Chapter 37 MASSIMO
The next morning…
Jenna's words stay with me long after she falls asleep again.
Not the fear in them. Not even the resolve.
The certainty. I'll be right there with you.
By your side. That should comfort me. It should feel like victory.
Instead, it disturbs something deep and buried, something I thought I'd already dissected and put to rest. Because if she's stepping fully into my world, then every lie, every omission, every half-truth becomes a fault line.
I don't sleep after that.
Morning comes gray and quiet; the noise of Vegas is hushed behind the glass like it's holding its breath. Jenna and Amauri are still asleep when I slip out of bed. I stand by the window for a long time, coffee untouched, jaw tight, thoughts circling one name.
Bello. Again.
The memory comes without warning.
Pain first. Always pain. Crushing. Wet. Everywhere. I'm floating in and out, drugged and heavy, lungs burning like I've swallowed fire. Machines beep. Voices blur. Light hurts. Darkness hurts worse. There's a taste of blood in my mouth I can't spit out.
Enzo is there.
I know it's him because he smells like smoke and leather and home. His voice cuts through the fog, low, controlled, but tight around the edges. "Easy, boss. Don't move."
I try to speak. My chest seizes instead. Time doesn't make sense. Days blur into nights. Weeks maybe. I wake and sleep and wake again, trapped in a body that doesn't answer to me anymore.
One night—or day—Enzo leans closer.
"I found out who ordered it," he tells me quietly.
My vision swims. I focus on his face like it's a target.
"Bello overheard it," Enzo continues. "Your uncle. He gave the order himself."
The memories land slow. Heavy. Impossible.
Bello overheard it.
Bello.
Always Bello.
I try to lift my hand. It barely twitches.
"Your cousins pushed," Enzo adds. "But the call came from him."
I remember thinking—through the morphine, through the haze—that at least the rot was contained.
Family business. A clean line. A betrayal I could understand.
I trusted Bello's ears. I trusted Enzo's voice.
I built everything that followed on that foundation.
The memory snaps loose. I'm standing in my kitchen now, knuckles white around the mug I never drank from.
Jenna's father. Kingsley.
Northstar.
The money.
The date.
And Bello—again—standing right at the point where truth bends.
My jaw tightens until it aches. If Bello lied then—if he filtered what he overheard—if Enzo knew more than he said…
The implications are catastrophic. From a drawer, I pull a notepad with the hotel's icon on it and scribble a hasty note for Jenna.
I'm just about to pull my phone out when I hear the tap tap tap of little feet. Amauri stands in the doorway, looking devastatingly adorable in his dinosaur pajamas and sleep-tousled hair. A big yawn nearly splits his face in half.
"Good morning, buddy, you're up early."
"I'm thirsty," he declares and, without fanfare, shuffles into the kitchen, opening the industrial-sized fridge.
I watch him pull out a chair, climb on top of it—while resisting the urge to help—and pull out the orange juice.
He's a resourceful little man. Pride swells my chest. I decide to intervene when he goes for the glasses and hand him one down.
"Thank you," he mumbles, impressing me with his manners as well.
"You're welcome. You want something to eat too?"
He shakes his head and drinks down the juice in big gulping swallows. An idea occurs to me. "Hey, if you could decorate your own room, what would it look like?"
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and I hand him a napkin. He tilts his head, deep in thought. "Whatever I want?"
"Anything." I agree. If he wants a damn slide down into his bed, I'll have the roof cut open and get it done. My little man deserves nothing less than everything.
"I saw something…" he looks at me, "Can I have your phone?"
Curious where this is going, I hand it to him. He scrunches his forehead up as he looks through it. "You don't have Pinterest."
"Pin… what?"
He taps like a little madman, then hands me the phone, "I need your passcode."
He's resourceful, too, it seems. I take it, type in the code, and hand it back. A few moments later, he has something pulled up on it and shows me the screen with the biggest grin I've ever seen.
There is a wall, made to look like a forest. On it run several clear tubes in different colors. A giant cage stands in the center of it, and the tubes all interconnect, some with little balls in between, and I realize it's a large running place for hamsters.
"That looks… awesome," I hedge. I like his hamster, because he likes the rodent, but having vermin in my house has never occurred to me before. "Do you think Hammie needs friends?"
My son looks at me with a duh expression. "Hamsters are solitary animals."
Oh, thank fuck.
"I'll see what I can do about that," I promise.
"That would be cool." He nods, yawns again. He puts my phone on the counter. "I'm going back to bed."
I watch him return to his room, while pride swells in my chest. I give myself a minute to just relish the moment before I grab my phone, already moving. Enzo answers on the first ring.
"Boss."
"We need to talk," I greet in a calm voice. Too calm. "Now."
A pause. Just a fraction too long.
"I'm on my way," Enzo replies.
"Meet me in the boardroom." I don't want Jenna or Amauri anywhere near what might happen.
I end the call. Whatever Enzo tells me next will decide something irreversible.
Because if the truth I built my empire on is compromised, then I've been standing on a lie for ten years. And I don't forgive that.
Not of anyone. Not even Enzo.
The elevator doors slide shut behind me with a muted thud, sealing off the penthouse, sealing her off, sealing my son off.
The boardroom level opens, all glass, dark wood, and quiet authority.
Enzo isn't here yet. It'll take him fifteen minutes, give or take.
I don't sit. There's too much pent-up restlessness in my body for that.
Too much motion with nowhere to go. I pace the length of the long table once, twice, then drift toward the window.
My city stretches out below me. Las Vegas doesn't pretend to be innocent. She advertises her sins in neon, wears excess like perfume, dares you to underestimate her because you think you've seen it all before. People come here believing the rules don't apply. They're half right.
This city was chaos when I took it, fractured crews, borrowed power, men confusing noise for strength. I didn't tame it. I aligned it. Every street, every club, every casino now hums to the same rhythm. Mine.
My uncle ruled with fear and spectacle. Public punishments. Loud reminders. His sons would have done the same, broken bones in daylight, headlines as warnings. They believed power had to be seen to be respected.
I learned differently. Vegas thrives on illusion, but underneath it's built on control. Timing. Pressure. Knowing when to let people think they're winning.
I press my palm to the glass. Somewhere down there, people are waking up, making bad decisions, falling in love with strangers, losing money they don't have. They don't know how close they are to the machinery that keeps them safe from worse men than me.
This city knows me. It responds to me. It bends because it understands the cost of resisting.
For years, that was enough for me. Power.
Order. Expansion. The quiet satisfaction of an empire that works.
But now, now there are two more lives tied to it.
Jenna and Amauri. Suddenly, Vegas isn't just something I rule.
It's something I have to protect them from.
That changes everything.
My city—my beautiful, dangerous city—will feel the shift long before anyone else realizes it's happening. Because when a king stops ruling for himself… the ground always moves.
I pull my phone from my pocket and call Alessio.
"What time are we wheels up?" I ask, already pacing the length of the room again.
"Two," he answers without hesitation. "Everything's arranged. Private terminal. No noise."
Good. That gives me time. A few hours with Jenna. With Amauri. Enough time to remind myself why I'm doing all of this. The call ends. I don't waste a second before dialing Damiano. "How's our guest?"
A low chuckle comes through the line. "Still breathing. Still bitching. Louder by the hour."
I can picture it. Whitford, chained to a chair, pride bleeding out of him one complaint at a time.
"Can I shut him up yet?" Damiano asks.
"Gag him if you need to," I reply coolly. "He doesn't get comfort. He gets time."
"Understood."
An expression from Whitford's face returns to me.
The one he wore on the plane when I told him who I was.
I'm confident I can peg a liar a hundred miles away, and he didn't wear the mask of one.
He really didn't know who I was. But my name rang a bell.
Not that it wouldn't. Everyone in Vegas at least knows of me.
The fear I saw could be from that, or from what he knows. Only one way to find out.
"Actually, why don't you have a chat with him?"
"About?"
"About what he knows about the hit and run ten years ago. About what Kingsley told him or how and why he might have been involved."
I can hear a thousand questions on the other end, but Damiano doesn't ask them. He knows I'll tell him when I'm ready. The boardroom doors open, and Enzo walks in with a calm expression and eyes sharp enough to cut glass. He takes one look at my face and knows better than to open with small talk.
"I've got to go," I tell Damiano, ending the call. The line clicks dead. Then my attention shifts fully to Enzo.
He nods once. "Everything ready?"
"Yes," I nod, "But things just got… complicated."