Elio pov
There’s only one week left until I finally get my revenge on Marco De Luca.
It’s going to be the longest fucking week of my life.
Since I dislike spending any time stewing in my own dread, I’ve decided to spend the week at my villa in Tivoli as a way to avoid the impending disaster of the marriage contract.
It’s a little treat. Something I’m giving myself before my life totally goes to hell, and I turn into the villain in so many stories.
It’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that our parents will finally be avenged.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the light scent of the orange blossoms from the trees that are scattered through my property.
I love it here. This is the only one of our many familial properties and holdings that is truly and completely mine. I bought it seven years ago, intending for the villa to be a wedding gift for the beautiful and young Caterina De Luca.
She never saw it, so it became a gift to me. It’s a haven, of sorts, that I have used many times since that horrible night.
If I had to, however, I’d trade it to have my parents back in a heartbeat.
I’m brought from my reverie by the crisp sound of heels clicking down the marble hallway to my office. “Boss,” my twin sister Gia, knocks on the doorframe in a very cursory gesture of respect before entering my space. “New intel.”
I grimace.
First, Gia only calls me ‘boss’ when she’s got some really fucking bad news.
Second, if the intel is new, I don’t want it.
The plan was perfect as I had it. If there are any adjustments, any pivots…
That perfection is gone.
And I demand nothing but perfection.
Softly I curse in Italian before looking at my sister. “What, Gia?”
She raises her eyebrows, and her hands crack like she’s holding back from punching me in the face.
Well.
That makes two of us, I guess.
“Your bride to be is suspicious as hell.”
I snort. I know that’s the truth: for years she was simply beneath my notice, and so I didn’t invest any time into finding or keeping her in one place.
Quite honestly, I never wanted to lay eyes on Caterina De Luca ever again.
And yet.
I sigh.
Being a Rossi is sacrifice. It costs us everything and gives us everything.
I’m sure my father didn’t intend for that to include the cost of his life when he said it, but here we are.
Both of our lives, gone.
Given to the family. To the business. Given in service of a deal with the devil that wore the face of a friend.
The De Lucas were close with us once. American, though their ancestors had come from Italy, they were my family’s ‘in’ to the ocean of untapped buyers that the States offered us.
Somehow, every last one of them landed behind bars. Which meant their ability to operate ports and find markets for our particular brand of exports diminished.
Which meant their usefulness to us ended.
It never made sense to me that Father had entered into such a stupid bargain with the De Lucas. We didn’t need them.
After their grip on the Port of New York loosened, we found other pathways. The Russians. The Japanese. Hell, even the Irish offered a more promising route to American markets than the De Lucas did.
But after one weekend in Atlantic City, my father came back and declared that he and Antonio De Luca had made an agreement. An arrangement. Binding the two families together.
An oldest son for an oldest daughter.
The irony, of course, is that the oldest daughter was also the youngest daughter. Six years younger than me, Catarina De Luca started out as my friend Marco’s little sister.
That’s how I thought of her. For years. I had known, of course, that we would be married at some point.
My father made it very clear to me when I entered my teens that any female companionship that I managed to wrangle would have to be non-committal at best, because Catarina De Luca would be my wife someday.
As with all of the men in my family, my father had a healthy appreciation for sex workers and mistresses, and while he did not discourage the use of either, he did encourage me to keep it quiet. I didn’t need to be told twice, and it wasn’t like I could mess around too much anyway.
After all, for every private party or club I went to, my bride’s older brother was right there next to me.
I would miss Marco, I supposed.
If I did not hate him so violently.
“What is the intel, Gia,” I say with exactly as much exasperation as I feel.
She slaps down a packet of pictures. “Bodyguard. On her 24/7. Looks like just one though. A condo. I think she nannies for a little girl in the family. Any of the brothers have a good time they forgot to keep under wraps?”
Gia’s puns will be the death of me.
Provided, of course, that any of the other multitude of actors slavering for my demise don’t work out.
“Marco probably not. I imagine he got the same level of emphasis that I did about accidental… mishaps.”
“The others?” she prompts.
I frown. “Dino and…”
“Sal. The hot one,” she clarifies.
“Gia. He is three years younger than you.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Hotness doesn’t have an age.”
Ugh. She sounds so American. “He is the son of the man who killed our parents.”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s still hot. Anyway. Either one of them have a surprise baby?”
I sigh. “We should look into it. That type of leverage could be useful.”
“More useful than being married to their precious baby angel younger sister?”
Her tone is sharp. I know she doesn’t approve of this plan.
It is, however, the best option.
“We will have a backup. If the child proves useful, we will make use of it. If Caterina is the most useful, we will make use of her. Find out who is the father, and we will go from there.”
Gia gathers the pictures and taps them sharply, collecting them back into one pile. “You know,” she says with a pause. “You don’t have to do this.”
I close my eyes. “Not this again, Gia.”
“Listen. We can send Enzo. He can work his way up in the organization…”
“Enzo, who is nearly identical to Father at that age?”
Gia shakes her head. “They don’t know. It’s not like there’s a picture of him lying around the De Luca estate or anything.”
“Marco will know. He spent plenty of time with Father and I.”
“I know, but if we can just find the contract…”
I slam my fist down on my desk. “Enough, Gia!”
The hurt in her eyes cuts me, but I hold her gaze. Gia and I are fraternal twins, but our looks are so similar that when we were both tiny and sported terrible bowl cuts, people would mistake us for each other.
She is my sister. My best friend. My closest confidante.
And even to her, I am a monster.
Sacrifice. “We are not looking for the contract, Gia. There’s no point. The only way for us to get Marco and the De Luca’s to admit that they killed our parents is to use their greatest weakness against them.
Catarina is young. She’s naïve. She’s been sheltered by three older brothers who would do anything for her, and she’s the person who will hurt them the most when we take her.”
Gia’s expression morphs into something hard. Her lips draw tight, and the corners of her eyes look pinched.
“I understand, boss.”
With that, she leaves.
I sit back in my chair. My head is pounding now, and I lean forward to pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. The orange blossom scented air reaches out to me again, and I inhale deeply, letting it soothe me as I try to think around the pulsing in my mind.
Everything that I said about Caterina is true.
She is the youngest of the De Lucas. She’s been painfully sheltered by her three older brothers to the point where her innocence is so obvious on her face that it’s almost palpable.
After Marco and I graduated business school, I moved back to Italy. An American education through young adulthood was plenty for my family, but the promise of a business degree had been mine.
The last time I saw Caterina prior to our engagement party, she was fourteen. She was all legs and glasses and frizzy, wild curls. Remembering Gia at that age, I had been polite but indifferent. I had kept a wide berth from her, because she was a child.
When I saw her again at our engagement party, I had been expecting that child.
But instead, a woman had shown up.
I think Marco may have pinched me a little too hard when his sister, on the arms of Sal, the brother closest to her in age, walked into the room.
I breathe in the citrus blossoms again. Dio santo, I remember everything about that night.
Her dress. A lilac color that made her look like some kind of fairy tale princess.
The way her skin glowed in the candlelight.
The way her lips had rounded on my name, shaping it into syllables that I knew, but hearing them from her made me feel reborn.
The way her eyes glittered when we danced.
My jaw works as I try to stop myself from remembering more.
Because there is so much more to remember.
The sweet surprise of her lips as I parted them with my tongue. The little noises she made when I pushed the gown off of her shoulders, releasing her pert breasts to the cool night air. The way she gasped my name, first as she came around my fingers, next as she came…
Stop.
The command is final. I drag myself, kicking and screaming, from the memory of Caterina that floods my senses. She’s a feast for my imagination, and my mind wants nothing more than to stay and gorge as I think about every small detail of that night.
However, that way is madness.
I know.
Because I’ve been fighting it ever since we separated that night.
I have long stopped feeling affection for Caterina. Once, I may have done just that. She had no guile in her, or so I had thought, that night under the stars.
But like everything about her, it was a lie.
One carefully crafted to disguise the real intentions of the dinner party that night.
To cover a murder.
There is no doubt in my mind that the De Lucas did not intend to honor their business deal. They clearly dangled a willing Caterina in front of me as bait, to distract my siblings and I from their real angle.
My throat gulps back the bitter feeling in my stomach.
I don’t know anything about Caterina De Luca, despite the fact that I thought I might have once.
I thought I knew all of them.
I bark out a bitter laugh before I can stop myself.
I doubt she was even a virgin. I’m sure she had some trick to explain why she was so tight, or where the blood came from that night.
She hid everything else from me after all.
What reason do I have to believe otherwise?
No, there is no doubt that the De Lucas orchestrated the death of our parents. I want to find some bitter satisfaction in the idea that, while our parents were murdered, so were theirs.
But it probably was just part of their plan that had gone wrong.
Marco isn’t nearly as intelligent as I.
However, after six years of searching for the original contract and trying to find evidence that would justify a retaliatory attack, my efforts were alarmingly fruitless.
I wasn’t about to risk an open attack on them. Not without proof.
I might be a criminal and a degenerate, but even I know better than to start a war without allies.
And allies need proof.
Especially in our world, the De Lucas were small, but begrudgingly well connected. Despite the remarkable amount of them that had been locked up in the great culling of the families in the States in the 80s and 90s, none of them flipped on their international allies. In fact, many of the other organizations still backed the slimy assholes, and that wouldn’t work for me.
I didn’t want vengeance on them. Not exactly.
I want annihilation.
Nobody comes after the people I love and survives. This is as true today as it was then. I protect my business interests with a ferocity that is renowned the world over, but that intensity pales in comparison to how I protect my family.
The De Lucas harmed me. They harmed my siblings. They took my father and my mother from the world, which eventually broke my Nonna’s heart.
They hurt me.
And now it was their turn to hurt.
In order to wipe them from the planet completely, I needed those allies. I needed everyone to turn their backs on the De Lucas, so that they were alone and desperate. I needed them to be without a single friendly soul to call out to.
And then, I would strike.
After, of course, I made them admit to their part in my family’s murder.
I sigh and sit up. My phone is vibrating with a number of notifications. I glance at it quickly before I drag out a pen and paper to start making a list.
I have been told, by Gia, that I should hire a personal assistant.
I have also told Gia that I would rather take my eyes out with a melon baller than trust my organization system to another living being.
She told me I was throwing a dramatic ‘mantrum’ and stalked away, but she never brought it up again.
If what she’s saying is true about the child, this would be a helpful backup indeed. I make some notes on the paper, assigning some of my more specialized operatives to the task.
The great irony, of course, in claiming that one of the De Luca boys has a bastard is that while I have been vigilant my whole life about having protected sex, there is one time that I didn’t.
And I can’t think about it because if I do, the memories I have worked so hard to suppress will come roaring back.
I cannot think of Caterina like that. I can’t remember her taste, or her smell, or the way she moans and flushes pink when she comes.
I can’t think of her that way because I refuse to let her close to me again.
This time, I think darkly as I open my email, will be different.
This time Caterina won’t be able to control me.
I will control her.
And through that, I’ll get the vengeance that I am owed.
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