24. Antonio
Chapter twenty-four
Antonio
" N aomi," she whispers, her eyes locked on mine. The word hangs between us, heavy with questions I don't want to fucking answer.
I can feel her gaze trying to pry my skull open, digging for thoughts she has no right to see. And Christ, I'm glad she can't. She'd run screaming from the hurricane of darkness swirling inside me.
The scent of meatballs that filled me with something like peace moments ago now turns my stomach. Those happy memories? Gone. Scorched and replaced with the ones I never speak about. The ones that claw at my insides during the darkest hours when sleep won't come. During daylight, I bury them so deep they can't control me.
Or so I fucking thought.
"Your father isn't only a proud man," I growl, each word dragged out like it's fighting to stay buried. "He's pathologically jealous. He kept Naomi's father close because he suspected betrayal. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer' wasn't just a saying to him—it was his goddamn religion."
I pause, jaw clenching as memories flood back, each one bitter as bile. "Now I wonder if maybe he didn't think your mother and my mother had something with him."
The thought sends rage bubbling through my veins, hot and pulsing like lava. "It was jealousy so fucking blinding it consumed him," I continue, voice barely above a growl. "Like his pride had been gutted with a rusty blade."
My teeth grind together so hard I can hear them, muscles in my neck straining with the effort of keeping control. But I force myself to keep going, pulling words out one by one like shrapnel from an open wound.
"My mother arrived at that moment," I say, the memory playing behind my eyes with sickening clarity. "She heard him, and she started screaming at him that this wasn't part of their deal."
I can still hear her desperation. The terror. "He called her names, raised his voice, and when he raised his hand, I didn't see red. I saw nothing. Pure fucking darkness. I lunged at him, ready to tear him apart with my bare hands. His men swarmed me while he just stood there watching, like it was some kind of show put on for his entertainment."
My throat tightens at the memory of their hands choking me, my skin crawling with phantom fingers. "I fought through them, clawed my way back to him. By then, he had a gun pointed at my mother." The fear from that moment resurfaces—raw, primal—thinking I was about to lose her. That it would have been my fault. Again. "He looked at me with something like respect," I spit, the words acid on my tongue. "But also something else. And that's the first time he burned me."
I don't elaborate, but the memory sears through me anyway. The smell of my own flesh burning, my mother's screams cutting through me like knives, pain so intense it transcended pain and became something else entirely. The scars on my back throb in response, as if awakened by the memory of their creation.
"What do you mean?" Her voice is small, fragile.
"My back." The words taste like ash. "He burned me, then carved patterns with his knife. I refused to scream. But my mother did. Screamed and sobbed until I finally broke. Told him what he wanted to hear. Apologized for daring to protect her."
A bitter laugh escapes me, the sound closer to breaking glass than anything human. "He hugged me afterward. Said I'd proven myself to him. That he never would have actually hurt my mother. Never would have hit her or shot her. That his demands about Naomi and his reaction to my mother were just tests. Tests I passed with 'flying colors.'"
I shake my head, disgust rising like flood waters. Isabella watches me intently, her brow furrowed with something that looks dangerously like pity. I can see the questions swimming in her eyes, but I can't stop now. The poison's been festering too long.
"My mother looked at me like she wasn't sure either," I continue, voice rough with the emotions I've spent years burying. "And he spoke to her softly, promising this was all planned. That he should have told her. That no one needed to be afraid. That he married her because he respected her, because he cared for her."
I close my eyes briefly, his laughter echoing in my skull. It seemed so real, so fucking genuine. But I know better now. I know the monster behind the mask.
When I reopen my eyes, the despair in Isabella's gaze makes my chest tighten in ways I don't deserve. "He told me he loved my mother and would never raise a hand to her. Said he was proud of me. That I had what it takes to be his son. His heir. To keep everyone safe."
I feel her studying me, searching for something. Truth? Lies? Weakness? I swallow hard, throat constricting. "Those words meant something to me back then," I admit, the confession barely audible. "I wanted so fucking badly to believe him. To think I could earn his respect. His pride."
Even saying it now, I feel the hollowness spread through my chest, the sickening realization that his 'pride' came with a price tag written in blood and scars. That becoming the son he wanted meant becoming something monstrous—something I've spent years perfecting.
I can still feel the phantom burn of that first lesson, the sting of the blade tracing patterns only he could see. And yet, in that moment, with his arms around me, I'd felt a flicker of something like hope. A desperate, pathetic longing for the father I never had.
The fucking irony…craving approval from the man who'd just tortured me. But that was his power. He twisted emotions, desires, loyalties until north was south and pain was love.
Isabella's eyes overflow with sorrow and grief—like she's mourning someone she never really knew. Is it me she's grieving? Or the father she thought she had? Either way, I don't need her pity or her understanding, not when I've become the monster I swore to destroy. Not when I've hurt her in ways that would make even her father proud.
"Where was I?" Isabella finally asks, voice breathless and small. "How did I not see what was happening?"
"You were dancing," I say softly, the memory of her twirling, hair flying, laughter ringing out, a blade between my ribs. "Your father was a master at making everyone see exactly what he wanted them to see."
I need to keep talking, need to run from these memories that claw at me like rabid dogs. Even if she doesn't believe what comes next.
"My second truth?" My heart pounds like it's trying to escape my chest, palms slick with sweat. "I wrote music for you."
"Wh-what?" she stammers, eyes searching mine, trying to separate truth from the web of lies between us.
"Music," I repeat, the word barely a whisper. A confession torn from somewhere deep. "I wrote pieces for you. More than one. Several. Many. Light and airy and filled with all the fucking longing I couldn't express any other way."
I force myself to hold her gaze, even as the truth claws its way up my throat. "I think your father always knew how I felt about you. Even before I had the slightest clue myself. And he played me like those piano keys."
A heavy sigh escapes me, the weight of realization crushing. "All those doubts, maybe even that revenge—it's him playing with my mind, making me see how much I fucked everything up. How much I've always been his puppet, dancing on bloody strings."
The weight of it all presses down like a mountain of stone, suffocating, crushing. I don't want to keep thinking about my mistakes, my failures, the blood on my hands.
And yet there's one last truth—the one I've never shared with anyone. The one that might change how she sees me forever. But I have to tell her. The words burn in my throat, acid and fire, demanding release.
This truth I've kept buried under mountains of pain and rage. Something her father knew and used to manipulate me from the very beginning. One of the reasons I sought his protection, desperate to become someone he'd be proud of. Someone who could stand tall and make damn sure no one—no one—would ever hurt what was mine again.
"I had a brother."
The words hang in the air between us, three simple syllables that cost me everything to speak aloud.
The words hang in the air like smoke after gunfire. Isabella stares at me, those eyes that have haunted my fucking dreams for months now wide with shock, her lips parted like they were last night when I made her come apart beneath my tongue.
The firelight cuts across her face, turning shadows into demons that match the ones clawing at my insides. I can feel them scraping beneath my skin, taunting me with truths I've buried deeper than bodies in the Mediterranean.
Because I wasn't strong enough. Not then. Not now.
My brother.
"What did you just say?" Her voice barely reaches me, soft as a blade sliding between ribs. The way she's looking at me—like I'm something worth understanding—makes me want to put my fist through the nearest wall.
I swallow hard, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. This isn't the confession I planned. This is weakness. This is giving her ammunition she could use to destroy whatever's left of me. But the words are already climbing up my throat like they've been locked away too fucking long.
"Angelo," I rasp, the name scraping like gravel. "My father was higher up in the Falcone family—but he wanted to leave. He thought he could. Fucking idiot didn't realize that once you leave, there's no protection anymore." I pause, muscles coiling tight beneath my skin. "That's why I'm changing this. Why nobody leaves my organization without backup."
I shake my head, hating how my brain is trying to drag me back to the boardroom instead of facing the blood-soaked memories threatening to drown me. My scarred fingers close around the tumbler of whiskey, knuckles white with strain.
"One day, the Falcone's sworn enemies raided our house and killed my little brother."
The words rip out of me like bullets, and suddenly I'm there again—the scent of blood thick enough to choke on, gunpowder burning my nostrils, screams that still echo in my nightmares.
I can see Angelo's eyes staring up at me, empty and accusing at the same time. My little brother with his gap-toothed grin and bruised knees, the kid who used to follow me around like I hung the fucking moon. The same kid whose blood soaked through my shirt as I held him, begging him to stay.
The kid I failed.
The whiskey burns as I down it in one swallow, embracing the fire that spreads through my chest. Better than the ice that's been there since that day. Better than the hollow echo where my heart used to beat.
"My father begged them not to," I continue, voice dropping to something darker than hatred. "He fucking begged them... he didn't fight them. Didn't put his body in front of him." The glass shatters in my grip, shards digging into flesh already mapped with scars. I don't flinch. "I respected him until I saw how he was no match against the violence. He froze."
Blood drips from my palm to the floor, crimson on stone. Isabella's gaze follows it, and there's something in her expression that makes my chest constrict. Something too close to understanding.
I don't deserve her understanding. I don't want it.
"But as I look at you, Isabella," I force myself to meet her eyes, to face the damage I've done, "I see the truth I've been avoiding, the truth I can't escape anymore."
The words come out like they're being dragged over razors, each one leaving me bleeding. "You were right. About me. About everything. I know I can't change the past, no matter how badly I want to. I can't undo the damage I've done, the fucking pain I've put you through. I've turned into the very thing I hated, the monster I never wanted to become."
My brother would hate the man I became. He wanted out—away from the death, away from the fear. Instead, he got both in spades.
I take a breath, feeling like I'm inhaling broken glass. Isabella's scent—honeysuckle and something uniquely her—wraps around me, making this confession more intimate than it has any right to be. "And I don't know if there's any going back from that. The darkness, the rage, the fucking agony... they're part of me now, just like the scars I carry. They define me, remind me of the bastard I've let myself become."
My voice drops to something raw and wounded, a sound I barely recognize as my own. "I'm sorry, Bell'cenda. I know it's not enough, that it can't erase the hell I've put you through. The ways I've hurt you, broken your trust, shattered the love you once had for me."
She flinches at the old nickname, and the pain in her eyes hits harder than any bullet I've ever taken.
"In the end, your father got what he wanted. He turned me into the weapon he always intended me to be. And I lost. I lost myself, my soul, everything that ever fucking mattered."
I step closer, the space between us charged with something more dangerous than hatred. "But I won't let him hurt you anymore. Not you, not Elena, not Naomi, not anyone in this goddamn fortress. I'll burn everything to ash before I let him touch any of you."
My blood is on the floor between us now, a stark reminder of the violence that lives in my veins. I search her eyes, looking for a glimmer of what we were before flames and betrayal rewrote our story, knowing I deserve nothing but her scorn.
She doesn't move away when I reach for her, my bloodied hand hovering near her face without touching. The heat between us has nothing to do with the fire crackling in the hearth and everything to do with the spark that's never died, no matter how hard I tried to drown it in hatred.
"This is my burden to bear," I tell her, each word carved from the darkness I've embraced. "To live with what I've done to the one person I would have burned the world to protect."
I let my hand drop, forcing my walls back into place. The Beast doesn't get redemption. The Beast doesn't get second chances.
But maybe, he can still save her.
Even if it means sacrificing whatever's left of his soul.