3. Chapter 3
Vito Calvino dabbed his mouth delicately with a linen napkin, savoring the buttery flakiness of the croissant on his plate.
The eggs were perfect and the prosciutto exquisitely crisped.
A man should always start his morning with refinement, he thought with satisfaction.
A man in control of everything and everyone around him.
The illusion lasted exactly three more bites.
The door to the dining room opened slowly, and one of his guards shuffled in, clearly nervous in a way that immediately soured Vito’s appetite.
“What is it?” Vito demanded, setting down his fork with a sharp clink.
The guard swallowed. “Sir, we’ve had word. Your daughter…she was spotted at the Philadelphia airport.” He bowed his head, inhaled slightly, then added, “Several days ago.”
Silence fell across the room, heavy and suffocating.
Vito’s jaw tightened, and for one icy moment, he simply stared. Then, with deliberate slowness, he rose from his chair. The guard’s eyes widened, his weight shifting back, but his efforts to avoid what he knew was coming came too late.
Vito’s fist shot forward, catching the man squarely across the jaw. The satisfying crunch of knuckles against bone echoed off the high ceilings. The guard staggered, crashing into a side table, before scrambling upright, blood trickling from his split lip.
Vito tugged at his pristine cuffs, adjusting them after that nasty, but necessary, bout of violence.
“You knew this and didn’t tell me immediately?
” Vito’s voice was a whisper of barely controlled fury, each word sharp enough to cut.
He looked up from his cuffs, his dark eyes blazing with fury.
“Do you think I pay you to let my daughter simply waltz back into this country, like some tourist?”
The messenger dropped his hand from his mouth, trying to ignore the pain. “N-no, sir—”
Vito turned his back on the man, disgusted. “Get out.”
Relieved, the man stumbled from the room, and Vito glanced down at the sunshine filled breakfast table, exhaling a slow breath as though the violence had merely been a necessary chore, an irritation before returning to his usual morning routine.
He sat back down, reclaiming his fork and carefully arranging the napkin across his lap once more.
“Now,” he murmured to himself, spearing another bite of egg. “Where were we?”
For a few moments, he continued to pretend—lord of the manor, master of all he surveyed. A civilized man, eating a civilized breakfast.
But the calm didn’t last. The import of the news that his daughter was back soured his perfectly regimented breakfast.
Mia. His disobedient, ungrateful child. If she had returned to the States, what did she know? Did she suspect?
Vito’s gaze moved to the large portrait of his late wife hanging on the wall. A woman he had loved once, perhaps, before practicality had stepped in. She’d been useful, then an obstacle. He’d handled it. He always handled obstacles. In the end, her inheritance had been worth it.
Now her mother, Evangeline, lingered far too long for his liking.
The old bat was seventy-five and frail, locked away where she couldn’t meddle.
He had been patient—oh, so patient—waiting for her fortune to be unlocked.
But patience had its limits. And today, finally, the courts would recognize what was true: that he, Vito Calvino, should control her estate.
Full guardianship. Legal and financial. All of Evangeline’s delicious inheritance from her delightfully wealthy husband would soon be funneled neatly into his pocket.
He took another bite, though his thoughts distracted him from properly enjoying the flavors.
Mia and her grandmother had always been close.
Too close. Somehow, the two had managed to keep in touch despite his best efforts.
He had confiscated phones, intercepted letters, bribed staff, and still—still—he hadn’t uncovered their method of communicating regularly.
It infuriated him, the thought that two mere women could outwit him in his own house.
But Mia was still a child, he reminded himself with a grim smile.
Twenty-five or twenty-six, perhaps, but still that same little girl who had run from him, thinking she could live her life away from his control.
However, Mia’s efforts to save her previous grandmother were pointless now.
Even if she suspected something, even if she’d returned, she would be powerless to stop what was coming.
Today’s hearing was a foregone conclusion.
He hadn’t even needed to bribe the judge—why waste money when the outcome was guaranteed?
The ruling would be in his favor, as it should have been years ago.
Over the past few months, Vito had ensured the nursing home had done its best, now it was just up to the judge to look at the old biddy and give him control of Evangaline’s estate.
He lifted his glass of orange juice, holding it aloft in a toast. “To the Calvino legacy,” he murmured. He’d already amassed a healthy fortune, but it was nothing compared to Evangeline’s trust fund.
Staring at the sunshine filtering through the glass, he smiled, proud of his machinations that had gotten him to this point. Then he drank deeply, his thoughts already racing ahead to the fortune that would soon, finally, be his.
Mia might try to interfere. She might even scream and claw at the edges of his empire. But she was too late. The game was already won.
Vito Calvino always won.