Chapter 31
Damiano
Six Years Ago, Sicily
“Mamma, it’s time to go.”
I yawned while checking my watch, adjusting the silver cufflinks she had given me for my twenty-fifth birthday. We were in Taormina, stepping out of her favorite restaurant, after an excruciatingly long brunch with the Soleris.
As per usual, the ladies had endless topics about the wedding they wanted to talk about, and I had to sit there and agree with every choice they thought was best.
At least Nina was there to suffer with me. We had been preparing for our wedding for two months after everyone learned we slept together. It was only a drunken hookup at a party that Lucian, with his big mouth, had turned into a family merger.
Nina walked beside me, her heels clicking against the cobblestones, looking every bit the fashionista in her oversized sunglasses and silk scarf.
“Che cosa? Got somewhere better to be?” she asked as we hit the corner, a few feet away from our mothers. I pulled out my lighter and lit the cigarette in her lips and then mine.
“I’d like to enjoy my single life before you put the shackles on my feet,” I teased, but the joke felt a little thin.
She chuckled, blowing a cloud of smoke into the bright blue sky.
“It’s either Lilac Belov or me. I hear the Bratva princess killed her last fiancé in his sleep. Pick a team, Caro.”
“Of course I choose you,” I said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. “At least I know your father won’t shoot me if I forget our anniversary.”
Just then, Mamma appeared behind us.
“Nina, darling, I’ll see you on Friday for the dress fitting,” she said, her eyes beaming with excitement.
Her posh British accent sounded so out of place in the rugged heat of Sicily.
Out of all those involved in this wedding, I thought she was the most excited.
She’d always wanted to plan a wedding. Being stuck with two boys who never bothered about that, she was over the moon now that I was getting married, and Nina couldn’t care less, letting her make all the decisions.
“Si, Mamma,” Nina answered, already using the title, which made me chuckle under my breath. Unbelievable.
She was already playing this obedient daughter role so well, it was fucking hilarious. Everyone knew Nina was a wild child. But in front of our parents, she acted like an angel. Still, I was extremely satisfied by how my mother’s smile grew when she called her mamma.
We walked toward the waiting line of black SUVs, and Mamma wrapped her arm around mine.
She was small, reaching barely to my chest, but she was the only person in the world who could make me feel like a little boy.
Every time she held me like this, I felt like the rest of the world was just noise and that as long as she was there, everything would be alright.
“You look so handsome in that shirt, my love,” she uttered softly, her voice tender, but her big green eyes looked up at me with worry. “But you’re looking so detached. Is it the wedding? Be honest with me.”
I slowed my pace, letting the rest of the party move ahead toward their cars. I looked down at her, seeing the fine lines of smiles around her eyes.
“I just want you to be happy, Mamma. I knew how much you’d been looking forward to this. If this wedding made everyone I cared about happy, then it was worth it,” I told her.
She frowned, her fingers finding the lapel of my jacket with a lingering touch.
“I am only happy if you are, my son. Always remember that,” she said, her gaze fiercely protective.
“Don’t marry for the family, or for the Dons.
Marry for love. Life is too short to wake up next to a stranger, even one as lovely as Nina.
Love is the only worthwhile experience in this world.
” She reached up and cupped my cheek, her hand warm on my skin.
“You are the best of us, Damiano. You have a heart that this life will try to turn to stone. Don’t let that happen. Promise me.”
Her words hung in the air, and for a short time, it felt as if a kitten was trying to scratch that annoying beating thing inside my chest. It didn’t really hurt, but there was a dull pain that I couldn’t seem to ease.
“I promise, Mamma,” I said, feeling a rare moment of uncertainty about this wedding.
She smiled again and hugged me. She smelled of vanilla and that bottle of wine she had almost finished with Nina.
“I love you, son,” she said.
“Of course you do, I’m your favorite son,” I grinned.
“Don’t let Enzo hear,” she laughed.
She was my home, the one person who saw me for who I was and not the executioner my father raised.
Everything I did—agreeing to this merger, taking on the heavy lifting for my father—was to ensure she never had to see the ugliness of our world up close.
I wanted to keep her in this bubble of silk dresses forever.
I opened the door of the lead SUV, my other hand still resting on her shoulder.
The first shot sounded like a tire blew out, sharp and loud against the stone buildings of the narrow street.
Then the next one came, tearing through my shoulder, spinning me like a top. The pain was a numbing shock that sent me crashing into the pavement. I hit the ground knees and palm first, a trace of copper and dust coating my mouth.
“Get down! Amunninni, abbassativi!” Gio screamed, but the sound of his voice sounded as if it were coming from underwater. The air was suddenly filled with the cracks of rounds and the intense shouting of our guards as they returned fire.
I wrenched myself up, drawing my Beretta from my waistband, my vision tunneling. But as soon as I was up on my feet, another round caught me just below my collarbone, sending me falling backward. The air left my lungs in a painful, ragged wheeze, and everything turned slow motion.
In the midst of smoke and chaos, I frantically looked for her. I searched for the floral print of the dress she had been so proud of that morning, my heart beating in my ears.
I looked to my right, and that’s when I saw her.
She was ten feet away, lying on the pavement near the SUV’s rear tire.
She looked like she had simply tripped, her hair splayed out on the concrete like a halo of silver-blonde, a dark hole in the center of her forehead.
There was no struggle. No last words. No chance to tell her I loved her one last time—just a horrific silence.
“MAMMA!”
The scream tore my throat open. I tried to crawl toward her, my hands digging into the hot ground, my blood leaving a smeared trail on the ground, but I couldn’t move.
I reached out my hand to her, but two guards, Gio and a man I didn’t see, grabbed me by the arms and dragged me backward toward the open door of the second vehicle.
“Lasciami!” I howled, kicking and bucking like an animal. My hands were outstretched, stretching toward her as the distance grew.
As they threw me onto the floor of the retreating SUV, I looked at my mother one last time through the open door.
Far behind her, a man stood in the mouth of a dark alleyway.
He wore the tactical gear of a professional assassin.
A ragged scar ran from his ear to his jaw.
I knew that face. I had seen him with the Castigliones before.
I watched until the car turned the corner, leaving my mother alone on the street like a discarded doll in the dust.
By the time we screeched into the villa’s driveway, the tires were smoking, and the doors were peppered with bullet holes. The door flew open before the SUV even came to a complete stop.
When I looked up, my father was there. He looked like an angry God. In his face was a terrifying stillness. Beside him, Lorenzo lunged towards me, his eyes filled with panic.
“Damiano!” he shouted as I tumbled out onto the ground. His hands were instantly stained red as he pressed them against my wounds.
“Stay with me, fratello. Damiano, look at me! Keep your eyes open!”
I looked at my father, who was standing over us, his shadow long and dark.
“They killed her,” I rasped, the words catching on the lump in my throat. I grabbed my father’s hand, my fingers leaving red streaks on his gold watch.“It was them. Castiglione.”
He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry either. He just looked at the guards, his eyes turning into two dark holes of endless rage that made the summer air feel like winter. He pulled his hand away from mine, his voice subdued and vibrating, as he promised the end of the world.
“Uccideteli,” he whispered to his head guard. “Kill every soul that had anything to do with this,” my father continued, his voice gaining a terrifying, hollow strength. “Bring my wife home!”
Lorenzo and Gio dragged me toward the house, my boots dragging behind me. Lorenzo’s voice was shaking as he called for the medics, his hands trembling as he tried to staunch the flow of my blood.
“I’m here,” Lorenzo kept muttering, more to himself than to me. “I got you. Just hold on. You’re okay.”
But I wasn’t okay.
As they carried me through the doors of the villa, I looked back at the driveway.
My father stood there, staring at the horizon, the silence of his rage more deafening than the gunfire had been.
That was the day the light went out.
The man I was supposed to be died on that sidewalk with her, face down in the dust.
∞∞∞
Two years later
The blood on that sidewalk dried into a dark, ugly stain, yet the memory of it remained a fresh wound in my mind.
For two years, I was stuck in my own home. I spent every waking hour obsessing over grainy CCTV footage, ballistic reports, and whispers in the streets. I knew what I saw. Amid the smoke and the screaming, I recognized a man as a member of the Castiglione clan.
But no one saw him. To everyone, I was just a grieving son losing his grip on reality.
I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. The gym in the basement became my only sanctuary, where I broke my knuckles against heavy bags until the physical pain drowned out the screaming in my head. I was dissolving into a shell of a man fueled only by rage and resentment.
Lorenzo stood in the doorway of my mother’s darkened room one night, the smell of Mamma’s perfume still clinging to the curtains I refused to let them wash.
“Damiano. You’re wasting away. Come down. Have a meal. Show respect to the Dons.” He said, sounding exhausted.
“I’m not sitting at a table with my mother’s murderer and his friends,” I said, not even bothering to look his way.
“You have no proof!” Lorenzo’s frustration ultimately cracked, his voice bellowing in the room. “We’ve looked everywhere. You are mistaken, Damiano. It’s time to admit that before this kills you.”
I didn’t go to dinner.
I waited until the house became silent, until the clinking of silverware and the fake laughter of our “allies” had ebbed into the night.
I walked into my father’s study, clutching a folder of evidence that was nothing more than circles drawn around blurred faces and dates that only made sense in my own head.
I dropped the folder onto the center of his desk, his brows furrowing at me. I was shaking, my eyes bloodshot with months and months of little sleep.
“It was them,” I said, my voice shaking. “Why won’t you believe me? Why are you protecting them over your own blood?”
He didn’t even glance at the papers. He looked at me, his eyes devoid of anger. Instead, there was a terrifying defeat that I had never seen in them.
He looked at me like I was a broken thing he didn’t know how to fix.
“Damiano,” he uttered, and the gentleness was worse than a scream. “I have lost my wife. I cannot lose my son to this insanity, too. You are seeing things that aren’t there. You are becoming someone we don’t recognize.”
“Because I’m the only one who hasn’t forgotten!” I screamed, sweeping the items off his desk in a violent motion. Books, pens, and crystal glass flew to the floor. “You’re all moving on! You’re laughing with them! It’s like she never existed!”
“Enough!” My father stood, his voice taking on a terrifying scream.
“I have tried everything to understand you. The Castigliones will never do that to our family. You have to believe that.”
He walked around the desk, stopping inches from my face. He smelled like the expensive cigars Mamma used to hate.
“If you stay here, you will die in this house, losing yourself in that false memory,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I won’t watch it any longer. I won’t watch my son rot from the inside out.”
I chuckled, a hollow sound of disbelief.
“So what? You’re throwing me out?” I said.
“I am letting you go,” he said, and his eyes finally glazed over. “Go somewhere else. Find a life somewhere else. Because if you stay here, there will be nothing left of you to save.”
His words shattered something inside me. I felt my heart break in a way I hadn’t thought possible after losing Mamma, a new, deeper ache that weighs in my chest.
He had given up on me.
For a long moment, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe; the pain was suffocating. But beneath the heartbreak, a cold, determined resolve crystallized. I realized there was nothing left for me in this house, nothing left in Sicily except for my mother’s grave.
I turned away from my father, the last remnants of hope falling away.
I left that night, knowing I would never return.
I didn’t pack a bag or say goodbye. All I had was the freezing rage that had turned into my only companion.
∞∞∞
Three months later, Buenos Aires
I stood by the VIP bar at Lux. For the first time in my life, I was a nobody—just a man with a heavy bank account and time he didn’t know how to spend.
Gio brought me a glass of whiskey, and we toasted to our new business.
Then, the strobe lights caught her on the dance floor.
She looked like a delusion.
She moved recklessly, like a beautiful firefly, oblivious of the man watching her.
When she stared back, she locked her eyes with mine and smirked like she was taunting me.
“Who is she?” I asked Gio.
“That?” Gio grinned. “Katarina Flores. Model, actress. Half of Buenos Aires is in love with her. She was in my favorite soap opera.”
“Sounds like trouble,” I said, the word tasting like a promise, as she challenged me in a staring contest.
For the first time in two years, the freezing rage in my chest felt a fraction warmer.
I didn’t know who she was.
I only knew she was the first thing I had seen in two years that looked more beautiful than revenge.