With a final heavy sigh, I plant my palms on the table and rise from my chair, exiting the room through the same door as my brothers.
The streets of downtown Chicago are bustling with foot traffic as civilians get off work for the evening and head home.
Their strides are intentional and enthusiastic, like they’re eager to get somewhere—or away from the place they’ve been for the past eight hours.
Lost in the bustle, I can feel my own troubles settle at the back of my mind, ready to come forward when I’m in the quiet, alone once more.
It’s a muggy late-summer day, the sun brutal as it glares down on me.
A trickle of sweat works its way from the back of my collar down the curve of my spine until it finds the mint-green fabric of my dress shirt beneath my tailored Italian suit.
It’d be a cold day in hell when the world might find one of the Chiaroscuro brothers out in public wearing anything less sophisticated—aside from Sandro, maybe, who prefers the bare-knuckle boxing ring and therefore a bare chest and boxing shorts to the suits our father raised us to prefer.
But the heat feels something like penance as my thoughts linger on the long-buried memories all this recent violence and unrest have dredged up.
Memories of the last time we got into a conflict with a rival family—an Italian family that wanted to take over our territory and chose to make a statement by stealing Stephanie right out from under my nose.
I can still recall that evening with perfect clarity—Stephanie and I exiting out onto the sidewalk after a romantic dinner together, her stepping out of my arms and away from me with that enigmatic smile that never failed to steal my breath away, the sound of tires screeching as they jumped the curb, the men pulling her into a black van, then racing off before I could get to her.
Her body was never found, but the message they sent my father made it clear that searching would be futile.
She was gone, just like that.
Taken from me, her perfect, beautiful, creative life snuffed out, all so someone could make a point.
I brutally murdered every last man responsible.
I killed every single member of that family.
I wiped their name off the face of this earth, never to be uttered again.
I’d gone half-mad with grief, and after all that blood was shed, I didn’t feel a lick better for it.
It only made me realize that if there were a heaven, I had just condemned myself to an eternity without ever seeing Stephanie’s face again.
Because I had no doubt they would never let me inside the pearly gates. Not after what I did.
Since that realization, I’ve abhorred violence—not that my change of heart has any chance of changing the likelihood that I’ll ever get to see my love again.
She was made to be an angel.
And I’ll be damned to the deepest pits of hell.
The dark meandering of my thoughts carries me down the Magnificent Mile and around a corner, my feet taking me in a random direction.
I shouldn’t be out here alone—not with tensions as high as they are between our family and the Tanakas, or the Murrays.
But my life has become too claustrophobic.
I was never meant to hold the Chiaroscuro throne.
That was Leo’s burden to bear.
And suddenly, it feels like the weight of the world has been dropped on my shoulders.
But when I wander the city streets—like any other businessman on his way home after a full day of work—I can pretend I’m no one important.
I can breathe. I can process.
