Prologue
Matteo
Almost Three Years Ago
Being woken up out of a dead sleep is never fun. Being woken up by Apollo of all people fucking blows. The asshole just lifted one side of my mattress clear off the frame and forced me to roll out of my comfortable slumber onto the cold hard ground.
“Son of a bitch,” I bite out, groaning against the marble tile. Never in my life have I wanted a carpeted bedroom more. As I look up at my brother through groggy eyes, I gripe, “What the hell was that for?”
“We’re having a meeting,” he replies in that aggravating, authoritative tone of his. It’s rare that he sounds like anything other than a stern father, and he isnotmy dad, no matter how often he pretends to be. “Get up, everyone needs to be in Dad’s office in two minutes.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” I complain, stumbling to get up on my feet. I might feel the need to worry or put my guard up if he hadn’t just thrown me out of bed. In the event of immediatedanger, there would already be a gun in my hand and a vest secured over my chest.
Apollo ignores me, leading the way out of the room. His broad shoulders are straight back as he walks down the hall, hair still perfectly in place like he never went to bed. He probably didn’t, the fucking vampire.
“You didn’t need to throw me on the floor to get me out of bed,” I grumble, padding behind him with cold bare feet and my eyes still adjusting.
“Boo-hoo.”
Prick.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nope.”
Double prick.
Our father’s office isn’t far from my room, but by the time we show up, it’s packed to the brim with my brothers. All in various stages of dress. Most in sweats or sleep pants, but some in rumbled day clothes, too. Apollo is still in half a suit; I swear the pompous ass sleeps in them.Or he doesn’t sleep at all.Like I said, he could be a vampire, if you ask me.
Stiff, brooding, acts like everyone should be afraid of him. It fits.
Scanning the room, I’m a little surprised to find that Uncle Cesar is also here. He’s at our house a lot of the time, of course. But in the middle of the night on a random weekday? That definitely qualifies as odd.
“Were you asleep?” my brother Armani asks as I take the open space by him to stand. His long brown hair is pulled back into a messy bun, and his tattoos are out on full display in his weird excuse for a shirt. It’s a navy-blue silky Versace thing that he barely has buttoned at all, and a sure sign that he’s come home from clubbing somewhere to be here. “You’re so bad at being eighteen, my friend. You could have come out.”
I roll my eyes. “And watch you get hammered with models? No thanks.”
He grins, white teeth flashing. “Jealous?”
“Not even a little bit.”
I prefer my debauchery to be on my terms, and my terms never include being out in the middle of the night when I could be enjoying the comfort of my bed. If I want to party, I finish at midnight. A man needs his beauty sleep, after all.
“Boring,” Armani tsks.
I pin him with a look that saysreally?
We both know I’m not one of the boring Moretti siblings. Not even close.
He cracks a smile and laughs silently, amusement shining in his crystal blue eyes.Mycrystal blue eyes, really. Almost all of us have them. Out of nine sons, Dante Moretti only produced two with brown eyes. Emilio and Elio are the only set of identical twins, and I guess that wasn’t enough to make them unique. They had to go and have deep brown irises to set them apart too.
I was kind of jealous of it as a kid. I always thought I would look nice with Elio’s eyes. His muscles, too, but I ended up getting those on my own.
A throat clears suddenly, wordlessly commanding attention. Standing in a line behind his desk, our father, Uncle Cesar, and Apollo face the rest of us. Feeling the weight of their stares, any and all chatter has come to a sharp end.
“There’s been an attack on the west coast,” Dad begins slowly, studying us with an unreadable expression. “Anton Morozov’s daughter was just admitted to the hospital, half dead.”
What the fuck?My stomach drops, and my brain immediately scrambles to wake up and flip through information.
