Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
"No. Maybe. I don't know. Let me be very clear here—"
"Good, I could use some clarity."
"I am not killing this woman." Giovanni nods his head to the dungeon bedroom door. "I made the decision to let her live and that’s that. You have no say in this."
"Don't I?" It comes out like a threat because that's what it is. "You drag me into your sins, get blood on my hands, and then wanna act like I have no say, Giovanni? Sorry, cousin. That's not how this works and you know it. This is fucked up. This is going to get us killed."
I drag a hand across my face, feeling the stubble beneath my palm. My heartbeat slows with each measured step across the concrete floor.
"The girl needs to go." I pivot, meeting Giovanni's eyes across the expanse of the training room. "She’s fun. Interesting. I see the attraction, I do. I get it. But… no, Giovanni. No. She needs to be disappeared completely."
"So you're gonna kill her?"'
"Are you gonna stop me?"
Giovanni doesn't answer with words, but he does nod his head.
We stand, breathing hard, the inherited violence of generations pulses beneath our skin, demanding release. But neither of us moves. We're too evenly matched, too familiar with each other's methods. The battle has become metaphysical now.
We are equals. Not by accident—by design. In sparring, in weapons, in discipline, the scales were built to balance. From childhood on, Giovanni Bavga was the template, and I was told to become his mirror. The Moretti line doesn't have a whole city—not even one as small at Pittsburgh. We've got the rivers. And it's a good deal. They're lucrative. But there is no Moretti boss in my immediate family. There is no Salvatore.
Giovanni was always the standard. I was always reaching up. And he's good. He's as dangerous as any man can be. But in a fight, a fair one, anyway, he cannot beat me. But I can’t beat him either.
I turn away first, crossing to the far side of the dungeon. The movement is deliberate—not retreat but tactical repositioning. I begin to pace, the rhythm calming the chaos of my thoughts. "Why the fuck did you let her live?"
Giovanni walks over to the bench and sits down. His movements carry the deliberate weight of ritual. Slow. Measured. Like a man approaching confession with sins too heavy to hold upright. He leans over, putting his head in his hands—a posture of supplication I have not witnessed in him since we were children.
"I asked you a question." My voice remains level. Not raised. Never raised. Volume is the weapon of men without discipline. "Why. Did you let. Her live."
Giovanni makes me wait. This is his pattern—control through absence. The room tightens around us almost suffocating. I can feel my patience fracturing, the microscopic cracks spreading beneath the surface of my skin. One more moment and I will break his jaw. Teach him the cost of silence when blood demands answers.
Finally, just as my hand forms into something that will leave marks, Giovanni looks up. Those laser-focused green eyes that have stared down men three times his size are suddenly blurry. Unfocused. Wrong.
"I like her."
The confession hangs between us like a profane prayer.
"She's chaos, Jino. Messy." His hands gesture outward, fingers spread as if trying to catch something intangible, something slipping through his grasp like sand. "The shit left behind after a dust storm. There’s nothing precise about this woman except..." He pauses, searching for words that won't betray weakness, that won't shatter the facade he's spent years constructing. "These words she collects. She curates them. Arranges them into particular patterns in her head. Effortlessly. She doesn't even try. They just come spilling out in the most extraordinary combinations and it paints the world in an entirely new way."
I watch his hands tremble slightly as they move through the air, trying to capture the essence of something formless, something that defies his need for order and control. His reverence for her chaos is a contradiction that disturbs me deeply.
Giovanni has always been a man of meticulous precision, of calculated moves and measured responses. Yet here he sits, speaking of disorder with something akin to worship in his voice, as if this woman's untamed nature is not a flaw to correct but a wonder to behold.
The stigmata inked into my palms seem to burn as I flex my fingers, the rosary beads tattooed along my knuckles catching the dim light. I've dedicated my life to structure, to the ritual of breaking down and rebuilding that which is disordered. And now Giovanni speaks of embracing the very chaos we've sworn to contain.
I observe the reverence in his voice. This is heresy. This is Giovanni Bavga—heir, executioner, perfect son—speaking of disorder as if it were sacred.
"She makes me laugh." The admission sounds torn from him. "She's earnest. She tries hard at everything."