Vengeance: DARK MAFIA ROMANCE

PROLOGUE

SAVIO

There's a monster in me.

It wasn't there a minute ago.

I don't recognize it, but it knows me.

It calls me to come deeper and never turn back.

I claw my way across the floor, bloody fingernails scraping at the carpet. Ragged breaths tear in and out of my lungs. Just before I reach my mother's body, stretching out to grasp her fingers in mine, a heavy foot slams into the center of my back, firing white-hot pain through my ribcage.

I see everything, like a movie playing out before my eyes. But all I feel is the monster's fingers crawling through my heart, deadening every nerve.

I've always been plagued by emotion. Passionate, easy to tears, the frayed end of a live wire. My papa, mi capo, it drove him mad. "We can't have this, boy. You must purge yourself of weakness before you become a man."

"Mio figlio," my mama would always whisper afterward, stroking my hair, "never let go of your heart. You must stay human."

You must do this; you must do that. I must nothing. I'm just a kid. I'm Savio Coretti. Now I'm a night-black beast with no heart.

In the middle of my sixteenth birthday, the door to my father's office blows open in a rush of gun smoke and bullets. I look up from the candles burning on my mama's strawberry cake. Papa's soldiers lie flat on their faces in the hall.

Papa puts his cigar slowly in the ashtray, his left hand reaching for the top drawer of his desk where he keeps his gun. Before he can even open the drawer, Mama spins sideways and crashes to the rug, blood seeping from her forehead.

We have lived in Chicago long enough for Papa to adopt America's heavy, bulky suits. I think he enjoys looking bigger than he really is. The two men who stroll in the door of his office as the gunfire settles wear true Italian suits. Tight and lean, breezy and dangerous. They regard us with quiet excitement, guns loose at their sides, and I think how similar they look, like they must be related.

One of them trains his weapon on Papa, while the second, a smile toying with the corners of his mouth, comes so near to me that I can smell the flower of his cologne and the tobacco on his breath. He has a sharp body, a narrow face, and a hint of grey in his hair. He runs a light finger down my jaw, then presses it against my pulse point. "So, this is the puppy," he breathes.

He hits me so hard that I slam into the wall before hitting the floor. I can hear the men speaking to my father as I gulp for breath. I don't think I've ever heard Papa keep so quiet.

I stare at the fine, leather shoes walking all over my father's office. The monster expands in my chest, crushing my lungs and my heart. Without a second thought, I twist onto my back, snatching my birthday present, the shiny switchblade, from my pocket. I want to plunge it into the man's genitals, but I can't get the blade to spring free.

The man's eyes wrinkle with amusement as he watches me. Taking his time, he wedges his toe under my hip and flips me back onto my face, pinning me with his shoe. The cold steel mouth of a gun kisses the back of my neck, probing the base of my skull. It slides across my shoulder, aligning with my heart.

If I am cursed with life, forced to carry on without my family, I'll let the monster lead and it will not rest until I have taken every retribution. Fortunately, darkness carries me away as the boom of the shot makes my ears bleed and pain tears through muscle and bone.