Chapter One

Mary 

The Bensons were many things, but quiet was not one of them. 

I crashed through mom’s door, carrying a dish of wedged potatoes that was just a little too hot to be holding with my bare hands, as my red hair whipped into tangles from the wind. 

I felt like a mess—and I looked one too. I certainly didn’t look like a fashion school graduate.  

I shouted out an ‘I’m here!’ into the house, dropping the potatoes -almost literally- onto the table in the foyer.  

I expected mom to come around the corner with her oven mitt on, smiling at me and telling me to get in there, or to hear my brother hollering from the dining room about how late I was. A part of me still expected to get swept up into my dad’s bear hug, even though it had been almost four years now. 

Instead, the house was silent, and the minute I realized it my spine tingled with apprehension. 

It had been a difficult day. 

The magazine had me writing an incredibly boring article on the miraculous powers of a liquid dish soap.  

I had taken a journalism course in college alongside my fashion design major in the hope that I could work for a prestigious fashion magazine whilst designing my own line of clothes one day. I had yet to write an actual fashion article, no matter how hard I tried, and none of the fashion magazines in the area were hiring. Or at least, they weren’t hiring me. 

I’d ended up needing a hot shower to destress, but it stopped being soothing the minute I stepped out and caught sight of the clock. 

I’d lost track of time and had only thirty minutes to get ready for the Benson Monthly Family Dinner (trademark pending). 

Those thirty minutes were a whirlwind of me dodging from one end of my room to the other, trying desperately to put myself together enough to convince mom and Pietro I was doing alright.  

It probably worked, at least for them. 

I’d put on a sage long-sleeved dress with gray leggings underneath, which was just the right mix of flowy and flared to create an illusion of the curves I didn’t have, with a chunky, spiced-pumpkin sort of orange scarf keeping my pale neck and collarbones warm from the fall chill. 

The slouchy hat matched, but the ankle-boots were a light tan that didn’t fit the rest and I hadn’t had time to put any earrings in, let alone add bracelets or a necklace. 

I’d had to tie my hair, still wet enough to look brown more than copper, into a messy braid, and I’d had to try to do my eyeliner on the bus. 

If I’d had a few more minutes to put it all together I would have been able to make it cute, and to most people it would probably still be passable, but it felt painfully incomplete to me.  

I paused and forced myself to take a breath. 

I didn’t want my family to worry, and besides, it was all going to turn around soon. I just had to bear it a little longer and then I wouldn’t have to force a little extra cheer onto my face.  

“Mom?” I called again. “Mama, I’m here.” 

My stomach sunk when no one answered me. 

“Mom? Pietro?” I started down the hall towards the dining room as the frenetic energy that carried me in flatlined into something heavy in my gut. 

I tried to shake it off. Sure, something unusual was happening, but that didn’t mean I had to teeter down the hallway with my heart pounding like I was in some horror film. 

I should check my phone—maybe they had just gone to get something from the grocery store last minute and I just hadn’t seen the text— 

Then mom rounded the corner, eyes distant and a letter clutched in her hands. Instantly I knew that something was wrong.  

“Mom?” I gasped, hurrying towards her with my hands out. It looked like she would pass out and I knew if she did I’d have to catch her, although I didn’t know how, given that I was the definition of a stick and couldn’t lift more than ten pounds on a good day. But wasn’t that what adrenaline was supposed to do? Make people stronger when they were scared? 

I grasped mom by the shoulders, looking up at her. Her eyes met mine and the first sob broke free.  

“Oh, Mama,” I whispered, walking her back so she could sit at the dining table. 

Immediately, I felt tears burn my own eyes; my mom was an emotional woman but she rarely ever cried in front of us. 

The last time was the day dad died. She’d soldiered through the funeral planning and the wake with the people bringing casseroles with dry eyes, sagging like the world was heavy and she was exhausted, but never breaking into sobs. 

To see her now, hyperventilating with this scrap of paper clutched tight to her chest, made me feel overwhelmed and helpless—and scared down to my soul.  

Pietro wasn’t there, and I feared the worst.  

“Mom?” I asked, a sob building in my throat. “Mama, please, what’s…” She shook her head and held out the letter. All it said was: 

Dear Mom and Mary—I’m sorry, but I’m going somewhere dangerous and I can’t take you with me. I’m not in trouble, but there’s something I have to do. Mom, I found out but I don’t blame you for keeping it secret. If everything goes well, I’ll be back in a while, but I’m begging you not to call the police. The people I’m with cannot know who I am, and if the police come looking for me, I’ll lose the advantage of anonymity. I know this is scary for you, but the best way to keep me safe is not to tell anyone I’m in danger. If everything goes according to plan, which I really think it will, then I’ll come back to you. I promise. Stay safe, and stay out of downtown. -Pietro 

I stared at the words, reading them over and over like they would suddenly say something that made sense to me. 

All I was catching was Pietro, danger, might not come back—it spun around in my head senselessly. 

Sure, we hadn’t heard from him for a few days, and we’d thought that was kind of weird since we were a very tight knit family, but this terrifying, cryptic message couldn’t be real, could it? 

I mean, Pietro could be a total annoyance, but he was never a troublemaker. He’d dodged some classes but never failed any, and he’d thrown some punches but never the first. 

He was smart and funny and personable, and he was my big brother.  

No, it couldn’t be real. Pietro was fine. 

This was a prank, or a joke, or he was filming from around the corner while snickering, or something. 

He’d pop out with a big grin, and then see us crying and apologize, saying he didn’t think we were going to take it so badly. He’d comfort us like he had after dad’s death, he’d hug me like he did after my first college boyfriend broke my heart, and I’d smack his chest and yell at him and be so, so glad he was there.  

But mom was struggling to reign in her rising fear, clasping her hands over her mouth like that could smother the urge to scream, and Pietro wasn’t anywhere 

I read the letter again. 

Found out—secret—they can’t know who I am—if the plan works—if the plan works— 

I felt like I would collapse. 

Pietro was gone. This letter was real. 

Pietro was in danger, and he was gone. I’m going somewhere dangerous, and I can’t take you with me. 

What was the plan? Where had he gone, why was it dangerous, why could no one know who he was when he got there? Would he ever come back? 

What had mom kept a secret, and why did it sound like it started all of this?  

It was handwritten, and it was Pietro’s handwriting. 

He did that stupid thing where he put a vertical line inside of every lowercase O, because otherwise no one could ever tell his O from his E, and the slant of the Ts and Ds were weirdly severe. I had that handwriting in every one of the 24 birthday cards he’d given me. 

There was no mistaking his penmanship.  

Mom took deep, heaving gasps, eyes closed, as she tried to pull herself together. As she tried to be the adult. 

I was never any good at that, someone else always had to pick up the slack, putting aside their own needs to help me with every curveball that came my way. And here mom was, doing it again. 

She pushed the fear, the grief and hysteria, back down inside of her, even though I was sure she wasnted to let it all out, and I needed her too bad to tell her not to.  

“Mary,” she croaked. “Ma-Mary.”  

“Mom?” I asked, voice small. “What—what does he mean, he’s gone? What is he doing?”  

Another sob half-broke out of my mom’s clenched teeth and she clenched her whole face until the moment passed. “He’s—I think he’s with the mafia.”  

As I already said, I had never been very good at handling bad news. 

When I was 12 and my bully had dumped her food tray on me I’d sobbed inconsolably for days, and when I got rejected from my first-choice college I’d thrown up. When dad died they’d had to hospitalize me for dehydration because I cried out all the water they tried to give me. 

This time I felt the room spin and let my eyes roll into the back of my head.  

I wasn’t unconscious for very long, according to mom, but I woke up on the couch with my mother looking near apoplectic beside me. 

“Mary!” she gasped, squeezing my hand so hard it throbbed. “Oh my god, baby, don’t do that to me—here, have some water. Does anything hurt?” 

“No,” I drawled, smacking my lips as I came back.  

“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?” mom asked, bringing a cup to my face and peeling open my eye like she had the medical training to diagnose a brain bleed or whatever. I pulled back from her, taking the cup.  

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing myself up. 

The events of my last few waking minutes slowly leaked into my brain. God, Pietro was gone. 

He was with the mafia. 

“Mom,” I said seriously, looking her in the eye with an uncharacteristic seriousness, “I need you to tell me everything.” She gulped.  

“I never wanted you to know,” she said. “Either one of you.”  

“Mom,” I said, firmer. Her lower lip wobbled.  

“You and Pietro are half siblings,” she blurted, squeezing her eyes shut like she knew my reaction would stop her if she saw it, and she knew I wasn’t going to accept half a story this time. 

Then, before I could process the depth of what she’d just said, she dropped the next bombs, one after the other. 

“He—his father r-raped me. I was engaged to Dad at the time, and I thought he was going to leave me, but he didn’t. We realized I had got-gotten pregnant, and there was no way it could be Dad’s, but Daddy wanted to tell everyone Pietro was his so no one would have to know what had happened to me. It was a different time, honey, we didn’t talk about these things, and we were scared what would happen if Pietro’s biological father,” she spat the words with disdain, “ever found out.” I was speechless.  

“O-okay,” I stuttered, trying to digest all of that. “So what—what does that have to do with now?” Mom swallowed thickly.  

“Because,” she said, shoulders rising around her ears as she tensed further and further, “the man who raped me—Pietro’s birth father—is Cristiano Pellico. The mafia boss.” 

I stared at her. I remembered a video where someone dropped a bowling ball into jello, and the way the bowling ball carved its way to the bottom, growing slower with every second of resistance but never stopping. At that moment, I felt like I was that jello.  

Pellico, Pellico… I didn’t know the first thing about the mafia, but I’d seen that name somewhere recently. 

“You think he found out?” I asked, half-numb. 

Mom nodded jerkily, eyes frantically pleading with me as we finally made eye contact.  

“I don’t know how,” she said. “I thought I’d buried our secret, not even your grandparents know. Daddy’s name is on his birth certificate, we registered him as Daddy’s son, I never wrote it down anywhere or talked about it to anyone but your dad. I don’t know how he knows, but he does.” 

“And now he’s… joining the mafia?” I asked, the words fitting wrong in my mouth. 

That was ridiculous. Pietro wasn’t a criminal. 

He wasn’t a scarred-up thug who roamed the streets looking for fights, he was the brother who had skipped high school parties to watch his little sister swim like the seven years age difference was nothing. 

He didn’t do drugs or any other weird stuff, he was just a guy. Just an average 31-year-old. 

He worked at a tire shop. He hated pistachio ice cream.  

“I don’t know,” Mom said, voice cracking. “The letter dropped through the letter slot maybe fifteen minutes before you got here, I haven’t—I haven’t figured anything out yet, but that is the only thing I have ever hidden from the two of you.” 

“But—but why?” I asked, lost. “Why would he join the people who hurt you?”  

Mom shook her head.  

“I don’t know,” she said morosely. 

Pellico! The image of my phone screen! My phone automatically opened to a news feed, that is where I had seen, in big red letters, the words “Nicola Pellico Found Murdered.” 

I gasped.  

“My phone,” I said, trying to stand and ignoring my mother trying to urge me back down. “I need my phone!” 

Yep, right there—Nicola Pellico, the only son of suspected mafioso Cristiano Pellico, was found just hours ago in his apartment with four bullet holes punched through him, face down in a puddle of his own cooling blood, gunshot residue on his hands, his gun nowhere to be seen. So far there was no evidence of a forced break-in or a stated suspect. Information was still being gathered from the crime scene.  

My mouth dried up, and my mom went rigid where she was looking over my shoulder. 

Nicola had been 26, just two years older than me, and he hadn’t done anything important or notable. The only reason anyone would target him was because of his father. 

His father, who was also Pietro’s father. 

If someone killed Nicola in order to get back at Cristiano for something, then wasn’t Pietro living under the same threat? Is that why he left, to keep us from getting caught in the crossfire? 

“We have to do something!” I said, shaking my head There had to be something we could do, right? Some way to go back to normal? Mom’s fists wrinkled her work blouse.  

“What, Mary?!” she snapped. 

I reared back, and she reigned in her voice a little. “What can we do? He’s right, if we go to the police he’ll get killed. With all of… this… Cristiano will be desperately looking for another heir, so if Pietro shows up he’ll probably be welcomed with open arms.” 

I tasted bile. 

“So—so if—” 

“If he joins, he’ll become a mafioso. The police don’t help mafiosos, they shoot them. And if the mafia finds out the police are looking for him they’ll think he’s a snitch, and they’ll do a lot worse than shoot him .” 

“But—”  

Mom shook her head, holding me tight. “We can’t do anything, Mary. We can’t do anything at all.” 

Chapter Two

Salvatore 

When people died, they tended to take their secrets to the grave, and I had to know everything Nicola Pellico had up his sleeve.  

Usually, when I was staring this intently at a photograph, it showed a crime scene. 

Or, occasionally, a future crime scene. 

I was not used to inspecting a series of photos of one dead man and a random assortment of people he’d apparently known.  

I sighed, rolling my head to loosen the tight muscles of my neck. 

Flavio glanced back at me in the rearview mirror; he was a good man, as far as mafia men went, and deeply loyal to me as the last Mastro. He knew better than anyone else how personal this situation was for me, and though he wasn’t stupid enough to tell me to take a break, I could tell he was keeping an eye out for anything he could do to help me.  

I returned to the photos in my hands. Each one was taken in a different location, at a different time of day, and even though Nicola was the constant in every picture he was the one thing I wasn’t looking at. 

After all, he was no longer a factor. 

No, the trouble I had was with the small group of people that seemed to revolve around him, only some of whom I could identify. 

Lorenzo Sprezza and Francesco Faci were both soldiers in the Pellico family, but neither of them held any importance within the organization; there were two women, one seen more frequently than the other, that my consigliere was working to identify, and two other men who were also yet unknown to me. 

If the rumors were true, and Nicola Pellico had been planning some kind of coup, these were the only people who could tell me about it.  

Truthfully, the idea amused me to no end. I despised the Pellico family, in part because they were the natural rivals of the Mastros but more personally because Cristiano had forced me to watch as he ended my family and my childhood in a wash of blood. 

The nightmares had never ended, and the rage only grew more bitter with each one. 

Nicola was just Pellico’s son, but that was enough for my hatred to extend to him. Nonetheless, that he could have been scheming right underneath his father’s nose, ready to upend his family and possibly send everything Cristiano loved and felt pride in crashing to the ground, brought me incredible joy. 

Part of me hoped that Cristiano figured it out before Nicola found the wrong end of the muzzle. The betrayal must sting something terrible.  

I wanted Cristiano Pellico to feel true despair before I put a bullet in his head. 

How awful would he feel, in his final moments, to suffer as my father did? His children murdered, his lineage snuffed out, his empire left kingless? Everything he’d worked for in his life gone? 

I rubbed absently at the scar Cristiano’s bullet had left in the center of my chest when I was too young to even know what kind of life I was born into. 

No, killing the man wouldn’t be enough. I had to destroy him.  

I refocused myself on the photographs. 

If Nicola really was planning a revolt and these people were on his side, then they were more loyal to Nicola than Cristiano and might tell me everything I needed without having to deal with the messy affair of torture. 

If they did, I’d offer them a swift, clean death. 

The men, at least—not like Cristiano Pellico. He had never held true to the Cosa Nostra law to keep women and children out of mafia business. I had experienced that personally. 

Unless the son had turned his back on that, the women wouldn’t know anything, and were more than likely the wives or girlfriends of the other men involved in Nicola’s plot. I wouldn’t go after them unless I had to, and I doubted I would. 

Even if the men didn’t want to talk, I had ways to make them open their mouths.  

“We’re here, Don Mastro,” Flavio said, pulling me out of my thoughts as the car rolled to a stop outside my home. I pocketed the photos with a sigh.  

“Grazie, Flavio. Will you be using your room tonight?”  

“No, sir,” Flavio responded. “If you don’t need me, I’ll spend the night at my place.” I nodded, sliding out of the car.  

“Very well. Goodnight, then.”  

“You too, Don Mastro.”  

My house was beautiful, and it was one of the reasons I pitied the bosses who were stuck in places like Chicago and New York, where the height of luxury was a penthouse suite. 

Nothing would ever match up to a freestanding home. I was often grateful to have been born into Buffalo—a city of significant size, yes, but with a far more suburban feel. The buildings here had individuality.  

I left my shoes and coat in the foyer, unsurprised by the silence that greeted me. 

It was far too late for the maids or cook to be here, and the house was far larger than I needed for just myself. 

For now it felt empty, but someday I’d fill it with my children. 

It was my job to revive my family, so I would need at least four kids to secure our lineage for the future. 

In the meanwhile, I had the space to have overnight rooms for my underboss or consigliere should our business run particularly late, so it worked well for now.  

I followed the curve of the stairs up to the second floor, deciding to head straight for the shower and neatly peeling my shirt and belt off on the way. My bedroom was massive, with high ceilings and enough space for two beds, but I barely glanced at it. 

I’d bought this house the day I turned 18, selling the home where my family was slaughtered, and had lived here since. 

Nothing about this opulence was unusual to me—if anything, I had downsized from the mansion I’d grown up in.  

I stepped out of my dress pants and dropped my clothing into my dirty laundry bin, not sure if the cleaning service could salvage them now that the blood spatter had dried into hard brown scales. If they couldn’t, no biggie, they’d provide perfect replacements. 

I didn’t care much about clothes, luxury cars, watches, or private jets. 

Money couldn’t buy me what I wanted. 

Sure, by most people’s standards I was living like a king, but it was all surface level. 

Until Pellico’s head was served to me on a platter, using my father’s fortune felt like spitting on his grave.  

I entered my bathroom, moving past the full-length mirror to start the shower. I barely bothered looking at my reflection. 

My body, like everything else, was a tool. 

My slightly above average height made it easy to blend in to crowds, my black hair just long and shaggy enough to help cover my facial features if I needed it to but could just as well be slicked back into the sharp, clean visage expected from a Don. 

I kept my body muscular so I could handle any situation with force, but leaned into a wrestler’s physique more than visible muscle definition, because defined muscle was intimidating but not as useful. 

I was less threatening this way, clearly strong and capable, but not in the way that made people stare. 

Staring meant you were noticed, and being noticed meant you’d lost your element of surprise. 

Being underestimated, would only ever work in my favor.  

I had my father’s tan skin, and my mother’s blue eyes. My mother’s father had passed down the square jawline to me, and I never knew where my thick eyebrows came from. 

I knew where each scar came from, though. 

One long one running down the outside of my thigh marked where the surgeons had to cut me open to bolt my broken femur bone back into place, and both my knees were heavily scarred from repeated abrasions, and nearly invisible at this point was a small line across my forehead where I’d been pistol-whipped as a teen. 

Then, of course, the starburst of gnarled, darkened skin sitting low and tight on my sternum. 

Without any of my trappings, I looked more like a street rat than a Don. It was my favorite version of myself.  

I stepped under the warm spray and started kneading at my shoulder muscles, pondering over those photos again. 

The most recent one, in particular, had my eye; in it was Nicola, sitting at a table with two men on either side. 

I recognized Faci and Sprezza, but then there was another man with strawberry-blonde hair and lastly one with a tattoo on his neck. They were sitting at a table in a darkened venue that I couldn’t place, which meant it had to be owned by the Pellicos. 

There was a crowd, what looked like several tipsy people holding drinks and laughing, but the mood at their table was serious and tense. 

They were clearly talking business, and based on the somber looks on everyone’s faces, it looked like a war meeting.  

I had worked towards my revenge for more than two decades, and I was so close to finally looking Cristiano Pellico in the eye as I tore down his empire. 

Whether Nicola had really been trying to overthrow his father or something else was going on, I didn’t know. 

I could not let unforeseen circumstances derail me from my quickly approaching justice. 

I was going to hold Cristiano’s life in my hand, show him how useless it was, and then crush it. And no one else would distract me while I did it. 

I kept my shower short and utilitarian, dried off briskly, and didn’t bother to redress as I made my way to the kitchen. 

If I was going to be up all night trying to find these mystery men, I was going to need the fuel. 

I had one goal, one single-minded purpose, and I was too close to seeing it through now to waste time sleeping.  

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