Mario stood there, unmoving, as the silence deepened.
Outside the room, his brothers waited.
Ricardo. Lorenzo. Diego.
They believed they were leaving Italy because their father’s death had freed them to expand.
They believed Chicago was opportunity.
They did not yet understand that it was also distance.
From Italy.From the past.From a woman none of them had known.From a truth that could fracture everything.
Francis’s hand closed weakly around Mario’s wrist.
“Promise me,” he whispered.
Mario looked at him.
He had spent his life obeying this man. Learning from him. Becoming what Francis had shaped him to be.
But the truth now lying between them did not feel like inheritance.
It felt like a blade.
“I’ll protect the family,” Mario said.
Francis’s mouth tightened, as if he knew that was not the promise he had asked for.
But it was the only one Mario would give.
By dawn, Francis Conti was dead.
By sunset, Mario had begun making calls.
Chicago would be theirs.
The Conti cousins would not arrive in America as mourners or exiles.
They would arrive as power.
But somewhere across the ocean, in Atlantic City, another Conti don ruled beneath a name that was both true and false.
Luca.
Elio’s son in every way that mattered.
Francis’s son in the one way that could destroy them all.
And Mario Conti—the new don of the cousins—was the only living man who knew.
Chapter One
Victoria
I step out of the car in front of Enterprises with my work bag in one hand and my entire future balanced somewhere in the middle of my gut.
That sounds dramatic.
