CHAPTER THREE DAMON
CHAPTER THREE
DAMON
THEN
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
“Are you even listening to me?” my father snaps, dragging me out of my Chloe-induced daze.
Every now and again I get a glimpse of her auburn hair as she runs across the yard with my brother Ronan on her heels.
There was a time the three of us were inseparable, that I would have been out there with them, but in the month leading up to my sixteenth birthday, Dad demanded I have no time for such childish things, not when I’ll be the one to lead the Lombardi family one day.
A soft laugh filters through the open window, and my heart clenches.
Chloe Weaver has always been the prettiest girl in any room, and that only becomes truer with each birthday she celebrates.
The daughter of my father’s most trusted enforcer, she grew up in this life right alongside me and Ronan, but she’s always been too soft for the darker sides of mafia life.
If I had it my way, she would never know how much blood stained the hands of the Lombardi men, the blood that will soon stain my own, but it wouldn’t be fair to her.
She needs to know how dangerous this family is because we’ll never be short on enemies, and sheltering her does nothing to protect her from that very real reality.
“Yes, sir,” I reply, my hands fisting in my lap at the term he insists I use to address him. He says it’s respectful, that we’ve fallen too far from the manners his parents taught him as a child, but calling him anything other than “Dad” feels like a betrayal to our mother.
How the kindest woman I’ve ever known found herself married to Salvatore Lombardi, I’ll never understand.
Before her accident, she was the life of every party, the bright light that shone through the darkness of mafia life, but now she’s nothing but a shell of herself, and the further she gets from the woman she once was, the harder Dad gets.
As if the one good part of himself is dying right in front of him, zapping any piece of kindness he ever held in his cold dead heart.
I hope I’m never as callous as him. It’s my duty to become the head of the family one day, but I’m desperate not to lead like he does, to keep some of the compassion Mom always drilled into us boys.
It would be a disgrace to her memory to lose the parts of us she’s proudest of.
“We have a lead on Kingston. He was seen by one of our contacts in Atlanta last week, and we believe he’s still there.”
The sound of his name is like a hot poker in my chest.
The man I looked up to, who was my mother’s best friend since college, betrayed us in the worst possible way almost a decade ago.
I was just a kid at the time, unable to do anything other than watch as my father sought revenge for my mother’s accident.
I was scared and alone, and no one prepares you to grieve someone who is still alive, who still walks the halls of the estate like a ghost of what she once was.
I sit up straight, truly paying attention for the first time since I walked into the room an hour ago. “What’s the plan?”
“I’m sending a handful of men to scope out the location we’ve been given to ensure we’re not walking into a trap, and if they deem it to be safe, then we will move out in a few days.
” He pauses, looking me over with an assessing gaze I’m becoming used to.
“I want you with us on this one. But I want to ensure you’re ready.
I don’t need a weak child getting in the way of taking out the man that’s responsible for your mother’s… illness.”
“I’m ready, sir.”
“You’ll have to prove it. Meet me by the gazebo at midnight. Bring your gun.”
I open my mouth to ask what I could possibly need to bring my gun for, but with a flick of the wrist, my father dismisses me, his attention already locked on the laptop open in front of him.
As I stand, I get a glimpse of Chloe and Ronan in the backyard, her soft laugh blowing into the room on the breeze, and for the second time in as many minutes, my chest aches.
She’s too good for this world and far too good for the likes of me.
If I were smart, I would distance myself more than I already have, but I’m greedy. I want as much time with my Duchess as I can get, even if that means hurting us both in the end.