Chapter 1 #2
I remembered. Dr. Anthony Ricci. He'd been useful to the Valentis for a decade now—patching up gunshot wounds, signing death certificates that didn't invite questions, doing whatever else Enzo needed from a man with medical training and no ethics.
I hadn't considered him in the context of my father's death.
I was considering him now.
"Even if you're right," I said, keeping my voice level, "we don't have proof. Not a shred of it."
"We don't need proof." Santo stopped pacing and turned to face me fully.
The overhead light caught the scar that ran along his shoulder, visible through the open collar of his shirt—a knife wound from seven years ago, a fight that had nearly killed him.
He touched it sometimes without realizing, a tell I'd learned to read.
He was touching it now. "We need to send a message.
Tonight. Before they think we're too weak to respond. "
"A message."
"Enzo. His underboss. Maybe that doctor too, if we can find him.
" His hand drifted to his hip, where I knew his gun sat holstered under his jacket.
Muscle memory. The weapon was always there, always ready.
"We hit them hard, we hit them fast. Show the whole city that the Caruso family doesn't fuck around, even with the old man gone. Especially now he’s gone. "
I watched my brother's face and saw everything he wasn't saying.
The grief that looked like anger because Santo had never learned any other way to process pain.
The fear underneath—fear that our father's death meant something was coming, something we weren't ready for.
The desperate need to do something, anything, rather than sit with the unbearable weight of loss.
I understood.
I felt it too, that same itch under my skin, that same urge to act. But I'd learned a long time ago that the urge to act and the wisdom to wait were rarely the same thing.
"Santo." I said his name carefully, the way you'd talk to a wild animal you didn't want to startle.
"What you're describing is a war. You understand that, right?
Not just a message—a war. Because if we're wrong, if Papa really did just have a heart attack, then we're killing men for no reason.
And if we're right, if Enzo did this, then he's been planning for our retaliation.
He's ready for it. He wants us to come at him blind and angry. "
"So what?" Santo's voice rose. "We just sit here? Let them think they got away with it?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then what are you saying?"
The question hung in the air between us. My brother, waiting for an answer. The empty restaurant around us, silent as a held breath. My father's papers spread across the desk, his reading glasses still sitting where he'd left them, his wine glass still holding that last dark inch.
I was the don now.
The decision was mine.
And I didn't have enough information to make it.
"I'm saying we wait," I told him. "Not forever. Not while they make another move. But until we know more. Until I understand what Papa was doing that made someone want him dead—if that's what happened."
Santo's jaw tightened. His hand was still on his gun, and for one long moment I thought he might argue, might push, might do something we'd both regret.
But he was still my brother. And despite everything—despite the rage and the grief and the whiskey—he'd spent his whole life following the don's orders.
Even when the don was me.
"Fine," he said, the word sharp as a blade. "We wait. But not long, Dante. I'm not going to let them get away with this."
"Santo, sit down before you fall down." We both turned to see Marco, slipping in through the door Santo had left open, quiet as a shadow.
At twenty-six, my youngest brother had always been the diplomat.
The one who could talk to anyone, smooth over anything, charm his way into rooms the rest of us had to fight to enter.
Tonight the charm was stripped away. His eyes were shadowed, his jaw tight, and there was something harder underneath the exhaustion—a reminder that the golden boy had grown up in the same house as the rest of us, learned the same lessons, carried the same weight.
“I said sit, Santino.” Marco crossed to the cabinet where our father had kept his private reserve. The good stuff. The bottles no one else was allowed to touch, not even us, not without Vito's express permission.
Marco poured himself three fingers of the twenty-year Macallan without hesitation.
The small desecration felt deliberate. A way of saying: the old rules are dead too. Papa's gone. We make our own laws now.
Santo didn’t take Marco’s advice. He stood by the window, arms crossed, watching our younger brother with barely concealed impatience.
"Did you come to lecture me about patience?" Santo's voice was tight. "Because I've had enough of that shit from—"
"I came to make sure we don't do something stupid.
" Marco took a long drink, then set the glass down on our father's desk with a deliberate click.
"You want to hit the Valentis. I understand.
I even agree there's reason to be suspicious. But Dante’s right, suspicion isn't proof, Santo.
And moving on Enzo Valenti without evidence would be the worst strategic mistake we could make right now. "
"Strategic." Santo spat the word like a curse. "Our father is dead."
"Our father is dead," Marco agreed. "And every family in Chicago is watching to see how we respond.
You want to know what they're thinking? They're thinking: the old man's gone, the sons are young and hot-headed, maybe this is our chance to renegotiate some agreements.
Maybe this is our chance to test the new don.
" His eyes flicked to me, acknowledging my position, then back to Santo.
"If we attack the Valentis and we're wrong, we're murderers.
We lose every ally we have. The peace Papa spent twenty years maintaining shatters overnight, and we spend the next decade fighting a war on three fronts instead of one. "
"And if we're right?" Santo pushed off from the window, his bulk filling the small office. "If Enzo did kill him?"
"Then we need proof. Evidence we can show to the other families, something that justifies what comes next.
" Marco's voice stayed even, controlled, but I could see the effort it cost him.
"Even if we're right, Santo—why? What does Enzo gain from killing Papa now, when the alliance with the Moretti family is about to cement Caruso power for another generation? "
It was the right question. The question I'd been turning over in my own mind since Santo had first started talking. Enzo Valenti was many things—patient, calculating, ambitious—but he wasn't stupid. If he'd wanted Vito dead, there had to be a reason. A gain that outweighed the risk.
I didn't know what that gain was.
"Maybe he's scared," Santo said. "Maybe the Moretti alliance was the thing that scared him. The Carusos getting stronger, more connected—"
"Then why kill Papa instead of disrupting the wedding?
" Marco shook his head. "The marriage isn't until November.
Plenty of time to interfere, if that was his goal.
Killing the don makes us angry, sure. But it doesn't stop the alliance.
It doesn't even weaken us that much, strategically speaking—no offense, Dante. "
The marriage.
My mariage.
A marriage I didn’t want.
"None taken."
"So why now? Why this way?" Marco spread his hands.
"Either Enzo is making a move we don't understand yet, or Papa's death was exactly what the doctors said it was—sudden, unexpected, nobody's fault.
I know which one you want to believe, Santo.
Hell, I know which one I want to believe.
But wanting something doesn't make it true. "
The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything we weren't saying.
I watched my brothers—Santo with his barely leashed violence, Marco with his careful logic—and saw the same thing I always saw when we were together.
Three different men, three different ways of surviving this life. Santo fought. Marco talked. And I—
I calculated. I weighed. I waited for the path to become clear.
Both of them were looking at me now. The new don. The tiebreaker.
Santo wanted war. His whole body was angled toward action, toward violence, toward doing something with the grief that was eating him alive. I understood the impulse. I felt it too, that same burning need to make someone pay.
Marco wanted patience. Time to gather information, to think, to play the long game our father had always favored. He was right about the risks—if we moved on the Valentis and we were wrong, the consequences would be catastrophic. We'd lose everything.
Two choices. Two paths. And every second I didn't decide, my authority eroded a little more.
This was the test. I realized it with sudden, cold clarity. Not whether I made the right choice—there might not be a right choice—but whether I could make any choice at all while my brothers watched. Whether I could hold the weight of this family on my shoulders without buckling.
Whether I was the don, or just the man who happened to be standing in his father's office.
"We wait," I said finally, and watched Santo's jaw clench. "Not because I don't believe you, Santo. Not because I don't want blood if blood is owed. But because Papa didn't build this family on impulse, and I'm not going to tear it down in a single night."
"Dante—"
"Three days." I held up a hand, cutting him off.
"Give me three days to figure out what we're dealing with.
To go through Papa's papers, to find out what that meeting with Enzo was about.
If there's evidence, we'll find it. And then—" I met his eyes, let him see the steel underneath my calm. "Then we act. Together. The right way."
Santo stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.