Finding my seat, I pulled the curtain around me and waited. Why did it take so long to fill a plane? I needed to go. Surely someone would have checked on me by now? Well, theyprobably wouldn't have yet, unless the wine ran out. I huffed a laugh. Wine running out at a vineyard? That would never happen.
The bang of the large door slamming shut was the most welcome sound I'd ever heard, followed by the flight attendants going over their safety talk. Engines whirred to life, and before I knew it we were speeding down the runway. Front wheels off the tarmac, back wheels up, landing gear clunking into place, and we were in the air.
A tear slipped down my cheek as I realized I'd made it through step one of my new life. Below me, the lights of Sicily grew small and then disappeared into the dark.
I'm sorry, Nicola, I thought. Be safe.
I didn't sleep the entire flight.
CHAPTER 2
CONSTANTINE
My father was supposed to die in a hail of gunfire.
I'd always known that, the way you know certain things in this life without anyone ever saying them directly. It was in the way he carried himself, the way his men looked at him, the way he walked into a room and the air changed. Dante Venosa was not a man who was supposed to waste away in a bed, coughing up pieces of his lungs while the disease ate him from the inside out. He was supposed to go the way his father went, and his father before that — fighting, defending, refusing to yield an inch of ground until there was no ground left.
Instead I stood in the hallway outside his room every morning and listened to him breathe and counted the spaces between each exhale.
I'd been managing the family's operations for eight months now. Quietly at first, then less quietly as my father's good days became fewer. The men had adjusted without being asked to — they were loyal to the Venosa name above all else, and they understood the transfer happening before them, even if none of us spoke of it directly. It was easier that way. Easier to pretendwe were just covering for a man who was temporarily indisposed rather than watching him leave us by degrees.
The truth was I wanted it. I'd always wanted it. I'd been raised for it, trained for it, and I was good at it in ways that had surprised even me. The territory was more profitable than it had been in years, our relationships with the other four families were solid, and I'd handled two significant threats in the past eight months without a single civilian casualty.
I was ready.
I just hadn't wanted it like this.
There was something profoundly wrong about inheriting power from a living man. About sitting behind a desk that still smelled like my father's cigars and making decisions he should have been making for another twenty years. Every time I settled into that chair I felt like a man trying on clothes that almost fit — close enough to function, wrong enough to feel it constantly.
"Constantine, get in here." His voice bellowed from behind the closed door, and I heard the cough that followed it, deep and rattling in his chest. I closed my eyes briefly before I moved.
Taking a deep breath, I pasted a smile on my face as I walked into his room. "Father." I kissed each of his cheeks. His color was ashen, and if it was possible, he looked like he'd lost weight overnight. The room smelled of medicine and something underneath it I didn't want to name.
"There's my boy." He leaned back on his pillow and I took a seat on the end of the bed by his feet, the way I'd been sitting since I was small enough that my legs didn't reach the floor. "Are you getting brought up to speed on everything?"
"Yes. Emilio has been giving me a meticulous rundown of every business and deal you've got. This afternoon we're going to start going over the families and what we're requiring of them during this time." I tucked one leg under me and turned to look out the window. It was easier than looking at the once strongman wasting away before my eyes. The same view I'd looked at my whole life, the Chicago skyline gray and vast in the winter morning. "Everything is in order."
"Make sure you rely on the other four. We help one another." His eyes were growing heavy, the way they did after even small exertions now. "They will help you with the transition."
"I know."
"You have to get married, son."
I laughed despite myself. He mentioned this roughly once a day, as if I could forget. "I'm a little busy right now, Pop."
"Don't get so busy running the famiglia to forget about having one of your own." He sighed, and I waited for him to say more, but his breathing had evened out into the shallow rhythm of sleep. I stayed on the end of the bed for a moment longer than necessary, watching the rise and fall of his chest, doing the thing I did every time now — making sure there would be a next one.
There always was. So far.
"Constantine." Emilio appeared in the doorway, his voice quiet, his eyes going immediately to my father with the expression he always wore when he looked at him now. Grief wearing the mask of composure. These two men had been boys together, had come up through the ranks side by side, had built something significant out of nothing and defended it for forty years. Emilio had known forever that his place was beside my father. He took it hard that this was the one journey he couldn't accompany him on.
I stood carefully, so as not to disturb the bed, and followed him into the hall.
"What is it?"
He handed me a piece of paper without speaking. I read it once, then again.
Don Avola wants his daughter back. A reward awaits anyone who provides information that leads to her return.
