POV: Antonio Matteo
---
The blood was still wet on my knuckles when Marco handed me the phone.
"Your father," he said. "Three times."
I wiped my hand on a rag that came away red, took the phone, and walked out of the warehouse into the cold November air. Behind me, the men were cleaning up the mess I'd made of a man who thought he could short the family and walk away.
He'd learned otherwise.
"Father."
"Come to the house." Vincent Matteo's voice was carved from the same stone as the rest of him—unyielding, ancient, absolute. "Now."
The line went dead.
I stood there for a moment, breathing in the night air, feeling the faint sting in my knuckles where the skin had split. It was a familiar feeling. So was the emptiness that followed.
Thirty-one years old. Underboss of the most powerful family in New York. Men who would kill for me, die for me, fear me with every breath they took.
And not one person in the world who gave a damn if I came home at night.
I pulled out my phone and texted my driver. Five minutes.
Then I went back inside to wash the blood off my hands.
---
Old Vito drove me through the city in silence, the way he always did. He'd been my father's driver for forty years, mine for the last ten, and in all that time, he'd never once asked me a personal question. I valued that more than he knew.
The Matteo estate sat on ten acres in Staten Island, hidden from the road by walls and gates and men with guns who knew my face and waved me through. The house itself was a monument to my father's success—stone and glass and old-world craftsmanship, built to last centuries, the way he intended our family to last.
I found him in his study, sitting behind a desk that had belonged to his father and his father before that. Vincent Matteo was seventy-two years old, with a face that had seen too much and forgiven nothing. He looked up when I entered, and for a moment, I saw something in his eyes I couldn't read.
"Sit down."
I sat.
He pushed a photograph across the desk. I looked at it—a woman, mid-twenties, dark hair, intelligent eyes, caught mid-laugh outside what looked like a bookstore.
"Sofia Bianchi," my father said. "Twenty-six years old. She runs a bookstore in the Village. No criminal record. No ties to the family business—she's been clean for eight years."
I looked at the photograph again. She was beautiful, in an unpolished way. Real. Not the painted, desperate women who threw themselves at me at family events.
"Why am I looking at a Bianchi?"
My father's expression didn't change. "Because Carlo Bianchi owes us three hundred thousand dollars he can't pay."
"That's not my problem."
"It is now." He leaned back. "I met with Frank Bianchi this morning. The debt is forgiven. In exchange, you'll marry his daughter."
The words hung in the air between us.
I waited for him to laugh. To tell me it was a joke.
He didn't.
"No."
It was the first time I'd ever said that word to my father. It felt strange in my mouth. Wrong.
His eyes narrowed. "No?"
"I'm not marrying a Bianchi. I'm not marrying anyone. Certainly not to settle some gambling debt for a degenerate I've never met."
"You'll meet her before the wedding. The arrangement is—"
"I don't care what the arrangement is." I stood up. "Find another way."
"Sit. Down."
I sat. Because despite everything—the men who feared me, the power I wielded, the blood on my hands—he was still my father. Still the Don. Still the only person in the world I couldn't say no to.
"Frank Bianchi is dying," my father said quietly. "His family is crumbling. His son is a liability who will get himself killed within the year. His daughter is the only thing of value he has left."
"Then let him keep her."
"He's offering her to us. To you." My father's voice was patient, the way it had been when I was a child and he was explaining why certain things had to be done. "Think, Antonio. The Bianchi name still means something in certain circles. Their territory borders ours. A union would give us access to docks we've been fighting over for twenty years."
"I don't want their docks."
"You don't want anything." My father's eyes sharpened. "That's the problem."
The words hit harder than they should have.
"You're thirty-one years old," he continued. "You have no wife. No children. No one to carry on what we've built. You work, you kill, you come home alone. Every night, alone. You think I don't notice?"
"I'm fine."
"You're empty." He stood, came around the desk, stood looking down at me the way he had when I was ten and he was explaining why my mother was never coming home. "I know because I was the same at your age. Until I met your mother. She gave me something to fight for. Something to build for. Something more than just... survival."
"I don't need—"
"You do." He picked up the photograph, looked at it, handed it to me. "Sofia Bianchi. She's smart. Educated. Independent. She's spent eight years building a life outside this world. That takes strength."
"Or cowardice."
"Both, maybe." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. What matters is she's untouched by the life. Clean. She could give you something none of these women can."
"And what's that?"
"A reason."
I looked at the photograph again. Sofia Bianchi, laughing at something I couldn't see, her hair catching the light, her eyes bright with a joy I couldn't remember ever feeling.
"I don't want a wife who's bought and paid for."
"Then earn her." My father returned to his chair. "Court her. Make her choose you. The marriage happens either way—the families have agreed. But how it happens, what it becomes... that's up to you."
I stared at him. "You're giving me a choice?"
"I'm giving you a chance." He pulled out a file, slid it across the desk. "Her schedule. Her routines. Her bookstore. You'll meet her tomorrow at closing."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then Carlo Bianchi dies. His father dies defending him. The families go to war. Men we've known for thirty years start killing each other over a debt that could have been settled with a wedding." He met my eyes. "Is that what you want?"
I looked at the file. At the photograph. At the face of a woman who had no idea her life was about to implode.
"No," I said quietly. "That's not what I want."
"Good." My father nodded once. "Then tomorrow, you'll go to her bookstore. You'll be polite. You'll be charming. You'll make her see that this doesn't have to be a prison."
"And if she hates me on sight?"
"Then you'll have to work harder."
---
I didn't sleep that night.
I sat in my penthouse overlooking the city—all glass and steel and empty space—and I stared at Sofia Bianchi's photograph until I'd memorized every line of her face.
She looked happy. Genuinely happy, in a way I couldn't remember ever being. Like life was something to be enjoyed, not survived.
I wondered what that felt like.
I wondered if she'd ever look at me that way.
Probably not. I was the enemy. The monster her family had warned her about. The man who was going to walk into her safe, peaceful world and turn it upside down.
But my father was right about one thing: I was empty. Had been for years. Since my mother died, since I killed my first man at fourteen, since I realized that this life was all I'd ever have.
Maybe Sofia Bianchi could fill some of that emptiness.
Or maybe she'd just make it worse.
Only one way to find out.
---
The next afternoon, I stood outside a bookstore in Greenwich Village called The Last Page, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt something that might have been nerves.
Ridiculous. I'd faced down men with guns, survived shootings, ordered deaths without flinching. And here I was, nervous about meeting a woman.
I adjusted my tie, pushed open the door, and walked inside.
The smell hit me first—old paper, binding glue, something floral I couldn't name. It was warm in here. Inviting. Nothing like the cold, sharp world I inhabited.
And then I saw her.
Sofia Bianchi stood at the counter, helping an elderly woman with a stack of books. She was even more beautiful in person—dark hair pulled back, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, a soft sweater that made her look soft and warm and utterly untouchable.
She looked up at the sound of the bell.
Our eyes met.
And for one frozen second, the world stopped.
Then recognition flickered across her face. Followed by fear. Followed by something harder—defiance, maybe, or just the stubborn refusal to show weakness.
"You," she breathed.
I stepped forward, aware of every inch of space between us, every beat of my suddenly too-loud heart.
"Me," I agreed. "I'm Antonio."
"I know who you are." Her chin lifted. "You're the man my father sold me to."
The words landed like a punch to the chest.
I'd expected hostility. I'd earned it. But hearing it spoken so plainly, so painfully—it cut deeper than it should have.
I could have played the role. Charming. Persuasive. The way my father taught me.
Instead, I heard myself say something I hadn't planned.
"I'm not here to buy you, Sofia."
I pulled out a chair at the small reading table near the window.
"I'm here to ask if you'll have coffee with me. Just coffee. And then you can tell me to leave, and I will."
She stared at me, suspicion warring with curiosity.
"You'd really go?"
I held her eyes and told the truth.
"Would you want me to?"
A long pause.
Then, slowly, she sat.