Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Antonella
Gianna sits at the table, phone in hand, face twisted into that expression she gets when the world isn't cooperating with her plans. At nineteen, my sister still believes problems are temporary inconveniences rather than permanent fixtures.
I envy that.
"Nella." She looks up when I walk in. "Something's wrong."
"What happened?"
"My cards." She waves her phone at me like it personally offended her. "All of them. Declined."
My stomach drops.
"I was trying to pay for that skincare set I ordered.
The one with the vitamin C serum? You know, the one I've been saving for?
" She's talking fast now, the way she does when she's working herself up.
"First card, declined. Okay, fine, maybe I forgot to transfer money.
But then the backup card? Declined. And the emergency one Papa gave me for—"
"Gianna." I hold up my hand. "Slow down."
"They're all frozen or something. The bank app won't even load properly. It just keeps giving me error messages."
I pull out a chair. Sit down across from her. My mind is already racing through possibilities, and none of them are good.
"It's probably just a system issue," I hear myself say. "Banks have problems all the time. Remember last month when the ATM ate Claudio's card?"
"This is different." Gianna shakes her head. "I called the customer service line. They put me on hold for twenty minutes and then hung up on me."
"That's just bad customer service."
"Three times, Nella. They hung up three times."
I reach across the table. Squeeze her hand. "I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe there's some kind of fraud alert. You know how paranoid banks get about online purchases."
She doesn't look convinced. Neither am I.
"Just... don't worry about it, okay? I'll figure it out."
"But my serum—"
"I'll handle it." I stand up. Force a smile that feels like cracking glass. "Stay here. I need to find Claudio."
"He's in the garage. Been out there all morning."
I nod. Head for the back door.
"Nella?"
I stop. Turn.
Gianna's biting her lip. Looking younger than nineteen. Looking like the little girl who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms.
"Is everything okay? Like, really okay?"
No. Nothing has been okay for years.
"Everything's fine," I lie. "I'll be right back."
The walk to the garage feels longer than usual. Each step heavier. The bad feeling that started in my chest is spreading now, wrapping around my ribs like a vice.
Cards don't just get declined. Not all of them. Not at once.
Unless someone froze the accounts.
Unless there's no money left to decline.
Unless—
I stop outside the garage door. Take a breath. Push down the panic clawing at my throat.
Think. Don't assume. Ask questions first.
Claudio is under the hood of his car when I walk in. Some project he's been working on for months. A distraction, I think. A way to pretend our family isn't falling apart one piece at a time.
"Claudio."
He doesn't look up. "Busy."
"Gianna's cards got declined."
His hands stop moving. Just for a second. Then he's back to whatever he's doing, but the tension in his shoulders tells me everything I need to know.
"Banks have issues sometimes."
"All three cards? At once?"
Silence.
"Claudio." I step closer. "Look at me."
He straightens. Wipes his hands on a rag. Finally meets my eyes.
My brother is twenty-six. Five years older than me. But right now, he looks like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Don't lie to me."
He throws the rag onto his workbench. "I'm not lying. I don't know what's happening with Gianna's cards."
"But you know something."
He doesn't answer.
The bad feeling crystallizes into something sharper. Something with edges.
"Where's Papa?"
Claudio's jaw tightens. "Out."
"Out where?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying again."
"Nella—"
"Is this about his gambling?" The words come out harder than I intended. "Did he do something? Did he—"
"I don't know." Claudio's voice cracks. "I don't know, okay? He left this morning. Wouldn't tell me where he was going. Wouldn't look me in the eye."
My heart is pounding now. Blood rushing in my ears.
Papa wouldn't look him in the eye.
That's never good. That's never, ever good.
"When did you last check the family accounts?"
Claudio doesn't answer.
"Claudio. When?"
"Last week." He runs a hand through his hair. "They were... low. Lower than they should be. But I thought maybe he was just moving money around. You know how he gets about—"
"How low?"
He won't meet my eyes.
"How. Low."
"Almost empty." The words come out like a confession. "The main account. The backup. Even the one Mama set up before she died. Almost empty."
The garage tilts. I grab the workbench to steady myself.
No. No, no, no.
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I was going to figure it out. I was going to talk to him—"
"He's gambling again." It's not a question. "He never stopped, did he? All those promises after Mama's funeral. All those tears. And he never stopped."
Claudio's silence is answer enough.
I think about Gianna in the kitchen. Worried about her skincare order. Worried about something so small and normal while our father gambles away everything we have left.
I think about Eraldo Romano. My father. The man who held my hand at my mother's funeral and swore he would take care of us.
The man who is destroying us instead.
Bruno
The door to my room clicks open.
I don't turn around. Don't need to. Valentino. The only person in this house who doesn't knock like they're afraid I'll bite.
Maybe because he knows I won't. Or maybe because he doesn't care if I do.
Glass clinks against glass. The sound of whiskey being poured. Two glasses. He's staying.
"You look like shit again," Valentino says.
I wheel around to face him. He's already settled into the leather chair across from my bed, one ankle crossed over his knee, holding out a glass of amber liquid. His eyes assess me without pity.
I take the whiskey. "Fuck off."
He raises his glass. "Salute."
We drink.
Valentino sets his glass on the side table and leans back.
He looks tired. Running security for the Sicily compound while managing the family's European connections—it wears on him.
But he flew in three days ago when Pietro called about some business matter, and now he's here. In my room. Drinking my whiskey.
"Nico's not wrong," he says.
My hand tightens on the glass. "Don't."
"He's not wrong, but he's not right either." Valentino crosses himself. "You're angry. So what? Angry men have led families before."
"Pietro doesn't think so."
"Pietro thinks too much." He picks up his glass again, swirls the liquid. "Always has. That's why he's good at the job. But thinking isn't everything."
I stare at the whiskey in my hand.
"I can't control it," I say. The words come out rough. Honest. I hate honest. "The anger. I can't—"
"Don't want to."
I look up. Valentino's watching me. When we were kids, he'd visit from Sicily and somehow know exactly which of us had broken Nonna's vase or stolen cookies from the kitchen. He never told. Just knew.
"Don't want to," I admit. "Why should I?
They shot me at my own wedding. Put me in a coma for six months.
I wake up and everything's different. Pietro's Don.
Nico's—" I stop. Swallow. "Nico's right.
I hate myself. I hate this chair. I hate that I can't stand up and put my fist through his face for saying it. "
Valentino doesn't flinch. Doesn't offer comfort. Just drinks his whiskey and waits.
That's why I can stand him. He doesn't try to fix me. Doesn't look at me like I'm broken. He looks at me like I'm a man making choices, even if those choices are shit.
"You love them," he says. Not a question.
"Yes." No hesitation. Pietro, Lorenzo, Nico, Vittoria—they're my blood. My family. I'd die for any of them. Kill for them. Have killed for them, before. "But I can't—"
"Can't be around them without wanting to burn everything down."
I drain my whiskey. "Something like that."
Valentino sets down his empty glass. The silence stretches between us, comfortable in a way it never is with my brothers anymore. He doesn't fill it with platitudes or advice. Just lets it sit.
"You want the title," he says finally. "You'll get it."
I look up. Search his face for the lie, the placation. Find nothing but that steady certainty.
"Pietro won't—"
"Pietro will." Valentino uncrosses his legs, leans forward with his elbows on his knees. "He never wanted it. You know this. He took it because someone had to, and you were—" He stops. Crosses himself again.
"There's work to do first," Valentino continues. "The anger. The—" He gestures at me, at the wheelchair, at everything I've become. "This. You need to get control of it. Not kill it. Control it. Use it. Angry men lead families, Bruno. Uncontrolled men destroy them."
"And you think I can? Get control?"
"I think you're a Sartori." He says it like it's an answer. Maybe it is. "I think you were the best of us before. I think you can be again. Different. But the best."
Something cracks in my chest. Not hope. I don't do hope anymore. But something close to it.
I look away. Out the window. The grounds are dark, just the security lights casting pools of yellow across the manicured lawn. Somewhere out there, guards patrol. Cameras watch. The fortress my father built to keep us safe.
It didn't keep me safe. Nothing did.
"Valentino." My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. Try again. "I need to ask you something."
He waits.
I hate this. Hate the words forming in my mouth. Hate that I need to say them. Asking for help feels like admitting defeat. Like proving Nico right. That I'm too weak, too broken, too consumed by my own shit to function.
"Stay," I say. The word tastes like ash. "For a while. Here."
Valentino's expression doesn't change. He just nods. "I'll send Dante back to Sicily. He can manage things there for as long as needed."
Dante. Lorenzo's right hand. His consigliere, his enforcer, his closest friend outside the family. Dante's been in Chicago for years now, running Lorenzo's darker operations while Lorenzo plays the legitimate businessman with his restaurants.
"Lorenzo won't like that," I say.
"Lorenzo will manage." Valentino stands, moves to the window. His reflection ghosts across the glass. "Dante is important to him, yes. But if I ask, Lorenzo won't argue. He knows what I'm doing. Why I'm doing it."
Because Lorenzo still loves me. Even now. Even after everything. He still shows up.
I hate him for it sometimes.
"Things between you and Lorenzo," Valentino says, still facing the window. "They're not good."
"No."
"They will be. Eventually." He turns back to me. "Family breaks. Family heals. That's what we do."
I don't answer. Can't. The lump in my throat won't let me.
Valentino crosses the room. Stops in front of my chair. For a moment, I think he's going to put his hand on my shoulder, offer some gesture of comfort. Instead, he just looks down at me.
"Tomorrow," he says. "You face them again. Pietro, Lorenzo, Nico. You sit at that table and you show them you're still here. Still fighting. Still a Sartori."
"And if I can't control it? The anger?"
"Then you leave the room. You come find me. We drink whiskey and you try again the next day." He shrugs. "It's not complicated, Bruno. It's just hard."
Hard. Yes. Everything is hard now. Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. Wheeling myself through halls that used to echo with my footsteps. Facing my brothers who look at me like I'm a ghost. Like I'm already dead and just haven't realized it yet.
But Valentino's here. Staying. For me.
I won't say thank you. Can't. The words would choke me.
He seems to understand anyway. He always does.
"Get some sleep," he says, heading for the door. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
The door closes behind him.