light, wine glasses in hand.
I walk down the porch steps, letting the cool breeze roll across my skin. The Faravelli vineyard stretches before me—lush, golden, serene. For a fleeting second, I imagine what it would be like to stay here. To live slow. To live soft.
But men like us don’t get soft lives. We only borrow moments of peace before the world demands them back.
I cross the garden and spot her.
Maria. A tiny silhouette near the tall grass, hunched over the earth with her teddy bear propped against her side like a silent guardian.
I slow my pace, my voice low when I call, “Ciao, principessa.”
She doesn’t answer. She just keeps drawing something into the dirt with a stick, her small shoulders curled inward, her silence as deep as a well I’m scared to look into.
The house is behind her, glowing warm with lights and laughter, but she sits just outside of it—as if peace is something she can see but can’t quite reach.
She hears me before she sees me; her small spine straightens by a hair.
“You’re good at disappearing,” I murmur, stopping a respectful distance away.
She doesn’t turn. Just lifts one shoulder in a shrug. It guts me to see her like this—hollowed out where all that bright innocence used to be. Now she carries a silence too big for her small body.
I ease down into the grass beside her.
“When I was your age,” I say quietly, “I used to think that if I stayed quiet enough, the bad things wouldn’t notice me.”
Her stick never stills. It drags lines, circles, jagged shapes—her turmoil etched into the ground.
“Did it work?” she whispers.
“No,” I admit. “But it helped me think. And sometimes thinking feels safer than facing the monsters head-on.”
A beat. Two.
Then her voice opens, soft as a tremor.
“They made me watch Luca die.”
The world seems to tilt. But I stay still.
“They said I needed to remember what will happen to my dad if he doesn’t stop coming after them.”
She draws another circle. Perfect. Controlled. “Twenty-three punches. Two stabs. One bullet to the head. I counted them all.”
My jaw clenches. I don’t let it show.
“But the thunder helped,” she adds softly. “It made the walls shake so his screams weren’t so loud.”
Her voice doesn’t crack. Not once. It’s wrong—how steady she is. Children aren’t meant to sound like war survivors.
She swallows. “They told me to tell Papa that if he ever comes that close again, they won’t be warning him next time.”
I exhale slowly, forcing the rage down where she can’t see it. She doesn’t need my fury; she needs steadiness. A world that won’t lurch under her feet again.
“I told him everything,” she says. “Everything they said and did. And then…” She draws one last circle, tiny and tight. “…then I went quiet. Very, very quiet.”
I finally look at her. Really look.
“Quiet is okay, little one,” I tell her softly. “Quiet means you survived.”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t smile. But she doesn’t stand or run, either.
She just keeps tracing circles in the earth, and I stay there with her as the sky darkens and the first stars appear—two damaged souls sharing a silence that feels heavier than words.
And long after we’ve driven away, that silence stays with me.
That night, when Beatrice falls asleep against my shoulder and Daniele curls into her side, I lie awake staring at the ceiling, thinking of Maria.
Of Luca. Of every man who ever bled for me. Of every child who has had to pay for the sins of our world.
This life is merciless. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t forgive.
It takes. And takes. And then takes again.
For the first time in years, I wonder whether Marcello is right. Whether I should walk away from the empire I built with blood and bone. Whether I should choose my wife and my son over the throne I have spent a lifetime carving.
Because if I don’t leave this world soon…
It will take everything good I have ever built. Everything I love.
Everything that still makes me human.