Chapter 6
ROMEO
> Observation: subject = fun-sized distraction.
> Threat level: annoyingly high.
> Disruption potential: vulnerability with no patch.
> Outcome prediction: irreversible corruption.
> Note: little miss sunshine’s obsession with Ghostface runs deep.
>Exploitation sequence initiated.
“Jesus.” Rafe glances around the gore-filled woodshed.
Blood, guts, and vomit cover the floor and some of the walls while my chosen instruments of torture lay strewn wherever I last tossed them. I’ll have a mess to clean up later.
“What did these assholes do?” My brother glances at the remaining two carcasses propped against one of my workbenches.
“They touched something they shouldn’t have.” I stare at them, only marginally satisfied as I recall the way I tortured them until they begged for death.
After I slipped out of Gabi’s bed in the middle of the night, I loaded them into a van and set their boat on autopilot in Lake Union. I transferred them onto one of our vessels at the private marina, then made a questionable decision in a long list of them.
I went back to the penthouse, crawled into Gabi’s bed, and held her as she slept.
I didn’t trust myself to sleep beside her, and even if I did, I’m usually too wired at night to rest. Unlike most people, I thrive under the cover of darkness, when the world is silent and my brain comes alive.
So, I lay there and stared at Gabi like a psychopath, swinging on a pendulum between self-loathing and need. Every boundary I gave myself was for her protection, but meeting her as Eros destroyed any restraint I had left.
When I saw what those four assholes intended to do to her, it felt like a declaration of war—because who the fuck would touch her when she clearly belonged to me?
It wasn’t rational. Neither was the demon inside me when he came to life and neutralized them until I could satisfy his bloodlust.
After I brought them back to the island with me, I spent the morning torturing them, long after they gave me what I needed to know.
They were all spoiled, entitled fucks who belonged to what they called Imperium—a secret society at Laurelhaven University. It’s an invite-only organization of legacy students from wealthy alumni families.
Nate was an initiate, and Gabi was his intended target for their ritual. Needless to say, I spent the most time on him.
In the end, they had no loyalty to each other. They were all too eager to sell their brothers out, hopeful it might somehow spare them. They blamed each other for the plan, reasoning that she wouldn’t even remember what happened the next day.
I rewarded them for their honesty by testing the limits of the human body until their suffering reached its natural conclusion.
It tempered some of the rage I’d suppressed from last night, but not nearly enough. If I didn’t have other things to do, I might have drawn it out. But I also had to scrape the cloud feeds of every private security camera near the house on Lake Union.
It’s been thirty-six hours since I last slept, and as soon as I torch what’s left of these assholes, I’m going to crash.
“You want to give me a hand?” I glance at my brother, who’s busy typing out a text on his phone. I don’t know why he’s even hanging around here, but I may as well put him to work.
He grimaces as I grab one of the dead men’s ankles and yank him onto the floor with a thud. With some reluctance, Rafe helps me carry both bodies to the cattle incinerator behind the woodshed.
“I’ll never look at barbecue the same.” He gags.
I shrug, because I’ve been doing this for so long, I don’t even think about it anymore.
Rafe is no stranger to violence and bloodshed, but he doesn’t have much of a stomach for it.
This job isn’t for the faint of heart, but that’s why my father gave it to me.
After years of trying to rewire my brain post-nuking, the doctors sat him down and told him they’d done all they could.
He knew if he left me in that facility, it would have been the end for me. I wasn’t going to live out my days staring at the same four walls.
I was still fucked in the head, but my father brought me back to the island anyway. Then he sat me down and gave me three rules.
Forget the life I had. Don’t leave the island. And do the job he chose for me.
For three years, I only left my wing of the house when it was time to work. He helped me outfit the woodshed and taught me what he knew, then left me to figure out the rest.
I became the most primal version of myself, learning how to hunt and kill. My father thought it would be good for me, and in a way, I guess it was. I was still a liability—prone to explosive mood swings, intrusive thoughts, and darkness that followed me like a shadow. But at least I had a purpose.
My days were spent in isolation and misery, living in chronic pain as I tried to organize the chaos in my mind. I didn’t trust myself around anyone, so I kept my distance, drawing pictures from memory and learning how to hack.
Over time, I gradually reintegrated with my family, accepting my role as the storm cloud in every room. But I grew restless. I wanted more.
I wanted something I could no longer have.
As I close the hatch to the combustion chamber and start the incinerator, it reminds me who I am.
Moody, volatile, and lethal.
It’s a stark contrast to the cotton-candy-pink world Gabi lives in. She might be a daughter of the Cosa Nostra, but she’s nothing like the rest of us.
She’s pure in a way I taint just by looking at her. Gentle. Nurturing. Sensitive. She respects all living things and feels guilty if she so much as injures a bug by accident. She spends her days dreaming and creating. I spend mine destroying and taking.
She’s sunshine, and I’m nightmare fuel.
“Hey.”
I glance up to find Rafe studying me. I let my guard down and forgot he was still here. The last thing I need is any of my brothers trying to decipher the thoughts running rampant in my mind. If they knew what they were, they’d stage an intervention.
“What were you thinking about?” he asks.
“What I’m having for lunch,” I answer blandly.
He releases a breath, finally getting to the reason he’s here.
“Angelo wants to talk to you.”
“Then Angelo should have come down here himself.” I traipse around the woodshed, lock the door, and leave the mess for later.
“You’ve been avoiding him,” Rafe says.
“I avoid everyone.”
Rafe doesn’t take the hint and joins me for the walk back to the house.
Black Stag Island is an eighteen-hundred-acre property that was once settled by our nonno and two other Mafia families. After our father died and Angelo took over, he trimmed the fat. Now, the island is divided into two halves—one belonging to the Stavros family, and the other to the Vitales.
Tenuta del Cervo Nero—The Black Stag Estate—is a mansion built of stone my grandfather imported from Italy.
It was designed to be a multi-generational home, consisting of one central gathering space and individual residences.
An open-air courtyard connects all six wings, and as we pass through, I veer off in the direction of mine while Rafe sighs after me.
“I guess he’ll come to you, then.”
“Yeah, I guess he will.”
I move through the dimly lit corridor into my private space. The lighting in my wing is motion-activated, but I keep it soft and sparse. My brothers often describe it as a dungeon, but it serves a purpose.
When I came back to the island at nineteen, my mother thought it might cheer me up if she redecorated.
Then she realized how little she had to work with.
My eyes had become sensitive to light, and at the time, I had almost daily migraines.
Out of necessity, the walls were painted a dark matte gray, and blackout shades were installed on every window.
My father called it the perfect retreat, but he’d really meant a perfect cage.
He’d named each wing for the qualities his descendants possessed, and mine was Il Lupo, The Wolf.
Loyal, territorial, and lethal.
He told me a wolf’s bonds run deep. They fight to the death for their pack, and when they mate, they mate for life. He said it would always be my nature, but the best thing I could do for myself—and Gabi—was learn to deny it.
For years, I have. But like any primal urge, the hunger pangs never really went away. I’d suppressed them until starvation gnawed at my self-control. Then, like any beast, I started to think, what would one little taste hurt?
I decided I could check up on her once…just to see what her life in Seattle was like.
Once turned into a few dozen times, and it snowballed from there. Every detail fed the need to know more, and soon, it became an obsession.
Watching her from the shadows wasn’t enough. I needed a live feed, and because I wasn’t burdened with moral ambiguity, I indulged myself.
I swore it was as close as I’d ever get to her, but that was a lie.
When I saw her lurking on Discord, she opened the door for me to walk back into her life anonymously.
Talking to her every day had become a bad habit, and I tried to break myself of it more times than I could count. But I never factored in that I’d require the willpower of a saint when she sat on my lap and practically begged me to fuck her.
Now, I know how she tastes, and I can’t erase that from my mind.
As I enter my suite, the sound of footsteps echoes down the corridor behind me.
“Didn’t take you long,” I call over my shoulder.
Angelo follows me into my room, staring me down as I recline in my office chair.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
I reach for the Rubik’s Cube on my desk and scramble it, just to start arranging the pieces again. “I’ve been busy.”
“Clearly,” he clips out. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing?”
“It’s called orientation and permutation.” I solve the cube in under fifteen seconds, bored with the toy and this conversation.
“I’m not talking about whatever fuckery you’re doing with that thing.”
“It’s not fuckery. It’s pattern recognition.”
He scrubs a hand over his face like I’m terminally exhausting him. “Romeo, why the fuck are you interfering in Gabi’s life?”
I rock back in my chair, stretching my arms behind my head. “Your men didn’t tell you?”
He hesitates for a second, caught off guard. “You know?”
“Of course I know.” I yank open my desk drawer. “You can call off your dogs. And while you’re at it, you can tell your hacker to go back to daycare.”
Angelo glances at the casualties—trackers, cameras, microphones, drones, and melted SIM cards. “So I take it that was you fucking with them when you were sending them on wild goose chases all over the city?”
“For a while.” I shrug. “Until it got boring.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “I wouldn’t have you followed if you just told me what you were doing.”
“Why?” I arch a brow. “Worried I’m going to have an episode and make a mockery of the Vitale name?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Do you ask everyone else for a detailed report of what they do when they leave the island?”
He chooses to ignore that point.
“She’s engaged,” he says, as if I don’t already fucking know that.
“I’m aware.”
“To our cousin,” he adds. “The contract is signed.”
“And?”
“Why are you meddling in her life? Moving her out of her apartment. Changing her guard. God knows what else you’ve been doing. I know you like to torment her, Romeo, but this is above and beyond.”
“Gabi wasn’t safe in that apartment, and her guard was incompetent. If Riccardo had two functioning brain cells, he would have known that.”
Angelo studies me. “So you aren’t trying to move in on her behind his back?”
The idea that I owe Riccardo any sort of loyalty is laughable.
She was mine first. She’s always been mine, even when she didn’t know it.
But that’s not what this is really about.
Angelo is in the middle of negotiating the favor of a senator, using Riccardo’s father Emilio as his connection.
It’s a big score with opportunities for backchannel lobbying and securing government contracts.
He wants my assurances that I’m not going to fuck this up somehow.
“Nothing has changed,” I bite out. “Don’t twist yourself up in knots on Riccardo’s behalf.”
“It’s not Riccardo I’m worried about.”
“So what then? Afraid I’ll blow a gasket and hurt Gabi?”
A grim expression settles over his face. “Is that what Dad told you?”
I don’t answer, and the silence that follows is uncomfortable as fuck.
“He must have said something because you did a thorough job of pushing her away.”
“He told me the truth.” I stare through him.
Angelo looks like he wants to argue, but thinks better of it. “You can’t just come back into her life when you feel like it.”
“I already told you, it’s nothing. Now, if you don’t mind, can you fuck off so I can go to bed?”
He lingers for a moment, then nods. “Fine. Get some sleep.”
When he leaves the suite, my focus shifts to the monitors on my desk. I haven’t watched her today, but the echo of my father’s words blunts that spark of temptation.
You aren’t good for her.
Not like this.
He was right. And I know if I ever opened the letter he gave me before he died, there’d be another reminder.
As if I needed one.
My gaze drifts to the scar imprinted on my hand. There’s a certain irony to its haunting permanence.
Gabi has no idea the mood ring she won branded itself onto me during the lightning strike.
She’d tried a few different fingers before realizing it would only fit one. I’d never seen her blush as furiously as she did when I slid it onto my ring finger. She referenced the chart to read my mood, growing even more flustered when I asked her what it was.
Passionate, she said.
It was the last few minutes of innocence we ever had. An hour later, my heart stopped, and life as I knew it ended.
Deliriously tired, I open my phone to check my messages, but there are none. When I pull up the live feeds inside the penthouse, I find Gabi reading a book with Beppe in her lap. She’s wearing a pink lounge set and fake-fur slippers.
Her animal-loving, non-meat-eating conscience would never buy the real ones.
Because she’s light.
Sunshine.
And I can only ever be darkness.