Chapter One
BIRDS SANG IN the thick green trees as they danced through the dense, overgrown gardens outside the magnificent old villa some thirty minutes from the center of Palermo, Sicily.
But what Giovanbattista D’Amato—called Jovi by the few who dared address him directly—noticed despite their chatter were the sounds that should not have been there, soft beneath the usual noises he knew so well.
It seemed he had a guest.
When he was not the kind of man who encouraged visitors, especially of the uninvited persuasion.
Something that must surely be clear by the untended sprawl of gnarled oleander and fig trees that had grown up around the gates down near the road and made the entrance to the villa seem all the more secretive and, therefore, more provocative.
The villa was perfectly preserved and stunning, as everyone always whispered in shocked tones, despite everything.
Teenagers and tourists who thought they might poke around a place with such a riveting, tragic past were usually scared off by their own overactive imaginations long before they made it to the villa’s front door.
The ghosts that haunted the villa and its quiet slide toward a graceful, genteel ruin knew only too well how to occupy a mind and sneak deep into an unguarded moment.
Jovi knew that better than anyone.
He heard the car out in the front of the villa, on the winding drive that had given way to the demands of changing seasons and the scrubby mountainside that stretched above and below, though nothing could conceal the bones of the estate, a crowning achievement of the Sicilian Baroque period.
Neither time nor negligence could dim its glamour in the slightest.
Jovi had certainly tried.
He heard the slam of the car’s heavy door, yet he stayed where he was. He sat perfectly still in the shade of the towering oak tree some gardener long-dead had planted here in another lifetime, as if he was contemplating nothing more than the easy mysteries of a warm, Sicilian afternoon.
But that was only the impression others might form if they saw him here, sitting so quietly.
And only those who didn’t know him.
Because anyone who knew Giovanbattista D’Amato knew exactly who and what he was. Ice, straight through.
Ice where other men were flesh. Ice in place of organ and bone.
He remained still. He supposed that it was possible that somewhere, back in the dimness of the youth he did not allow himself to recall too closely—or too often, lest he give those ghosts free rein—he had gone ahead and taught himself these skills he used without thought, now.
The ability to sit so still that the birds themselves mistook him for a statue. A stone like any other.
The capacity to wait. To do nothing else.
To simply wait, without moving. Without breathing too much, lest it make his chest move and differentiate him from the stone walls.
To easily parse the various sounds that reached his ears.
The birds. The breeze and the trees above.
The rustle of small creatures in his gardens, long since surrendered to riots of rogue blossoms and weeds—a rebellion against the meticulously maintained, award-winning planting concepts that had once been synonymous with the villa and its residents.
He identified all of those, set them aside, and listened for the heavy fall of a man’s leather shoe inside the graceful, empty rooms of the once-proud villa that rose up behind him.
Jovi did not lock the place. Why should he?
Terrible things had already happened here and there was no pretending otherwise.
There was nothing to steal that he could not replace, assuming that he could be bothered.
To his way of thinking, anyone was welcome to drop in.
Unannounced and heavily armed, if they wished.
Though they might wish otherwise. Quickly.
He was not concerned about people entering this place where he lived when he was in Sicily. Because he knew that the difficulty was not in the entering. But in the leaving.
Once someone invaded his space, they would leave it again only if he wished it.
His were the only wishes that he would allow to prevail on this sprawling parcel of land, set up on the rugged mountainside, claimed by men who must have imagined it was ever truly possible to escape the chokehold of Sicily.
Jovi knew better.
He heard feet on one side of the duel staircases in their Sicilian Baroque style, all high drama as they marched away from each other and then angled back to meet at the great door.
And as the footsteps drew closer, he heard the faintest sound. Like a rough laugh, checked before it was anything more than a breath.
No need, then, to worry about his response.
He waited instead. And when the footsteps drew even closer, barely making scraping sounds across overgrown flagstones crafted by the finest stonemakers in Sicily and left to the whims of the sun, there was another laugh.
This one untethered, likely because its owner thought he was alerting Jovi to his presence.
The way he always did.
“I don’t know how you live in this haunted place,” came the intruder’s familiar, disparaging voice.
Not an intruder, Jovi corrected himself. Not exactly.
He did not bother to turn around. He knew who his uninvited guest was. Had known, in truth, the moment he’d heard that particular heavy cadence of footfalls from inside the villa.
Carlo D’Amato, his cousin. His oldest cousin and his uncle’s favorite son. This meant Carlo was also considered the sotto capo of what some news organizations liked to call the D’Amato crime family, but only because they dared be disrespectful from the distance afforded them through newsprint.
To those who knew better than to show disrespect, they were known as Il Serpente, wily enough to outwit the many criminal investigations that had plagued families like theirs since back in the 1800s. Not to mention the rival criminal organizations who muscled in where they could.
Most shivered at the very thought of Il Serpente, a true family organization built on blood ties, because blood brokered loyalty. Blood was less likely to be bought.
Jovi was a part of this family, but not the way Carlo was. Because Jovi’s father, the traitor Donatello, had betrayed his own brother—bringing dishonor to the family name and very nearly handing them all over to the authorities who stalked them.
This was a stain upon them all. Jovi alone of his father’s family had been spared.
So he was family, yes. Blood where it counted. More importantly, he was a weapon.
The weapon, perhaps.
“Did you hear me?” Carlo’s voice rose in pitch as he swung himself around the chair so he could look down at Jovi from the front.
Allowing Jovi to watch, fascinated as always, as this big, powerful man who feared nothing and no one—a fact Carlo liked to broadcast whenever possible—looked more than a little wary at the sight of his supposedly lower-ranked cousin.
The way everyone did if they had the misfortune of seeing him.
Because there was rarely any reason to see Jovi that did not involve pain.
Carlo, as ever, could not hold Jovi’s gaze. He looked away, and his shoulders hunched, more signs that he was intimidated by the cousin he liked to brag that he did not find frightening in the least.
He even spat on the ground, as if Jovi was a superstition in need of clearing. “You’re a spooky stronzo,” he muttered.
Jovi only waited. Carlo knew exactly why Jovi lived here.
This was the home Jovi’s father had inherited from his own father, as he had been the oldest D’Amato son in his generation.
Donatello had been too soft for the family business, however, according to the stories everyone liked to tell.
Jovi’s grandfather had used to say that he had two heirs.
Donatello for the public family legacy, charming and academic and sophisticated. And the crafty, cunning, and wholly soulless Antonio for the family business, where sophistication was not required but brutality was celebrated.
Antonio had wanted nothing to do with this place after he had meted out bitter family justice upon Donatello, his wife, and his two young girls.
Jovi did not allow himself to think of them in other terms. His father and mother. His sisters.
They had all lost the right to those connections when Donatello betrayed their family.
He rarely permitted himself to think of them at all.
It was his cousin who seemed to enjoy bringing up ancient history whenever he came here, always pointing out the empty, echoing rooms. Always making certain to remind Jovi of the things he opted not to remember.
Or, perhaps, reminding Jovi of his roots in the only way he could without risking Jovi’s displeasure.
Despite what Carlo liked to tell the rest of Sicily, and likely himself, both Jovi and Carlo knew very well that Carlo would never dare to actually insult his cousin. Here, in these private moments, Carlo’s cowardice was always clear.
Carlo swallowed. Then took his time looking Jovi’s way again. “Patri has a job for you,” he said.
This, too, was obvious. Only a directive from Antonio himself could compel Carlo to visit this place of shame and despair, a stain upon the family name.
There was no possibility that Carlo would ever come here to spend time with Jovi, to catch up or whatever it was people did when they had all of those social connections Jovi had never been permitted.
Even if Carlo wasn’t terrified of Jovi, they would never connect in this way. Jovi shared blood with his family and their ancestors, here in Sicily and across the water in Calabria.
He did not share anything else.
That would require that he be made of something more than ice, and his uncle had made certain that he remained too cold to melt. Ever.
In truth, he preferred it that way.