I know this city the way I know her. By heart. And I love this city. I’m not relinquishing one fucking square foot of what’s mine to the Sokolis.
I pull through the gates of the Montoni mansion as the moon shines overhead. The house is quiet and dark. I should go to bed. Get a few hours of rest before the day begins again.
But my mind is too restless. Too full of Zana’s smug smile and Andreas’s betrayal.
I push open the front door, and Tommaso appears at my elbow.
“Don Cristiano, can we please talk about Ariana Barone and your engage—”
“Not now.”
There’s nothing I’d like to talk about less than a woman who means nothing to me.
I close the front door and turn sharply away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Tommaso grimace in frustration. He wants me to marry, and he and I are in complete agreement. The only difference is our choice of bride for me.
Nico and Paulo are flanking me.
“Anything else tonight, boss?” Nico asks.
“No. I’ll be upstairs.”
I climb the stairs. Past my bedroom. Past Adora’s old room, closed up and unused. Down the corridor toward the staff quarters at the top of the house.
Mrs. Santoro still lives in the same room. I hear her television murmuring behind her door, some evening game show, with canned applause and cheerful music.
And Mina’s room…
I stop in front of the door at the end of the hall.
The room where I carried her after she hurt her ankle. The room where I laid her on the bed and watched her unwrap my gift. The room where I touched her for the first time, certain that she was going to be mine forever.
The room where everything fell apart.
I haven’t been inside it since that day. The thought of Mina’s things boxed up and taken away makes the memory of Mrs. Santoro’s car disappearing out the gates rise vividly in my mind, and pain twists violently in my chest.
But I’m here anyway, standing in the dark hallway, my hand on the doorknob.
I open the door silently.
It’s smaller than I remembered. A single bed pushed against the wall. A wardrobe with a mirror on the door, reflecting the dim light from the hallway. A desk where she used to do her homework, an empty bookshelf, a window overlooking the garden where we used to lie in the grass together as children.
Her things are gone. Mrs. Santoro must have cleared them out.
I move through the room slowly, touching nothing. Breathing her in, or trying to. Five years is a long time. Any trace of her scent is long gone.
But in the bottom drawer of her desk, I find something.
A yellow ribbon.
I remember this ribbon. She used to tie her hair back with it, a bright streak of sunshine against her dark waves. I remember we were twelve and thirteen, sitting in the garden. She was consoling me because—
I clench my teeth and swallow hard. She was consoling me because earlier that day in the back rooms of one of his casinos, Dad had forced a gun into my hand, curled his finger around mine, and made me pull the trigger.
A woman. He’d made me kill a woman, because her husband had double-crossed Dad and gone into hiding. He couldn’t find the man, so he took his anger out on the man’s wife.
Dad had berated me for going catatonic with shock after, saying this was what it meant to be a Montoni, and I wasn’t worth anything if I couldn’t be a man and do what needed to be done.
