Mario (The Conti Cousins #1)

Prologue

Naples, Italy

Two Years ago

Francis Conti did not ask for a priest.

That told Mario everything he needed to know.

His father had lived without confession, ruled without apology, and now, with death finally closing its hand around him, Francis intended to meet it the same way.

No weakness. No regret. No absolution.

Only one command left to give.

Mario stood beside the bed in the dimly lit room, the heavy air thick with the scent of medicine and dying breath. Beyond the shuttered windows, Italy slept. The estate was silent, waiting.

Francis’s eyes opened.

Still sharp. Still aware. Still dangerous.

“Chicago,” he said.

Mario didn’t move. “It’s already arranged.”

A faint, satisfied curve touched his father’s mouth. “Good.”

Of course it was good. Mario had been raised to anticipate what came next before anyone else recognized the need. His brothers would follow. The business would move. The Conti name would cross the ocean again.

But not to Atlantic City.

Not to Elio’s sons.

Not to the branch of the family Francis had cut from his life and refused to name for decades.

Francis’s fingers twitched weakly against the sheets.

“There is something you must know.”

Mario’s spine straightened.

In all his life, he had never heard hesitation in his father’s voice.

Until now.

“Maria’s first son,” Francis said.

Mario went completely still.

Luca.

The name was never spoken in this house, but it lived there all the same. Luca Conti. Don in Atlantic City. Elio’s heir. Elio’s legacy.

Francis turned his head, slowly, deliberately, his fading gaze locking onto his eldest son.

“He was mine.”

The room shifted.

Not visibly. Not enough for anyone outside these walls to feel it.

But something old and buried cracked open between them.

Mario said nothing.

Francis let out a dry, humorless breath. “She thought she saved him from me.”

Not rumor.

Not bitterness.

Truth.

Luca Conti was not merely their cousin.

He was Francis’s son.

Mario’s brother.

And the man ruling Atlantic City had lived his entire life beneath another man’s name.

“What do you want me to do with that?” Mario asked quietly.

Francis’s gaze hardened, the old authority flashing through the weakness of his body.

“Remember it.”

A command.

A warning.

A weapon.

Mario looked down at the man who had built an empire on control—and lost one woman because of it.

For the first time, he wondered whether his father hated Elio because Maria chose him…

Or because Luca had loved him.

Francis’s breath rattled in his chest.

“Do not trust them,” he said. “Not Elio’s line. Not Maria’s sons. Not the family she stole from us.”

Mario’s jaw tightened.

Stole.

Even now, Francis could turn loss into possession.

“She chose him,” Mario said.

Francis’s eyes flashed, sharp with something that refused to die.

“No,” he rasped. “She betrayed me.”

Then the strength left him.

The old don sank back into the pillows, the fire in him finally dimming.

Mario stood there, unmoving, as the silence deepened.

Outside the room, his brothers waited.

Ricardo. Lorenzo. Diego.

They believed they were leaving Italy because their father’s death had freed them to expand.

They believed Chicago was opportunity.

They did not yet understand that it was also distance.

From Italy.From the past.From a woman none of them had known.From a truth that could fracture everything.

Francis’s hand closed weakly around Mario’s wrist.

“Promise me,” he whispered.

Mario looked at him.

He had spent his life obeying this man. Learning from him. Becoming what Francis had shaped him to be.

But the truth now lying between them did not feel like inheritance.

It felt like a blade.

“I’ll protect the family,” Mario said.

Francis’s mouth tightened, as if he knew that was not the promise he had asked for.

But it was the only one Mario would give.

By dawn, Francis Conti was dead.

By sunset, Mario had begun making calls.

Chicago would be theirs.

The Conti cousins would not arrive in America as mourners or exiles.

They would arrive as power.

But somewhere across the ocean, in Atlantic City, another Conti don ruled beneath a name that was both true and false.

Luca.

Elio’s son in every way that mattered.

Francis’s son in the one way that could destroy them all.

And Mario Conti—the new don of the cousins—was the only living man who knew.