My hand tightens on the glass. "Don't."
"He's not wrong, but he's not right either." Valentino crosses himself. "You're angry. So what? Angry men have led families before."
"Pietro doesn't think so."
"Pietro thinks too much." He picks up his glass again, swirls the liquid. "Always has. That's why he's good at the job. But thinking isn't everything."
I stare at the whiskey in my hand.
"I can't control it," I say. The words come out rough. Honest. I hate honest. "The anger. I can't?—"
"Don't want to."
I look up. Valentino's watching me. When we were kids, he'd visit from Sicily and somehow know exactly which of us had broken Nonna's vase or stolen cookies from the kitchen. He never told. Just knew.
"Don't want to," I admit. "Why should I? They shot me at my own wedding. Put me in a coma for six months. I wake up and everything's different. Pietro's Don. Nico's—" I stop. Swallow. "Nico's right. I hate myself. I hate this chair. I hate that I can't stand up and put my fist through his face for saying it."
Valentino doesn't flinch. Doesn't offer comfort. Just drinks his whiskey and waits.
That's why I can stand him. He doesn't try to fix me. Doesn't look at me like I'm broken. He looks at me like I'm a man making choices, even if those choices are shit.
"You love them," he says. Not a question.
"Yes." No hesitation. Pietro, Lorenzo, Nico, Vittoria—they're my blood. My family. I'd die for any of them. Kill for them. Have killed for them, before. "But I can't?—"
"Can't be around them without wanting to burn everything down."
I drain my whiskey. "Something like that."
Valentino sets down his empty glass. The silence stretches between us, comfortable in a way it never is with my brothers anymore. He doesn't fill it with platitudes or advice. Just lets it sit.
"You want the title," he says finally. "You'll get it."
I look up. Search his face for the lie, the placation. Find nothing but that steady certainty.
"Pietro won't?—"
"Pietro will." Valentino uncrosses his legs, leans forward with his elbows on his knees. "He never wanted it. You know this. He took it because someone had to, and you were—" He stops. Crosses himself again.
"There's work to do first," Valentino continues. "The anger. The—" He gestures at me, at the wheelchair, at everything I've become. "This. You need to get control of it. Not kill it. Control it. Use it. Angry men lead families, Bruno. Uncontrolled men destroy them."
"And you think I can? Get control?"
"I think you're a Sartori." He says it like it's an answer. Maybe it is. "I think you were the best of us before. I think you can be again. Different. But the best."
Something cracks in my chest. Not hope. I don't do hope anymore. But something close to it.
I look away. Out the window. The grounds are dark, just the security lights casting pools of yellow across the manicuredlawn. Somewhere out there, guards patrol. Cameras watch. The fortress my father built to keep us safe.
It didn't keep me safe. Nothing did.
"Valentino." My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. Try again. "I need to ask you something."
He waits.
I hate this. Hate the words forming in my mouth. Hate that I need to say them. Asking for help feels like admitting defeat. Like proving Nico right. That I'm too weak, too broken, too consumed by my own shit to function.
"Stay," I say. The word tastes like ash. "For a while. Here."
