The way he always did.
“I don’t know how you live in this haunted place,” came the intruder’s familiar, disparaging voice.
Not an intruder, Jovi corrected himself. Not exactly.
He did not bother to turn around. He knew who his uninvited guest was. Had known, in truth, the moment he’d heard that particular heavy cadence of footfalls from inside the villa.
Carlo D’Amato, his cousin. His oldest cousin and his uncle’s favorite son. This meant Carlo was also considered thesotto capoof what some news organizations liked to call theD’Amato crime family, but only because they dared be disrespectful from the distance afforded them through newsprint.
To those who knew better than to show disrespect, they were known as Il Serpente, wily enough to outwit the many criminal investigations that had plagued families like theirs since back in the 1800s. Not to mention the rival criminal organizations who muscled in where they could.
Most shivered at the very thought of Il Serpente, a true family organization built on blood ties, because blood brokered loyalty. Blood was less likely to be bought.
Jovi was a part of this family, but not the way Carlo was. Because Jovi’s father, the traitor Donatello, had betrayed his own brother—bringing dishonor to the family name and very nearly handing them all over to the authorities who stalked them.
This was a stain upon them all. Jovi alone of his father’s family had been spared.
So he wasfamily, yes. Blood where it counted. More importantly, he was a weapon.
Theweapon, perhaps.
“Did you hear me?” Carlo’s voice rose in pitch as he swung himself around the chair so he could look down at Jovi from the front. Allowing Jovi to watch, fascinated as always, as this big, powerful man who feared nothing and no one—a fact Carlo liked to broadcast whenever possible—looked more than a littlewaryat the sight of his supposedly lower-ranked cousin.
The way everyone did if they had the misfortune of seeing him.
Because there was rarely any reason to see Jovi that did not involve pain.
Carlo, as ever, could not hold Jovi’s gaze. He looked away, and his shoulders hunched, more signs that he was intimidated by the cousin he liked to brag thathedid not find frightening in the least.
He even spat on the ground, as if Jovi was a superstition in need of clearing. “You’re a spookystronzo,” he muttered.
Jovi only waited. Carlo knew exactly why Jovi lived here. This was the home Jovi’s father had inherited from his own father, as he had been the oldest D’Amato son in his generation. Donatello had been too soft for the family business, however, according to the stories everyone liked to tell. Jovi’s grandfather had used to say that he had two heirs.
Donatello for the public family legacy, charming and academic and sophisticated. And the crafty, cunning, and wholly soulless Antonio for the family business, where sophistication was not required but brutality was celebrated.
Antonio had wanted nothing to do with this place after he had meted out bitter family justice upon Donatello, his wife, and his two young girls.
Jovi did not allow himself to think of them in other terms. His father and mother. His sisters.
They had all lost the right to those connections when Donatello betrayed their family.
He rarely permitted himself to think of them at all.
It was his cousin who seemed to enjoy bringing up ancient history whenever he came here, always pointing out the empty, echoing rooms. Always making certain to remind Jovi of the things he opted not to remember. Or, perhaps, reminding Jovi of his roots in the only way he could without risking Jovi’s displeasure.
Despite what Carlo liked to tell the rest of Sicily, and likely himself, both Jovi and Carlo knew very well that Carlo would never dare toactuallyinsult his cousin. Here, in these private moments, Carlo’s cowardice was always clear.
Carlo swallowed. Then took his time looking Jovi’s way again. “Patri has a job for you,” he said.
This, too, was obvious. Only a directive from Antonio himself could compel Carlo to visit this place of shame and despair, a stain upon the family name. There was no possibility that Carlo would ever come here to spend time with Jovi, to catch up or whatever it was people did when they had all of those social connections Jovi had never been permitted.
Even if Carlo wasn’t terrified of Jovi, they would never connect in this way. Jovi shared blood with his family and their ancestors, here in Sicily and across the water in Calabria.
He did not share anything else.
That would require that he be made of something more than ice, and his uncle had made certain that he remained too cold to melt. Ever.
In truth, he preferred it that way.
