Chapter 1 #2
My men preen and perform for female attention, their smiles flirtatious as they flash their strong white teeth, and their words grow suggestive. The waitress lingers, and I feel her gaze on me, but I stare over the piazza at the fountain.
“Boss, you’re made of fucking stone,” Paulo says with a laugh when she retreats, disappointed.
“I’ve got something made of stone for her,” Nico adds, suggestively cupping his groin.
They think I’m disciplined and controlled. Focused on business above all else.
A woman crosses the piazza, dark hair catching the sunlight, a child’s hand clasped in hers. The little boy is chattering about something, pointing at the fountain, and she bends down to listen with a smile that transforms her whole face.
I look away, but memories from another life chase after me, wailing like banshees.
Memories, not hopes. Not anymore.
My phone buzzes against the table, and I glance at the screen. Tommaso Mancini. One of my father’s most loyal capos, calling from a continent away.
I take a sip of espresso and let it ring.
If it’s not Tommaso calling, it’s my sister Adora, though it’s been some time since I’ve heard from her. One year? Two? She’s a grown woman now, God help her. Because I couldn’t.
If I hadn’t been exiled, I would have killed my father.
I knew it.
And he knew it.
I’ve built something here. A life that’s mine, not his.
I work for my uncle, run his operations in the south, and answer to a man who doesn’t treat me like I’m a sword to be hammered into the right shape.
It’s not freedom, exactly. But it’s distance, and distance is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever known. From Malus and my father’s shadow.
And distance from her.
It’s better this way, when I have no hope of winning her back. Some doors aren’t open for you, even after you’ve forcibly broken them down.
And yet every time Tommaso or Adora calls, I feel the pull of Malus like a hook in my chest. The Montoni name.
The Montoni legacy. The father who beat me until I learned to hit back, and then beat me harder for daring to fight.
His violence was seeping into my blood. His poison was filling my veins, and he was remaking me in his image.
Some nights I still wake in a cold sweat, certain that I’ll look in the mirror and see his furious eyes staring back at me.
Amber eyes. Unmistakable eyes, passed from father to son down the generations.
Tommaso calls again.
And again.
The ringing distracts my men from their cigarettes and flirting. They frown at my phone. Finally, to make Tommaso stop, I answer the call, but say nothing.
“Your father is dead,” the voice at the other end of the line says.
I watch a pigeon land on the edge of the fountain, its head bobbing as it searches for crumbs.
“Did you hear me? Agnello Montoni is dead. Murdered at your sister’s wedding.” Tommaso’s voice shakes with something between rage and grief. “I have a bad feeling, Cristiano. The way it happened, the timing. Adora married that Vici piece of shit. I don’t have proof, but I swear they did it.”
The pigeon takes flight, and I track its path across the pale blue sky until it disappears behind a terracotta roof.
“Cristiano. Say something.”
I hang up.
The phone sits in my hand, the screen blank.
My father is dead.
I reach for my espresso and down the rest of it.
I hated the way he smiled when I flinched, like my fear was delicious to him.
I hated the bruises he left on my ribs where no one would see.
I hated the sound of his belt sliding through the loops, the way he made me wait and watch before the first blow fell.
For years I dreamed of killing him, slow and agonizing.
I had plans. I had patience. I was going to look into his eyes and make him afraid of me for once.
But someone else got to him first.
My hand tightens on the empty cup.
Adora.
What did you do?
I think of my little sister, so eager to turn her face away from my pain, shut her bedroom door, and shut me out.
I wanted to do it.
I wanted to.
He was mine to kill, not hers. How dare she.
But now Agnello Montoni is dead, and everything that was his belongs to me.
The casinos. The clubs. The politicians in our pocket, the judges on our payroll, the cops who look the other way. The Montoni mansion with its marble floors and its ghosts. The soldiers who killed for my father and will now kill for me. An empire of violence, money, and fear.
All mine.
The burst of cold fury dies to a background flicker. I tap my forefinger on my espresso cup, thinking.
I imagine arriving at a Montoni casino, and everyone falling silent when I enter the room. My father was so stupid with power. Impulsive, ruling with his temper, swinging his fists at every problem like a brute.
I’m smarter than he ever was.
Five years in Italy have taught me things my father never learned. How to wait. How to plan. How to leash the violence inside me and let it off the chain only when it serves a purpose. I’ve learned to be clever, to be patient, to smile at men I want to kill and shake hands with men I’ll destroy.
Nico stubs out his cigarette and leans forward. “Va tutto bene?” Everything okay?
I can still feel the phantom ache in my jaw where Dad’s Montoni signet ring split my skin. No son of mine is going to shame this family over the daughter of the hired help.
The daughter of the hired help.
I should have killed him for that, but my heart was already dead. I lost Mina before my father ever sent me away because I was a stupid, reckless boy.
But I’ve changed since then. I’ve learned control. I’ve learned patience. I’ve learned to keep the monster on a leash.
At least, I think I have. I thought I could control myself when I was nineteen, but it turns out, I couldn’t.
She feared me.
Oh, how she feared me.
She flinched and whimpered and wept.
Mina, you’re mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. You just have to stay with me, and I’ll fix everything, I promise. I’ll show you how happy we can be. Stop struggling. I’ll show you. Why won’t you let me show you?
“Boss?” Nico prompts again.
I blink. The sun is warm. The coffee is gone. My father is dead, and everything I was promised from birth is finally mine for the taking. I’ll go back for the empire. For the casinos, the clubs, the power. The birthright my father exiled me from.
That’s the only reason.
The fact that she’s in Malus too, that’s incidental. Irrelevant. I have no intention of seeking her out. No hope that anything between us could ever be salvageable. She made her feelings clear five years ago, and I’ve accepted them.
I have.
“How would you all feel about going to America?” I ask my men.
They exchange glances around the table, cigarettes frozen halfway to their lips.
“When?” Paulo asks.
I stand and leave money on the table.
“Now.”
Rain streaks down the windows of the Montoni mansion. It’s been raining practically since I arrived. Gray skies, gray streets, gray faces. Italy had golden light that made even violence seem beautiful. Here, the coldness in my heart pervades the stone, the air, the people.
I stand at my father’s study window, hands deep in my pockets, watching the rain running down the glass.
My study now, though I still struggle to think about it that way.
Every time I sit behind the mahogany desk, I expect to see Dad’s shadow looming in the doorway, his body clenched in threat and his face in darkness.
The ghosts in this house are relentless.
I’ve been back in Malus for five weeks. Five weeks of consolidating power and reminding men twice my age that I’m their don now, and they will kneel or they will bleed.
The Montoni empire is vast, most of the northeast of Malus, and my father’s untimely death means that his enemies—that bastard had so many enemies—are circling like sharks who smell blood in the water.
I’m putting out fires with the Dervishis in the north and the Sokolis in the south.
Or at least I’m trying. Some days I feel like I’m pouring gasoline on those problems instead.
I’ve worked eighteen-hour days. I’ve made examples of men who thought the young don would be easy to manipulate. I’ve pushed back incursions on my territory.
And I feel nothing.
No satisfaction. No pride. No sense of accomplishment. Just the same cold emptiness that followed me from Italy.
My gaze catches on a gouge in the wooden bookcase. Deep and deliberate. The kind of mark that doesn’t fade.
I know what will happen if I touch it. The memory will surge up and drown me in it. Yet my hand moves toward the scar anyway. I reach out and touch it, as though I’m hungry for the pain. As though I deserve to choke on it.
My fingers press into the gouged wood, and suddenly I’m eight years old again.
The belt buckle misses my head by inches and slams into the bookcase with a crack that splits the air.
Wood splinters. I’m already running and screaming out for help.
I try to dodge around him, and I’m fast, but he’s faster.
His hand seizes my collar and drags me backward.
I hit the floor and the air punches out of my lungs.
Dad looms over me, and his face is red, veins bulging in his neck. He’s breathing hard through his nose like a bull. When he gets like this, eyes wild, spittle flying, it means the control is gone. He’ll keep going until the rage burns itself out.
He’s shouting at me, but the memory of what he’s saying is lost to time. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done to earn this. He’s angry, and when he’s angry, there’s only one outcome.
The belt comes down. Once. Twice. Again and again. I bite into my tongue trying not to cry out, and the taste of blood fills my mouth. Boys don’t cry. Boys don’t flinch and run and whimper like pathetic, worthless—
The leather bites into my shoulders, my stomach, the arms I’ve raised to protect my head. He’s not careful when he’s like this. He’s not thinking about what shows or what doesn’t. Just hitting and hitting and hitting.
When it finally stops, I’m curled on the floor, shaking.