Reduced to this.
Broken. Bleeding. Powerless.
He had never imagined this.
Not once.
Not even in his worst nightmares.
Getting him here had not been easy.
Nothing about Ottavio was ever easy.
For years, I had been hell-bent on revenge against my father—for what he did to my sister, for what he allowed to happen to me, for being the worst father.
But infiltrating his stronghold in Tuscany—the heart of his mafia empire—had been like trying to bleed stone.
Every assassin I sent disappeared without a trace. Every bribe I offered came back with a message—usually attached to a corpse.
He was always watching. Always calculating.
Paranoid enough to survive.
So I stopped playing his game.
Stopped chasing shadows.
Instead... I gave him something he couldn’t resist.
Family.
The rumor spread slowly at first.
Whispers in the right places. Carefully planted conversations. A name dropped here. A confirmation there.
Vincenzo Orsini is getting married.
A powerful alliance.
A return.
The prodigal son is stepping back into the light.
I made sure it reached him.
When my official invitation finally arrived at his table, I knew exactly what he would do.
He called me himself.
I remember the moment clearly.
The line had been quiet for a second too long before his voice came through.
Warm. Familiar. Fake.
“Vincenzo,” he said, like the years between us had never existed, like the blood and distance meant nothing. “We’ve been apart too long.”
I said nothing.
