Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

DANTE

I take a deep breath as I walk into my father's office. I haven't been in here since he died a couple of weeks ago, but I know that this is where all his important documents are. I'm looking for anything that might help me, really, although I'm really hoping to find his will.

My more money-grubby family members are squawking about it, but I know that my father wouldn't leave his important business to anyone but me.

I'm an only child, after all, and he's been training me to take over as Caputo since I was seventeen.

I walk around his desk, running my fingers along it. It's gotten dusty since I haven't allowed the cleaners to get in here since he passed.

Passed. That's what everyone kept saying. "I'm so sorry to hear about your father's passing." He didn't pass. He was murdered.

My phone rings.

"Hey, how are you holding?" Nico asks.

"Just going through his things." Nico is my best friend. I've known him for years. We are more like brothers than anything else. I know he'd give his life for me in a heartbeat and I'd do the same for him, even if it's his job to protect me and not the other way around.

"I just found my father's key ring on the desk, give me a sec," I say as I put him on speaker so I can unlock each of the drawers.

In the second to last drawer there's a stack of paperwork. "I've got something," I mention out loud to Nico.

"Anything useful?"

"Looks like his medical records, you know he had a bad ticker, right, even if it took a bullet to take him down."

"Yeah," he says grimly. "Fuckers. What else?"

"Stuff like my birth certificate, my mother's death certificate, things like that."

I remember when my mom died. "Of course they never solved my mom's murder. They won't be solving Dad's either. Cops are useless, unless you pay them, and even then they are a bunch of incompetent little bitches that can only whine and beg for more money."

Nico spits on the other side. "Pigs."

"Not like it matters, does it? Because at the end of the day, we both know who killed both my parents."

Luca Lorenzo. I'm almost certain of it.

"You know we own most of South Chicago, while Lorenzo rules over North Chicago. He doesn't like that he doesn't own the whole of Chicago, and he also doesn't like that he doesn't have a male heir."

"Just that girl you saved once, right?"

"Yeah. After that, Luca swears left and right that he doesn't have any beef with the Riccis. My dad might have believed him, but I know better than to believe Luca or anyone with the last name Lorenzo. Even if my father took strides to forgive Luca toward the end. "

A memory assaults me. A fight we'd had in this very office.

"You know he killed Mama!" I burst out, after we'd seen him at a party and my father had been friendly and charming toward him and his little daughter.

"We don't know that, Dante," my father said with a sad little smile. "Your mother died because of me. Because I had my fingers in too many pies. It could have been anybody."

I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something disrespectful to my father. I loved him, and I'd always done what he said, but this? Luca Lorenzo?

"We know he's our rival, and that he doesn't have an alibi for when she was killed," I said tightly, and my father sighed.

"Don't you get tired, son? Of all the killing? Of always wanting revenge?"

"Never," I said firmly, and my father ran a hand through his thick, mostly gray hair.

"What about that little daughter of his? What's her name? Mia? You saved her life a while back, you know that?"

"So what?" I asked, exasperated. "She's a little kid, I wasn't gonna let her get shot."

"You took a bullet for Lorenzo's daughter, Dante. Of course he wants to make amends."

I scoffed. "It was just a scratch, and she could have been any kid."

"Nevertheless, I think we need to accept this olive branch from Luca," my father insisted. "So, no more scuffling around with his brothers and cousins, yeah?"

I set my jaw but was silent.

"Dante?" There was a warning tone in my father's voice, and I knew that I had no choice.

"Yes, Papa," I said finally, and stalked out of his office.

"Hey, man, you still there?" Nico's voice pulls me out of my head, but my rage toward Luca is still boiling.

"Yeah, I'm here."

I shuffle through the papers that I found in the locked drawer, and I come across my father's will, my heart jumping into my throat as I begin to read it.

"I found it," I near whisper it, but it's enough.

"Yeah? What does it say? Not that I have any question about it." Nico sounds eager. I know he is behind me and same as me, he is sure my dad wanted me to step up in his place.

Not surprisingly, he's left almost everything to me.

"Marisa got some of it, but yeah, we were right."

I don't mind that Marisa Lopez, our housekeeper, got a small amount in the will. She's a second mother to me. She's kind and lovely, and she deserves what my father left her. She was also his mistress for the last fifteen years.

"I'll go through this in detail and let you know if there are any surprises, But as far as I can see at first glance, it's pretty clear."

"Okay, let me know if you need anything."

We hang up and I read the whole thing with an eagle eye. No reason to just skim it only to have someone find something that will screw me over.

It's all pretty standard until I come across a section later in the will called A List of Wishes. It's probably not legally binding, but it lists out all of Papa's desires on how he wants to be cremated, how he wants the service, and then, at the bottom, he lists something that shocks me.

I wish for my son, Dante Ricci, to marry Mia Lorenzo .

What the hell? Mia is just a kid, for one thing, and she's Luca Lorenzo's daughter. I stare at it for a long while before the wheels in my head start turning .

What's the best way to get close to Luca Lorenzo? To punish him for what he did to my family?

Getting close to his daughter.

A smile spreads across my face as I take the will and slide it into a briefcase, taking it with me to the lawyer.

"Don't worry, Dante," Edgar Lent tells me, looking over the list of wishes. "This isn't legally binding, so you don't have to marry Mia Lorenzo."

I smile at him, showing my teeth. He looks a little nervous. I guess when we come to Edgar, usually something is terribly wrong, so he's worried that I might snap after my father's death.

Lucky for him, I'm pretty strong-willed, and I've got a plan that will help me grieve.

"But I want to marry her," I say, and Edgar blinks at me.

"What do you mean, you want to marry her?" he chokes out. "You're not the marrying type, Dante, how many times have you told me that?"

I shrug. "Well, I've changed my mind. I want to honor my father's wishes."

Edgar sputters. "Well, you'll have to have her consent, of course?—"

"I'll get it," I say easily. "I'm meeting with Luca tonight."

"Tonight? You want this handled tonight ?" Edgar shuffles through the will. "Dante, the estate can't be transferred to you right away?—"

I wave a hand to dismiss him. "I don't care about that. I just want the wheels turning on my marriage."

Edgar just stares at me, looking shell-shocked. " Well...okay. I'll handle all the paperwork when you get Miss Lorenzo's consent."

"Consider it done," I say, sliding him a stack of cash that he quickly slides into a drawer. As uptight as Edgar is, he always gets the job done, and I have no doubt that he'll have my father's estate transferred to me soon.

"You'll want a prenup, of course," he says, and I shake my head. Edgar blanches. "Dante, trust me. You want a prenup. With your assets, plus now, your father's estate?—"

"I don't need a prenup," I say firmly, making my tone low and dangerous, and Edgar swallows hard.

"Fair enough," he mumbles, trying to put the papers all in one folder. He's nervous and trembling, and I understand, but I know what I am doing.

I stand up and clap a hand on his shoulder. "Don't be so nervous, Edgar. You'll get it done. I trust you."

"Yes," he says dumbly, and I walk out of the office to prepare for my meeting with Luca Lorenzo.

Mia Lorenzo is too young for me. I have a vague memory of the last time I saw her. She's not my type at all, too mousy, too flat, her legs too long. She was seventeen when I saved her from being caught in a crossfire, but four years won't have made much of a difference, I'm sure.

Not that it matters. She's just a means to an end, and that end will be Luca Lorenzo's life. I can't wait to hear him begging for his life as I aim the gun at the back of his head, the same way he did to my parents before pulling the trigger.

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