Chapter 2
Matteo
Confession is for the guilty.
In my family, we don’t confess.
We kneel for show.
We pray because tradition says so.
We tuck our sins into rosaries and stitch them into our suits.
The stained-glass saints watch from above. They always do
This church has seen worse, but nothing bloodier than my parents’ wedding. A day meant for champagne ended in blood, after the O’Briens attacked on holy grounds. Instead of winning, they started a war. Not only did they attack my parents' wedding day, they killed my grandmother.
I lean back, the pew creaking under my shoulders. The church smells of wax, incense, and control, the Messina scent. I roll the beads slowly, though I haven’t prayed without sarcasm since I was fourteen, but it makes my mother happy.
Our father always told us. Your mother is the woman who will love you no matter what you do in life. She will always be there. Keep her happy always. You upset my wife, you will be punished.
That was enough for me never to hurt her.
To my left, Marco nudges me with his knee. “You’re gonna burn if you keep pretending like you believe in anything.”
“Pretending?” I smirk. “I’m in church. I believe in the performance.”
He huffs under his breath, then leans forward like he’s repenting. Knowing him, he’s trying to remember which girl he took home last night. On my right, Milo’s halfway through humming the theme to The Godfather under his breath.
I elbow him in the ribs, and he just grins.
That’s us. Matteo, Marco, Milo.
The Messina triplets. Born under a red moon—poetic mafia bullshit. Knives in our hands before razors. Secrets in our lungs instead of air, but in here, we’re altar boys in designer suits.
In our granddad’s kingdom.
This is my mother’s uncle’s church, where she grew up and where she insists we come every Sunday.
Our mother’s parents died when she was a little girl, and her uncle raised her. She told us we are to call him Grandad because no matter what he was a father to her.
Giovanni Messina sits up front, silver cane across his knees, sharp suit catching the candlelight.
He and Grandmother came to this church long before any of us.
My father was born into this world. My mother wasn’t.
She married into it under these same vaulted ceilings.
Grandmother died at their wedding. In this family, blood always stains the celebration.
Up ahead, our parents sit together like no one else exists. My mother leans into my father’s side, whispering something that makes him smirk, then laugh quietly. They’re not shy about public affection, never have been. Even with us behind them, even in God’s house.
They were a mafia love story long before I knew what love even looked like.
Maybe that’s why I’m fucked up. Because I can’t stop seeing her
That girl.
The one with the ugly ring and the cliff between us.
Aoife.
I can still feel the wind clawing at my hair, the wild panic in her pretty blue eyes, the sharp breath between her lips when I pulled her back from the edge and I hate how much I liked it.
She smelled of blood, salt, rebellion—and flowers that shouldn’t have hit so hard. She looked like she wanted to kill me and kiss me in the same breath, and something in me shifted.
She’s Irish.
I remind myself again.
She’s a fucking O’Brien.
A legacy of the man who ended my grandmother’s life.
A name whose lips should never ever touch mine.
She’s trouble.
She’s beautiful.
She’s not mine!
“You thinking about her again?” Marco murmurs.
I don’t flinch. “Shut up.”
They caught me watching her from the car the other night. It took them only seconds to know who she was. That was when they said it. Dad will kill you. They’re right, he will the moment he knows an Irish girl has my attention.
“You’ve got that twitch in your jaw,” Milo says. “Same one you get when you’re lying to yourself and rage is building inside you.”
I glare at both of them.
“I pulled her off the cliff. I didn’t fuck her.” I close my eyes, knowing God is looking down at me in anger for swearing in his house.
“Yet,” they say in unison.
I elbow them both before they can finish what they were going to say. The question is whether my brothers will stand with me—or throw me to the men who’ll skin me alive if I touch her.
The music shifts, and the congregation rises. Our granddad starts another reading and smiles down to the three of us. We know he hates our life in the violent world, but he also knows who his niece married.
My grandfather’s eyes flick back to us from the front pew.
A look that means behave. A look that means remember who you are.
After the final hymn, after the fake communion and empty prayers, we step outside into the chilled morning. The air in Blackstone Hollow always smells like firewood and money.
We gather near the marble steps, where Grandfather waits, surrounded by bodyguards and family.
“Boys.” He nods for us to approach. “Blackstone Academy,” he says, resting both hands on the silver wolf head of his cane. “You’re walking into a world which already belongs to you, but power means nothing if you don’t show people how to fear it.”
Marco shifts beside me, Milo crosses his arms. I stare straight ahead, thinking of Aoife’s eyes. Fuck, one small interaction between us, one which was less than five minutes, and I already remember her fucking eyes, sky blue eyes.
“The Irish and Russians will always want what we built,” Grandfather continues. “The academy doesn’t belong to them. It never will.”
“What about alliances?” Marco asks. “Deals?”
“Deals are meant to be broken,” he says. “Power isn’t. You don’t marry into power. You take it and if someone tries to give it to you, you ask yourself what they want in return.”
The words settle like concrete in my ribs, because getting mixed with Aoife O’Brien will be dangerous not just for me, but for her too. The last thing her Uncle wants is for her to be mixed with a Messina boy.
The ring on her finger says she belongs to someone else. She stands on the edge of a cliff, and if this is a game, I’m already too close to the drop.
“You go to school, show them you rule and no one else. You have fun with the girls, because I know you will, and don’t tell your mother I said that either.”
The three of us start laughing, mom would hate him for saying it.
Footsteps crunch behind us on the church gravel. “Don’t you three look handsome, like always.” I don’t need to turn to know who it is. Rosa.
She walks up beside us like she’s always belonged there, because she has.
Her red curls pulled back tight, gold earrings, leather jacket over her sundress like she might kill a guy and then ask to borrow your lighter.
Rosa De Luca—Sebastian’s daughter, our father’s right hand, our shadow since we could walk.
Marco grins, throws an arm around her shoulders. He won’t admit it, but he wants her, not sure why he won’t make a move. “You stalking us again?” he asks.
“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I was here before you even finished buttoning your shirt this morning.” She slaps his chest, and I start laughing.
“You wish you could button my shirt,” he shoots back.
She elbows him, hard enough to make him wince.
I watch them for a moment, Rosa and my brothers, the ease of it, the years between us stitched into every insult and smirk. She knows all our secrets. She’s seen us bleed, fight, lose, and get back up, and instead of running, she learned how to walk with a blade hidden in her boot.
She turns to me, finally. “You good?”
I nod and say, “You look tired.” We know she doesn't sleep much; the past keeps her awake.
“I look dangerous,” she corrects, grinning. “There’s a difference.” She’s not wrong. Uncle Sebastian made sure after what happened that no one would dare come near her.
We all start walking down the hill together, toward the clearing behind the church.
Smoke’s already rising, someone’s lit the grills.
The scent of seasoned meat, charcoal, and garlic hits me before I even see the crowd.
Our entire family is here. Cousins, uncles, wives, kids, bodyguards who double as cousins.
Everyone wears Sunday best, but the laughter and shouting makes it feel more like a block party than a mafia gathering.
This is how we do it. Threats and warnings in the morning, before the calm of the church. Now, steak and laughter in the afternoon.
Uncle Sebastian stands near the fire pit, cigarette tucked behind his ear, apron around his waist, flipping ribs. Our father walks over to him, stealing a bite off the grill, and Sebastian swats at him with tongs.
“Your old man’s still trying to steal my crown,” Sebastian says, pointing the tongs at us.
“You haven’t had a crown since high school,” my father fires back. They both laugh like the last twenty years didn’t include blood on warehouse floors and bodies in rivers.
Our mother’s sitting at the long picnic table under the oak tree, sipping from a wine glass that never seems to empty. She waves us over, but I veer off, grabbing a drink first. I need something cold in my hand to drown out the heat crawling back under my skin.
Because she’s in my head again.
Aoife.
It’s not just that she’s beautiful. Plenty of girls are.
It’s not just the eyes, or the mouth, or the fall.
It’s the silence.
She didn’t scream when she slipped or cry when I caught her. She looked at me like I was a bullet she’d already taken once.
“Are you going to keep brooding or join the living?” Rosa asks, appearing at my side.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Your body is. Your mind’s off climbing cliffs and chasing shadows.”
I say nothing.
She stares at me for a beat too long. “Who is she?” she asks, like she already knows. “You look torn between putting her in the ground and pulling her into your bed.”
“You sound like Marco.” Knowing very well he’s told her, because that guy tells her everything and I mean every fucking everything.
She walks off without saying anything, grabbing a plate and slapping food onto it like she’s been starving since yesterday.
I make my way to the edge of the party, leaning against a tree, watching the others.
Laughter rings out, our little cousins chasing each other with sticks, our older cousins, who are about to finish Blackstone Academy and get into the world of business.
Our uncles deep in arguments about a football game, our mother dancing barefoot in the grass while Father watches her like she hung the moon.
That’s when I see them both, Grandfather and Granddad, sitting in their chairs. Their backs straight, napkins folded neat across their laps. Talking old stories about how the city has changed, but the Messina family looks after it.
Grandfather starts talking about his first mafia job, and everyone leans in to hear. Even Rosa. The old stories still burn. A blood-soaked foundation we’re expected to build on. The story continues, and everyone listens like it’s the first time they’ve heard it. It’s not.
But my mind stays on the cliff girl. The one I pulled back. The one whose name should mean nothing but enemy.
What I want to know is whether she tastes as good as she smells.
I drag in a breath and lie to myself, a secret with the enemy, a girl already promised, won’t hurt anyone. I want to believe it, but I know I can’t no matter how much I want it.
I need to stay the fuck away.