Chapter 3
1004 Words
Chapter 3: The Brothers
VICENZO.
The villa sat at the edge of northern Sicily the way old money always does — quietly, without apology, without the need to announce itself.
Stone walls. Cypress trees standing like sentinels along the drive. A silence that wasn't peaceful so much as controlled — the kind of stillness that only exists where everyone inside understands the cost of noise.
I walked in the way I always did. Unhurried. The suit was charcoal today, no tie, collar open two buttons — not carelessness, just the particular ease of a man who has never needed formality to be taken seriously.
"Look who finally remembered where home is," Damien called from across the room before I'd fully crossed the threshold. He was sprawled across the leather chair nearest the window with his legs hanging over one arm, a glass of something he probably shouldn't be drinking at this hour balanced on his stomach. The grin he wore was the same one he'd been wearing since he was seventeen — the one that made people underestimate him right up until the moment they really shouldn't.
Sebastian didn't look up from the papers in his hand. "You're late."
"I'm exactly where I need to be," I replied, crossing to where Damien had left a cigarette pack on the side table and helping myself to one. He made a noise of protest. I ignored it.
"The cargo landed?" Sebastian asked.
"Men are in position. We'll know within the hour."
Seb nodded, setting the papers down with the particular deliberateness that meant he'd already read them three times and memorized everything worth memorizing. He was the only person I knew who could make reading look like a tactical decision.
Damien uncurled himself from the chair with the lazy grace of someone who had never once felt the need to justify how he moved through the world. He drifted toward the window, glass still in hand, and I watched him from the corner of my eye the same way I always did — cataloguing, noting, the habit so deep it was automatic now.
"Heard the club had a problem last night," he said, and his voice had changed. Not dramatically — most people wouldn't catch it. But I'd known Damien since before he had opinions, and I knew the difference between his performance and his focus.
"Costas," I said.
The name settled over the room like a weather change.
All three of us carried a particular silence when that name came up. It was old — older than the current business, older than my tenure as Don. It lived in the walls of this house. In the way Sebastian rubbed the silver cufflink on his right wrist when he thought no one was watching. In the way Damien's grin went flat for just a moment before he rebuilt it from the edges.
"Children?" Damien asked.
"They're trying to use the club route again."
His jaw tightened. The glass in his hand lowered to the windowsill.
"Not on our watch," Sebastian said quietly.
It wasn't a declaration. It wasn't even particularly dramatic. It was simply the truth, stated the way Sebastian stated most truths — with the calm certainty of someone who had already decided, long before the conversation, what the outcome would be.
That was the thing about my brother. People assumed his composure was distance. It wasn't. It was depth. Sebastian felt everything — I knew that better than anyone — he simply refused to let his feelings drive. He was the one who had talked me out of burning three buildings to the ground in the months after we lost our father. He was the one who brokered the agreement with the Natellis when I would have gone to war. He was the reason the famiglia was still intact in ways that couldn't be measured in money or territory.
He should have been Don. By every standard, by birth order and temperament and the natural way people moved out of his path — he should have been the one sitting across the table from men who feared to say the wrong thing.
He'd never explained why he'd stepped aside. I'd never asked. Some things between brothers don't need words, and some doors, once you understand why they're closed, you leave closed.
"We need someone on the inside of the Costas' distribution line," Sebastian said, turning back to the papers. "Not force. Information first."
"Agreed."
"Damien." Sebastian glanced up. "That means no improvising."
Damien pressed a hand over his heart with an expression of profound, theatrical hurt. "Fratello. When have I ever—"
"Tuesday."
"Tuesday was a judgment call—"
"You set his car on fire while he was still sitting in it."
"He got out." A pause. "Eventually."
"And how is it going?"
I pause, swiping my lower lips with my left thumb, a habit I picked up years ago and probably won't let it go. I know exactly what the "it" is, and as always, I had it under control.
I always do. Probability doesn't sustain a man in the line of the business I run. It's either it is or it is not.. especially not in a secret like this that many lives has been laid down.
All it takes it just one slip to bring a man down. Slip once become a target, and unfortunately, I have, and I plan on rectifying that before others notice.
I lit the cigarette and moved toward the window. Outside, the grounds were quiet. Gardeners had come and gone. The afternoon light was starting to go gold and flat across the stone.
The Costas were moving faster than we'd anticipated. That was a problem — not because we weren't equipped for it, but because fast movement meant they felt safe. And the Costas feeling safe in territory adjacent to ours was a correction that needed to happen before it became a habit.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
Today, I had somewhere to be.
- Writer
