Chapter1
MATTEO
When I imaginedthe day I would return to my family home in Pacific Palisades I saw nothing but joy, triumph, relief, and a whole lot of other positive things.Instead, there’s bitterness, pain and hate trailing me through every room in the house.
You sacrificed too much, the very walls seem to whisper in each room I enter.You strayed too far.It’s too late.You can never rebuild.
Everything is just as I left it when I had the cleaners in before locking the doors and hanging the key on a leather strap around my neck.With my mother’s engagement ring, my great-grandfather’s signet ring and the crucifix that was given to me by my mother at my First Communion.I carry the key to Goldie’s bedroom on it too now.
Because the only way anyone else gets her to is over my dead body.
But she’s the one who wants me dead the most.Tried to kill me with my own knife just an hour ago.Tried to kill me in my sleep.In the bed next to her, where I’d gladly spend the rest of my life.
The fact that she tried to kill me hasn’t quite sunk in yet.
But the whispers from the walls are helping with that.
You pushed her too far.
You took everything from her.And you’re about to take more.
She’ll never forgive you.
She’ll never love you.
She will kill you.
She has every right to.
It’s as though the ghosts of my dead family are all here, all united in telling me what a fuck up I am.Even though I’m doing all this to avenge their unjust, untimely deaths.Even though I’m here to reclaim our family honor, take back all that was stolen from us by Dante Moretti almost a decade ago.
But they’re not wrong.
I have used Gianna—Goldie, the woman I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone.I used her badly.I made her fall in love with me, I took her virginity, made her trust me… just so I could turn around and betray her.Join forces with a man plotting to overthrow her father and take over the running of the New York Mob.And then I took her for myself.Locked her up.Made her mine in all ways but the way where she comes freely.
Yeah, I’d use a knife on whoever did that to me too.I’m just surprised she hadn’t done it sooner.
I tell as much to the ghosts following me from room to room, as I open windows and doors and throw the protective sheets off sofas, tables, closets, armchairs, and normal chairs.
Our housekeeper Maria and the cleaners did a good job closing down this house.But that was over seven years ago.Dust is flying thick in the air now, sparkling in the moonlight.I can see my footprints on the dirty floor.
My family home is a big house.My great-grandfather Eddo bought the land when he first came to LA, long before Pacific Palisades was the upscale neighborhood it is today.There are three more guesthouses in the huge garden and the entire estate must be valued at over 300 million these days.
I was born here, grew up here, became a man here… and lost everyone I ever loved here.
I’d gladly sell the place to fund an army that will help me get my revenge on the guy who took everyone and everything from me.Dante Moretti.The guy who started a war against my family after my younger sister Isabella refused to honor the marriage pact my father arranged between them.Fought dirty.Left me and my sister the sole survivors.Her lost in the world.Me his prisoner.His lackey, the lowest of the low among his hired muscle.For seven long years, I had to look at his ugly face, knowing he could kill me if I so much as looked at him wrong.But he enjoyed torturing me too much to do it.
That’s all over now.
Because the man who took over the running of the New York Mob—Angelo Ferro, the newcapo dei tutti capi—gave me an army to take it all back.To kill Dante Moretti.To finally get my revenge.
My army will be here in the morning.This house is more than large enough to house us all.
I should be making plans, gathering funds to pay them all, collecting weapons.I should be rejoicing.
Instead, I’m wandering around a dark house, worrying about a woman.A woman whose love I crave.But the simple fact is, as the ghosts have told me tonight, she will never love me.I used her too roughly.Betrayed her trust too completely.
But it’s also a fact that she’s already mine.
