I don’t want to. Everything in me resists with violent certainty. This is nonsense, grief dressed up as desperation, lies woven carefully enough to sound convincing. There is no sense in entertaining it. There hasneverbeen.
The truth of Matteo’s death has always been simple.
Brutal… but simple.
Everyone in Sicily knows who killed my brother. The streets whispered it before the blood coating my hands had even dried. There is no man behind the curtain, no hidden architect pulling strings from the shadows. No convenient revelation waiting years later to absolve guilt and rewrite history.
I know who ended my brother’s life because my father told me.
He had no reason to lie, no justification for pointing the finger at the wrong culprit before taking his own life after being shattered by grief over losing his favorite son. Cesare Cosenza did not die a coward like many said after I pulled him down from the mezzanine. He died a broken man.
My eyes betray me as they drop to the page, and everything I’ve ever believed factures within seconds.
Names leap out at me immediately, unmistakable even in the hurried, desperate script. I recognize them without effort. My father’s consigliere and two of his captains.
Men who stood shoulder to shoulder with me at Matteo’s funeral with their hands gripping mine to anchor me while my entire world fell apart. Men who murmured vows of loyalty while I tried and failed to keep the tears burning behind my eyes from falling. Men who swore fealty to me when my father’s crown was shoved onto my head, heavy with expectation and the burden of our family’s fallen legacy that I was never supposed to inherit.
My stomach turns violently.
My hand closes around the ledger without conscious thought, wrenching it fully from Elena’s grasp. I flip the page, then another. My eyes move quickly over the words, the Don in me dissecting patterns even as the brother in me screams denial so loudly, it feels like my skull might split open.
This isn’t madness or the rambling guilt of a man trying to justify his own guilt and betrayal. The notes are meticulous, obsessively so. The dots are already connected, laid out plainly for anyone willing to see. And worst of all, it makes sense the longer I read.
I feel something inside me splinter, a fault line tearing straight through years of certainty and rage that have shaped me into an unrecognizable version of myself.
Elena’s voice is soft when she replies. “It’s all true, Dante… It all makes sense. My father would never betray your family. He loved you all.”
Loved.
I nearly laugh, hysteria burning inside my chest.
If this is true… then everything I’ve done, every man I’ve killed, every alliance I’ve burned, every piece of myself I’ve carved away in the name of vengeance has been in service toward the wrong enemy.
The thought is poison, slithering into my mind uninvited, and I recoil from it instinctively. I shake my head hard, as if the physical motion might dislodge it before it can root itself somewhere permanent.
“No.” The word comes out rough, but absolute.
She reaches for me then, her fingers brushing my arm, tentative and desperate all at once. “Dante?—”
“No.” My voice rises sharply.
I don’t want her touch or the sweetness of her voice to lull me into another false sense of reality. I don’t wantanyof this.
With a sudden, violent motion, I hurl the ledger across the room. It slams into the far wall with a dull sound, the old binding splitting on impact. Pages tear free and flutter down onto the floor like wounded birds.
Elena’s gasp is immediate. “Don’t!”
She moves to go around me to retrieve it and save the evidence before I can destroy it completely, but I don’t let her. My hand snaps out, latching around her arm, and I drag her back toward the door with more force than I mean to.
The anger surging through me is wild now, unfocused, fueled by fear masquerading as rage.
“Leave,” I command. “Now.”
She struggles against my grip, panic and fury flaring in her eyes. “Dante, stop!”
I don’t argue back at her. I can’t. If I open my mouth again, something raw and vulnerable will come spilling out—feelings I’ve long since buried and abandoned.
I wrench the door open and shove her into the hallway, releasing her only long enough to slam it shut in her face. The impact reverberates through the study, the lock sliding home with a final, damning click.
