A reminder that fire can take everything, even pride.
Reaching the room my father used for his home office, I station my guards outside the door, then close it as I step in for a moment alone.
The space hasn’t been renovated yet, but the broken window’s been replaced, the burned curtains removed.
We lost half the books that used to adorn the wall of shelves, many first editions that my father coveted.
As a child, I’d always loved to sneak in and read them late at night, stories of Alexander the Great’s conquests and the history of Attila the Hun.
While my brothers spent their childhoods trying to earn my father’s respect through strength and brutality, I preferred to hone my intelligence.
My mind is my greatest weapon.
It was the best thing I had to defend Sandro against our father’s abuse.
I might be physically fit like my brothers, capable with weapons and lethal with a gun, but none of that could hold up against my father’s fists.
My words, on the other hand… I might not have been capable of ending his abuse entirely, but I found I could talk Sandro out of a punishment far more often than not.
I learned to wield language with ruthless precision at a very young age—learned to speak for Sandro as well as myself when my brother struggled to talk at all.
Pushing the family skeletons back into their closet where they belong, I focus on the challenge at hand.
This conversation with the Murrays could go one of two ways.
Very well, or catastrophically.
At this point, we need their support, their numbers, if we want a decisive victory against the Tanakas—which I do because I refuse to put my brothers or their families in jeopardy ever again.
But more than that, I need to know that even if we don’t have their support, they won’t intervene on the Tanakas’ behalf.
And that’s the sticking point.
I’ve always felt a certain unspoken comradery with the Irish.
A feeling that only intensified after Sandro found a passion for participating in their bare-knuckle boxing competitions when we were still teenagers.
Despite our Italian lineage, they took us in as something of honorary members to their clan.
At least on the nights when we chose to cast off our family name and slum it in their fighting pits.
So, even if the Murrays owed my family no loyalty, seeing them on the opposing side of the battlefield, side by side with the Tanakas and Pyotr Novikov, it had felt like a massive betrayal. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust them after that.
Despite the fact that our survival might depend on it.
The faint knock signals that my time for strategizing is up, and I press my palms against the desk, leaning forward as the guards open the doors to the old Chiaroscuro estate’s war room.
The Murrays file in like they own the place—four men in cable-knit sweaters, the father in front, his face carved from the same stone that’s built the walls around my patience.
The scent of cigarette smoke clings to them, mingled with blood and expensive whiskey.
“Rafael Chiaroscuro,” Callum Murray says, his Irish brogue as smooth as aged scotch. “I appreciate your agreeing to see us.”
I motion for them to sit, though my body stays tightly wound. “I didn’t realize I had a choice.”
Callum smiles like we’re friends, but he’s the only one who settles into the seat I offer. They don’t trust me any more than I trust them.
“I hope you understand that we don’t think of you as our enemy,” the Irish leader says.