Chapter 24
The name itself is a currency. In the underworld, it is a whisper that stops conversations. It is a signature that authorizes the movement of nations.
I am Gabriel Muratori.
To the world, I am a ghost. A shadow behind shell companies and offshore trusts. But to those who know—to the vipers and the wolves—I am the apex predator. I am the Capo dei Capi. I hold the leash of five of the most powerful syndicates to ever stain the earth with blood and ink.
La Familia. The military arm. We own the private security firms that guard presidents. We own the technology companies that mine the data of billions.
Il Consorzio. The financial spine. We run the banks that launder the sins of the wealthy. We sit on the boards of the Ivy League universities, molding the next generation of corrupt leaders.
La Corte Nera. The eyes and ears. Spies. Assassins. We own the luxury hotel chains where secrets are traded over champagne.
Famiglia Valenti. The iron fist. Weapons manufacturing. Shipping logistics. If a war starts in the Middle East, it is because I authorized the shipment of the bullets.
The Ferraro Clan. The chemical vein. Pharmaceuticals. Narcotics. We cure the sick, and we addict the healthy.
I am the architect of this global machine. I calculate risk. I manage chaos. I dispose of liabilities.
And yet, in the quiet sanctum of my own mind, a single, irritating, high-pitched voice dares to dismantle my authority.
"Gabby!"
The nickname echoed in my skull, bouncing off the walls of my psyche like a rubber ball. Gabby. It was a diminutive. A mockery. It was a name for a golden retriever, not the Godfather of the Muratori legacy.
And yet, I allowed it.
I sat in my office, the only room in this sprawling estate that remained untouched by the invasion.
The mahogany desk was clear. The whiskey in my glass was untouched.
I looked around the room, ensuring that the sanctity of my workspace had not been compromised by pink stickers or plush toys. It was safe. For now.
I stood up, adjusting the cuffs of my suit—bespoke, Italian silk, black as a funeral. I walked to the heavy oak doors and stepped out into the hallway.
The silence of the house had changed.
Before, the Muratori Estate was a mausoleum.
Built in the 18th century by my grandfather—the founder, the man who merged the first three syndicates to cease the trans-Atlantic wars—it was a structure designed to intimidate.
The stone walls held the cold. The corridors held the echoes of orders given and lives taken.
This house held memories.
Memories I refused to live by, yet could not evict.
I walked to the top of the grand staircase and stopped. I leaned against the wrought-iron railing, the metal cool against my palm. I looked down into the foyer.
It was... different.
My grandfather would have burned it to the ground. My father would have shot someone.
I just stared.
The severe black and white marble, imported from Carrara, was now partially obscured by fluffy, dusty-rose rugs. The imposing emptiness, meant to signal austerity and power, was cluttered with velvet sofas and giant, leafy plants that looked ridiculous against the architecture.
It was chaos. It was vibrant. It was alive.
And it made me feel something in the center of my chest. A tightening. A pressure.
I refused to acknowledge it. I categorized it as indigestion. Or perhaps irritation. Yes, irritation was a safe emotion. It was familiar.
My gaze drifted to the center of the pink rug.
There she was.
The anomaly. The variable. The five-foot creature who had hijacked my life.
Aleesha.
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by papers and colored pens.
Her black hair spilled over her shoulders like ink.
Her skin was smooth, unblemished by the scars of the world I lived in.
She was chewing on the end of a pen, her lips puckered in deep concentration as she stared at a piece of paper.
Beside her, glittering under the light of the chandelier she hadn't managed to paint pink yet, was her inhaler. Pink. Bejeweled.
Why did I adopt her?
The word adopt slipped into my mind, but I corrected it instantly. Married. Why did I marry her?
The Heir.
The logic was sound. It was impeccable. The Muratori bloodline required continuation. I needed a vessel. I needed a womb that was genetically compatible, physically healthy, and legally bindable. She was the contract.
But she hadn't given me an heir yet.
Instead, she had given me headaches. She had given me onigiri. She had given me a headache about onigiri.
"I love you."
The memory of her voice, soft and unyielding, surfaced again.
I scoffed, the sound sharp in the empty hallway.
Love.
A civilian delusion. A chemical trick designed to ensure procreation.
She didn't love me. That was a statistical impossibility. She knew nothing of me. She didn't know the blood on my hands. She didn't know that the phone call I took during dinner last night authorized the collapse of a rival cartel in Mexico.
She loved the money.
Of course she did. They all did. Every woman I had ever allowed into my bed, every mistress, every socialite—they loved the power. They loved the proximity to the fire, but they never wanted to burn. They loved the Amex Black Card. They loved the silk sheets.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" she had asked me once, her eyes wide and invasive. "How many? What was the sex like?"
She asked as if it would change anything. As if my past was a romance novel she could edit.
I remembered the urge I had felt then. To tell her proudly, Yes. I am desired. I take what I want.
But then I looked at her face. That innocent, stupidly open face.
And I felt... disgust.
Not at her. But at the proximity.
I remembered the night I tried to take her. The night I laid her down on the same bed where I had fucked a dozen other women—women who knew the game, women who were as hollow and transactional as I was.
And I couldn't do it.
It gave me the ick. A juvenile term, but accurate. It felt like placing a pristine white flower in a jar of sludge. It felt like contaminating the only clean thing in this godforsaken house.
I pushed off the railing.
I descended the grand staircase. My footsteps were heavy, deliberate. I was the master of this house, and I would not tiptoe around pink rugs.
Aleesha looked up as I approached. Her face lit up. It was a reflex, surely. A survival instinct. Smile at the predator, and maybe he won't eat you.
I sat on one of the new sofas—gray, thankfully. I crossed my legs, adjusting the crease of my trousers, and looked down at her. At my wife.
"Gabby!" she chirped. "You're done with your villain work?"
I stared at her. "I was reviewing quarterly projections for the shipping division."
"So... villain work involving boats. Got it."
She went back to scribbling.
"Do you think," she asked, without looking up, "that penguins have knees? Like, inside their bodies? Or are they just legs all the way up?"
I blinked.
This was her mind. While I calculated global domination, she contemplated the anatomy of flightless birds.
"Yes," I answered flatly. "They have knees. They are hidden within their plumage."
"Whoa," she whispered. "Secret knees."
I wanted her to shut up. That was my primary objective. If I answered her questions, she would stop talking. It was a simple input-output exchange.
She was just a vessel. I reminded myself of this. She is the soil for the seed. She is the asset. She is the future mother of my children.
My children.
I looked at her stomach. Flat. Empty.
"Gabriel?"
I snapped my eyes back to her face.
"What?"
"If I was a worm," she started, her eyes serious, "would you still let me live in the mansion? Or would you put me in the garden?"
I sighed. A long, weary exhalation that rattled in my chest.
"If you were a worm, Aleesha, you would not require a mansion. You would require dirt. And I would likely step on you by accident."
"Meanie," she pouted. "I would be a very cute worm. I would wear a tiny pink bow."
"Worms do not have necks for bows."
"I would use glue!"
"Glue is toxic to invertebrates."
"Ugh! You are so logical! Can't you just say, 'Yes, Aleesha, I would build you a tiny worm castle'?"
"No," I said coldly. "Because that is inefficient."
She huffed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.
Then, she moved.
She shuffled forward on her knees until she was directly in front of me.
I stiffened.
She placed her hands on her thighs and looked up at me. Kneeling.
I hated it.
It reminded me of executions. It reminded me of men begging for their lives in warehouses that smelled of rust and bleach. It reminded me of the power I held, which was absolute and terrifying.
But she wasn't begging. She wasn't trembling.
She was just... looking at me. With those wide, brown eyes that seemed to see things I hadn't authorized her to see.
"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice sharp. "Get up. The floor is for dogs."
"The rug is soft," she countered. "And I like looking at you from here. Your nostrils are very symmetrical."
I clenched my jaw. "Get up, Aleesha."
She ignored me. She reached out and placed her small hand on my knee. The heat of her palm seeped through the expensive fabric of my trousers. It was grounding. It was annoying.
"Thank you," she said softly.
I froze.
"For what?" I asked, suspicious. "I have done nothing today but sign death warrants—metaphorically speaking."
"For being a good husband," she said.
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Good husband.
Me. Gabriel Muratori. The man who ordered a hit on a senator last month. A good husband.
"You are delusional," I stated. "I keep you in a cage."
"A very nice cage," she looked around at her pink decorations. "With pizza and heating."
She squeezed my knee.
"You changed my bandages when I scraped my knee," she listed, counting on her fingers. "You let me borrow your card to buy the furniture. You let me keep the Hello Kitty clock even though you hate it."
"The card," I latched onto it. "Yes. The money. You appreciate the resources."
"It's not about the money, Gabby," she shook her head. "It's that you trusted me with it. You didn't ask what I was buying. You just gave it to me."
"I have unlimited credit," I dismissed. "It requires no trust. It is pocket change."
"It matters to me," she insisted.
She shifted, leaning forward, resting her chin on my knee. She looked like a child. She looked like a devotee. She looked like a problem I couldn't solve with a bullet.
"You know," she whispered, her voice taking on a dreamy quality. "I've been thinking."
"A dangerous pastime for you," I muttered.
"If I could go back to the past," she said, ignoring my insult. "Or if I went to another universe... like a multiverse thing? Where you were a baker? or a race car driver? Or a worm?"
She smiled.
"I would always find you."
Silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The grandfather clock in the hall ticked. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I couldn't speak. My throat felt constricted, as if someone had tightened a garrote around my neck.
I would always find you.
It was a statement of inevitability. Of fate.
I hated it.
I hated the weight of it. I hated the responsibility it placed on me. If she found me in every universe, it meant I was doomed to hurt her in every universe. Because that is what I do. I destroy things. I am entropy in a suit.
"You don't know what you are saying," I rasped. "In another universe, I would likely kill you."
"Nu-uh," she shook her head against my knee. "You wouldn't. You're soft, Gabby. Deep, deep, deep down. Under all the grumpiness and the expensive cologne."
She moved her head, resting her fluffy cheek against the side of my leg. She closed her eyes. She looked completely at peace. Completely safe.
Sitting at the feet of the devil, and she felt safe.
"I love you, Gabby," she whispered.
My hand twitched. I wanted to push her away. I wanted to stand up and leave. I wanted to tell her to stop uttering those words because they felt like acid eroding the steel walls I had built around my existence.
"And," she added, her voice barely audible, "don't ever tell me to stop saying it to you."
I looked down at her.
The pink rug. The pink inhaler. The black hair. The blind, idiotic, terrifying faith.
I didn't push her away.
I sat there, frozen in my own home, trapped by a girl who wasn't even the right target, listening to the terrifying sound of my own heart beating in sync with hers.
Chaos. She is pure chaos.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't know how to control it.