Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Pain drags me from the depths of unconsciousness. It’s a slow, agonizing return, my body heavy and sluggish. My muscles twitch, the last remnants of electricity still licking at my nerves. My breath shudders as I force my eyes open.
The world swims. The ceiling above me is an ornate fresco, blurred and shifting, as if mocking me. My fingers twitch against the cold, unforgiving floor. Marble. Expensive. Familiar.
I swallow hard and push up onto my elbows. The grogginess is suffocating, a thick haze clouding my thoughts, making it harder to piece together where I am—how I got here.
Then it hits me.
The compound. The gunfire. Antonia
I let my gaze dart around the room, lingering on the luxurious Persian rugs, the antique grandfather clock that has been passed down through the generations, before finally resting on the woman who sits regally in my father’s worn high-back leather chair that sits heavily at one end of the grand reception room where my father often heard the problems of the locals he protected.
This isn’t right.
My heart pounds against my chest as my gaze locks on the one person that has brought us to this moment. I want to blink, want to convince myself that I am somehow suffering from a hallucination. But the woman standing before me is undeniably my sister, Antonia.
She’s older now, but I recognize her dark eyes—eyes we both inherited from our father.
Her long dark hair is pulled back in a sleek bun beneath her hat, her ruby-red lips curving into a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. A black suit, tailored to fit her body, clings to her like a second skin, accentuating her regal bearing.
Antonia stares down at me with eyes as hard as diamonds.
“Surprised, Vitali?” she asks with an edge of mockery in her voice. She tilts her chin, holding herself straight, poised like a venomous snake ready to strike.
“H…how…?” The words stutter from me in disbelief. There are no words for what she has become.
“Welcome home, fratello maggiore ,” she purrs, leaning back in her chair, unblinking. Her carefully painted black nails tap along the rim of the crystal whiskey glass in her hand. “It’s been too long.”
A rush of memories overwhelms me. This is my little sister. The girl who used to clutch my hand tightly on her first day of school, is the dark shadow now ruling the Italian underworld.
For years I have blamed myself for leaving my mother and Antonia behind. For not trying harder to get them out. For being a coward and not coming back for them sooner .
All that blame, for nothing.
An icy shiver rakes down my spine at what this dark reunion implies.
“All this time.” I shake my head, eyes closing as an invisible hand clenches my heart painfully. “All this time, it was you.”
Antonia laughs softly—a chilling sound that echoes through the ornate room.
“Oh, dear brother,” she drawls, rising from her chair. She steps closer, her stiletto heels clicking ominously against the marble floor. Behind her trail two hulking bodyguards, their faces obscured by dark glasses. “I hoped it would be longer before you found out.”
Antonia sighs almost regretfully. She reaches out a hand adorned with a glistening serpent ring. Instinctively, I pull back.
“This is not you, Antonia.” My voice is a desperate whisper reverberating through the grandeur she surrounds herself with.
The chilling chuckle that falls from my sister’s lips makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Oh Vitali, dear brother, you knew so little about me.”
Never once have I thought the relentless trail of bloodshed sweeping through Italy would trail back to her. The first word that echoes in my mind is traitor, yet a part of me shudders at the thought. Despite how easily she and my mother cast that word upon me.
It is a strange sensation, seeing my once loving sister turn beastly. I can’t decide what cuts deeper. The deception or the betrayal.
“Apparently not,” I sneer, disgust tracing over my lips. “But it is all going to end today. ”
Antonia smiles smugly, her gaze darkening as she snaps her fingers.
My gaze moves quickly as the creak of the heavy door shudders through the room, echoing my pounding heart. Adrian and Kenzo are dragged in, their hands handcuffed in front of them and their expression a poignant mix of anger and defiance. Behind them, pulled roughly by her arm, is Gia. Her dress hangs torn and dirty against her slender frame, but she wears it like a queen’s robe, her chin high in defiance. My fiery piccola cerva still has her fire.
Her chocolate eyes meet my stony gaze.
The muscles in my throat tighten as I watch them get pushed to their knees in front of me. Gia hits the floor awkwardly. Her fiery gaze glowers up at Antonia defiantly, her spirit unbroken despite the grim circumstances.
“You have a choice to make, dear Vitali.” The dangerous gleam of something metallic is pushed into her hands by one of her guards before she moves closer. My jaw clenches as she presses a silver-plated revolver into my hands—cool and remorseless like her eyes. Her voice is quiet, but it pulses with undeniable force through the silence around us. “Kill them, and I will forgive your transgressions. Bring you into the fold. After all, dear Uncle Salvatore needs to be replaced now that he is dripping blood down the stone steps outside.”
She steps back, folding her arms above her waist–challenging me openly under the gaze of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Botticelli’s Primavera. Silent screams from painted faces hang in the air between us–two siblings now on opposing sides of a war one of us started.
Uncle Salvatore.
Does she not understand who he is to us? The two brothers in life were so alike in appearance, despite their age gap, even I had trouble believing the truth until it was presented in front of me.
Our mother has never told her the truth, keeping the shame of her affair buried deep.
The chill of the metal sears into my palm as I clench it tightly, my eyes drifting over the gathered faces in the dimly lit room. The men and women my father trusted have come to see the commotion.
Isabella De Luca will make an appearance. I am sure of it. A formidable woman like her won’t want to miss her hard work coming to fruition.
When my gaze finally locks onto hers, surprise flits across her features, her lips parting slightly and eyes rounding in shock. A smirk pulls at the corners of my mouth, fueled by the simmering anger within as memories of her actions flood my mind.
My mother may not have wielded the weapon that ended my father’s life, but she certainly exploited his death. It wasn’t mere survival she sought. She blatantly benefited from Salvatore’s leadership until Antonia matured, weaving deceit into my younger sister’s consciousness. The dossier Mark handed me about my mother’s machinations was a bitter pill to swallow, yet now, as I stare deep into her eyes, I believe every damning detail.
A chuckle rises in my throat.
“Delirious doesn’t look good on you, fratello ,” my sister sneers, her heeled foot tapping impatiently. “Stalling isn’t going to help you. Make the choice or I will make it for you.”
“Don’t play a game you know nothing about.” The words slither through the air like a shadowed whisper, carrying an ominous weight. My gaze locks onto her, fierce and intense, and whatever she sees in my eyes causes her to take a cautious step back as if retreating from the edge of a precipice. “Father used to tell us that. Do you remember?”
Her lips twist and her nostrils flare at the mention of the man who raised us. Aurelio De Luca is the only man I will ever recognize as my father. Not the piece of shit Antonia so easily dispatched. Salvatore will always be a traitor in my mind. A kin killer. A man who has no honor, and right there with him, is my mother.
A woman who cheated on a man who adored her, who raised us as if we were his own, despite knowing we weren’t.
“The only one playing games here is you, Vitali.” Her voice pitches with her anger, and it reminds of the times when she was little and would throw a temper tantrum. All she is missing is the stomping of her foot.
Nope, there it is.
“Enough of this,” Antonia screams in frustration. “Kill them now or I will.”
Shrugging a shoulder, I nonchalantly raise the gun and point it at our mother in the crowd. The woman freezes, eyes wider than before she caught my gaze, but Antonia doesn’t even blink. Just what I thought.
The fucking gun isn’t loaded.
So I pull the trigger.
The crowd screams, and my mother closes her eyes, bracing for the impact, but the gun simply clicks. It’s empty. Exactly as I predicted.
“Oops.” I smirk cruelly as I stare up at my sister.
Her jaw hangs loose, the bottom lip trembling like a frightened animal, caught in the headlamps of imminent danger. Momentarily locked in place by invisible chains of shock, her features draw back slowly to form a wide O—a gasping fish out of water, consuming horror with every breathless gulp .
“You would have shot her?” her whisper is laced with sadness and vulnerability, a soft tremor in her voice betraying her inner turmoil. This is the little girl I remember, the one who wore her emotions openly, like a delicate veil for all to see. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears, reflecting a deep, unguarded sorrow. Antonia had always been a beacon of love and light, exuding a carefree spirit that embraced life with both compassion and tenderness.
“I knew it wasn’t loaded, Toni.” The nickname flows easily off my tongue as if it hasn’t been decades since I last uttered it. “Don’t play games you can’t win.” I repeat our father’s advice.
“Kill him, Antonia.” My mother’s voice cuts through the room like a serrated blade, piercing the air with its shrillness. The words she hurls are laced with venom and vitriol, each one dripping with anger and resentment. “He will only betray you as he always has.” Her tone reverberates off the walls, leaving an almost palpable tension in its wake.
“The only one who has betrayed her is you, cara madre ,” I sneer at the woman who birthed me. Dropping the empty gun to the floor, I groan as I stand. I’m done kneeling to anyone who isn’t my beautiful wife. “She betrayed all of us. Including the man we called our father.”
“He’s lying to you.” Our mother steps out from the fringe of the crowd. Her face is drawn in a scowl, turning her features ugly.
“I’m not,” I tell my sister. “And I can prove it.” Antonia’s eyes dart between my calm collectedness and our mother’s dark fury that is nothing more than a mask to cover her fear at being discovered. Adrian was right when he asked if I was ready to face the truth that my mother may not be on my side.
“How?” Antonia’s voice is full of skepticism .
“Do you have my phone?”
Antonia’s eyes flick to the guard standing silently behind me. It is the very same man who had struck the side of my head with his gun just yesterday when I had rushed to my wife’s defense. With a deliberate motion, he slides his hand into his back pocket and retrieves my phone, handing it over to me. I take it, thanking whatever god is bothering to listen, that it is still charged.
I begin scrolling through the surveillance footage we’d captured on Megumi, my thumb pausing as I spot the exact clip I need. The screen comes alive with her tense voice; “I don’t have a lot of time,” intones Kenzo’s mother, her words echoing in the charged, silent space between us. “I barely managed to escape,” she continues, the urgency in her tone seeping through every pause. A heavy tension hangs in the air as Megumi’s desperate message is met with silence. “Are you there?” her voice demands, brittle and fearful.
“You are a foolish woman.” Antonia recoils slightly, her face drawn in shock as our mother’s cold, cutting words spill over the speaker. “You didn’t escape. They let you leave.”
The accusation hangs in the air like a dark cloud. But Megumi’s voice is resolute, laced with an unwavering calm amid chaos. “No. No,” she insists softly. “They weren’t even there. I haven’t been followed, and I’ve had the men check me for a device. There is nothing.”
A sneer crackles through the speaker in response. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that?” Our mother’s voice drips with contempt. “They aren’t simpering idiots like my current husband. They are careful and ruthless.”
Megumi presses on confidently, almost defiantly, “And soon they will be dead. Everything is in place.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a knowing glance exchanged between Kenzo and Adrian. A silent acknowledgment that the bombing of the warehouse had indeed been orchestrated entirely by Megumi as we had suspected all along.
“Good,” our mother finally declares, a sinister delight threading through her voice that twists my heart with a bitter chill. “We need to make sure that Vitali never makes it to Rome. I’ve worked too diligently to crown Antonia and place her on the throne, only to have everything ruined by him and his reckless friends. Plans for ridding myself of Salvatore are already in motion.”
A faint gasp escapes Megumi’s lips, barely perceptible, yet loud enough to cut through the tense silence. “Is that wise?” she ventures, her voice laced with incredulity and disbelief over the line.
A weighty sigh carries across the connection before our mother responds. “Salvatore has been pressuring me to tell the truth. By now, Vitali knows who Salvatore really is. It is why he needs to die. Hell will freeze over before I allow Antonia to uncover the truth. To her, Aurelio was their father, and that perception will remain unaltered. She will never know about my affair with Salvatore.”
“If you think that is best,” Megumi murmurs uncertainly.
“It is,” our mother assures with steely finality. “And so is this.”
An explosion rumbles ominously in the background, its detonation rattling the air, and in an instant, the line goes dead.
Disbelief glows brightly in Antonia’s wide eyes, a cross between incredulity and horror that furrows a crease deep between her brows as the recording ends. Her lips part, as if poised to utter soundless accusations, yet she is frozen .
“Tell me this isn’t true, madre ,” she whispers, horror coating her words. “This can’t be…”
Our mother remains silent, but her lips curl into a malicious smile, her dark eyes flickering with a sinister gleam as she looks back and forth between us. Who is this woman? She is not the nurturing figure who raised me, that’s for damn sure. The woman who brought me up, whom I call mother, was gentle and compassionate, her kindness like a warm embrace. None of those qualities are present in the person who stands before me now, her presence as cold and unyielding as a winter storm.
“Go ahead and tell her, mother ,” I growl. “Tell her the truth. That you had an affair with Salvatore once you suspected that father couldn’t have children. Tell her how you passed us off as his thinking he wouldn’t know any better.”
“He didn’t,” she hisses, her voice low and venomous, as her beautiful face contorts with anger. Her features twist, eyes narrowing and lips pulling into a thin line, transforming her expression into something harsh and severe.
A fleeting grin dances across my lips, and a soft chuckle slips past.
“Oh, he knew, Mother, he just never told you.” Antonia’s head whips toward me in shock.
“What?” she demands, her voice laced with disbelief. I maintain my gaze on our mother, steady and unyielding.
“Father lost the ability to have children when he was just a teenager,” I reveal, the words hanging in the air between us. “It happened during a skiing accident when he was sixteen.”
Mother’s eyes narrow. “You’re lying,” she sputters, her disbelief palpable.
“No,” I assure her. “I am not. Father raised us as his own, despite knowing about your affair. He never treated us like anything other than his blood and now, to keep your sordid secret, you had your own daughter murder her biological father.”
The horror on my sister’s face at my words is a snapshot of abject terror, a chilling testament to the darkness our mother plunged her headlong into without a safety rope. Her dark eyes open wide in panic, their depths gleaming with unshed tears at the realization of what she has done.
I want to comfort her. To tell her it is just a bad dream, and we will wake up soon. But reality has reared its ugly head and there is no going back now. She is neck deep in this blood-soaked world where trust is limited, and knives are stored in each other’s backs.
“No—” Her hand comes to her mouth, wide eyes dancing between our mother and me. Her skin pales, low jaw trembling. “You wouldn’t?—”
Mother lets out an exasperated sigh. “Grow up, Antonia.” She rolls her eyes. “This is how it works in our world. We must do what is best for us. For our name. Not the name my parents forced me into.”
“And that is what this is all about, isn’t it, Savia?”
The words cut through the thick tension, and I swing my gaze toward my wife. Moments ago, her eyes shimmered with fear; now they burned with an iron mix of anger and unyielding resolve. Her dark eyes lock on my mother, each glance heavy with accusation, while the deep lines of her frown carve harsh shadows over her beautiful features. “The Geryon is the reason you began all of this, isn’t it? Your parents deliberately chose Aurelio because, even as our old society crumbled, they still clung to the sanctity of bloodlines—didn’t they?”
I can barely process her words, the raw edge in her tone making my heart thunder. What the fuck is my wife getting at? Yes, my mother has revived the vestiges of the secret society, but her lineage never belonged to that elite circle. I have pored over the ledgers time and again, scrutinizing each line, or so I thought.
“Why don’t you tell them, Savia?” my wife goads, her words laced with scorn. She tips her chin, her voice rising, snapping like the crack of a whip. “Reveal who you really are. Explain who your family really is and how you wound up in the clutches of those who raised you as if you were their own.”
My mother remains quiet. She stands rooted to the spot as if paralyzed by shock. Her face drains of color, and her eyes grow wide in disbelief as she fixes her gaze on Gia as if she can’t believe that she knows her secret.
“Come now,” Gia presses on with a mocking smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Tell us just how long you’ve been scheming. They all assume you’re merely a hapless casualty of fate, but we both know you pulled the strings. Isn’t that right, Savia Vinci?”
Vinci.
The name echoes in the room. I haven’t heard it in ages, not since the violent years of the civil war when my father came to power. He was barely a teenager. The Vinci family had once been among my grandfather’s most trusted allies, loyal servants to the Da Luca’s for generations.
Then everything changed. They betrayed us, murdered my grandmother in cold blood, and ignited the deadliest war in our city’s criminal history, right here on the blood-soaked streets of Rome. The unforgiving pavements bore the crimson stains of our people; innocent lives were shredded in the chaos. The final straw came when my grandfather broke the rules of our forefathers .
In a bold move unprecedented among Dons , he declared a ceasefire, a temporary truce. When the traitors finally laid down their arms at his table, he executed them all, sparing no one. He even took the final, soul-crushing step of ending the lives of their children to ensure that the cycle of vengeance would never haunt us again.
But there was one misstep, an echo of mercy—or perhaps regret—in all that brutality. My father had spoken often of the one who had slipped away. A tiny girl, spared from the severest fate, had vanished into the murky shadows because he couldn’t summon the strength to end her life as he did her brothers’. He dismissed the potential threat her presence posed, convinced she was harmless.
Now, as I listened to Gia’s words ricocheting off the walls of our fractured family, I can’t shake the searing sting of betrayal. Every revelation, every remembered injustice, pulses like a fresh wound beneath layers of old scars.
My mother is the last surviving Vinci.
“You don’t know anything,” my mother jeers, her voice a whisper as she shakes free from whatever kept her silent before. Her eyes flash with a mix of anger and desperation. “None of you understand the torment of being married to that monster. To be forced to stand beside him day after day, to share his bed night after night, enduring it all in silence. Salvatore knew who I was. He caught me snooping one night and trailed me.”
“So you used him,” Antonia’s voice trembles as she speaks, her breath catching in her throat. “You used him to plant the seed of killing our grandfather and then orchestrated our father’s downfall.”
“Aurelio wasn’t your father!” my mother retorts, her voice cracking with an unexpected fervor.
“To us, he was,” Antonia screams back, her eyes blazing with a mix of betrayal and sorrow. “And you made me believe that he and my brother were monsters. Why? Was it so I could take over, only for you to plan to kill me, too?”
Our mother shakes her head frantically, her expression a mix of horror and disbelief. “No, Toni,” she whispers, her voice tinged with a desperate plea. “I placed you here to claim what is rightfully yours. It’s why I began grooming you from such a young age. This was always my plan—to make you the most powerful ruler in all of Italy.”
“Tell her the truth, mother,” I growl, my patience thinning. “She isn’t really running things, not in the shadows. Maybe she appears to be in charge, but you’ve had your influence in the underworld for a very long time, haven’t you?”
“No,” Antonia insists, her voice steady yet strained. “She’s right. I’ve been ruling since I turned eighteen. Mother has had nothing to do with the business.”
I scoff, turning to face my sister, my gaze piercing. “So you’re telling me that the sex trafficking is your doing, little sister?”
Antonia’s face drains of color, the truth hitting her like a cold wave.
With pursed lips, I shift my focus back to our mother. “That’s what I thought.”
“Why…” Antonia’s eyes well up with heartbreak as she stares at our mother, her voice trembling with sorrow. “Sex trafficking? How could you do something so horrific?” Each word is laced with disgust, dripping from her lips like venom. “I would never have condoned something like that.”
“It’s what needed to be done, Antonia,” our mother chastises darkly, her voice full of determination. Her eyes, hard as flint, bore into mine even as she talks to my sister. “Do you honestly believe that drugs and guns are enough?” She lets out a derisive laugh. “The skin trade is what brought us back from the brink of ruin.”
“Ruin you caused,” I snarl, my voice trembling with barely contained fury. I take a step forward, fists clenched at my sides. “You thought it would be so simple, didn’t you? Not realizing that Father kept so many other mafia families at bay with just a whisper of his name. Not just out of fear, but out of respect. Your war with them is what bankrupted you. Your sickening need for revenge.”
“They killed my family!” she roars, her hand diving behind her back with a swift, practiced motion. The metallic click of a pistol being drawn echoes, and she aims it at me, her eyes gleaming with dark intent. Antonia’s guards tense, their hands moving to their holsters, ready to follow our mother’s orders. Antonia’s eyes widen, fear and bewilderment flashing across her face when one of them points his gun at her head.
“Your grandfather murdered my parents and uncles. Aurelio murdered my brothers. They were only thirteen years old,” she continues, her voice cracking with raw emotion.
“And how many children have you murdered, mother?” Antonia spits, her voice a venomous hiss. “How many children have you ripped from their families to be sold off to perverts who would rape and abuse them?”
“Isn’t that what Fino’s plan for Gia was?” I interject, my voice cold and accusing. “Fino wasn’t selling her to be Salvatore’s pet. He was selling her to pay his debt because you knew how high a price you would have gotten for her virginity.”
Another cold laugh emanates from the woman who once filled my life with warmth. Her eyes glint with a chilling satisfaction.
“Her sale would have paid off his debt and then some,” she sneers, her voice sharp as broken glass. She shifts the gun’s aim from my chest to my wife’s, the barrel now trained on Gia’s heart.
“Your father knew your mother would never support Salvatore or me as leaders,” she continues, each word dripping with malice. “So he trapped her in that room with the bomb strapped to her body.”
Gia flinches at the revelation, her face ashen, open-mouthed, eyes glistening as tears threaten to spill down her cheeks. She is like a fragile porcelain doll on the verge of shattering.
My mother’s lips curl into a self-satisfied smirk, making my stomach churn. “She didn’t want to, of course,” she adds with a cruel laugh, “until he threatened you.”
Her cold eyes flick back to mine, the satisfaction etched deeper into her features, like an artist admiring their masterpiece.
“Let’s see if my son is as willing to sacrifice himself for you as she was,” she taunts in a low, venomous whisper.
The room holds its breath as the gun’s trigger clicks and the deafening crack of the shot slices through the air.
All I hear is Gia’s deafening cry and the shattering of my heart as my entire world crumbles around me.