Fatal Alliances [✓]

prologue

PROLOGUE: MATEO | 1 YEAR AGO

MY SON-OF-A-BITCH FATHER WAS DYING and I didn't quite know what to think about that. Was I supposed to be crying and bawling my eyes out at his still feet uncontrollably? That's what the rest of the family was doing anyways, both my step brothers and even my step mother, though something told me her tears were fake. She was pulling her cheeks in a downward motion, so the tears spilled right out and left her makeup untouched, her sniffles too sounding oscar-worthy as she blew her nose into a silk handkerchief.

Not so far away from us, were my father's guerrilla. As in the people he considered to be more like family than his own flesh and blood. Perhaps I was being bitter about everything, because the old man always made it clear how much of a colossal disappointment I was to him. His line of work always came first.

The world of organised crime that is.

My father was a deadly Made Man. With a few exceptions, he was proudly behind any illicit crime that could be imagined. He was one of the highest-ranking members within the inner circle and their family —everyone knew it.

Dominique Costello was feared by everyone, and yet simultaneously admired like he had gold, fairy dust coming out of his back side. But it was also true that some people were relieved he was on his death bed. Surely it meant this was the end of the Costello reign.

It had to be.

Except, the Costello family crimes dated back to my great grandfathers days and before then even. They had been rising in the underworld since. Spilling blood wherever they went, without feeling remorse. It was how I viewed my father, void of emotion and incapable of humanity now.

"Mateo," Tina sniffled, "Come here, son. He wants to speak to you."

My brows furrowed as I pondered why she had approached me that way. I wasn't her son in any way and she had never made effort to treat me as one during the years that I had known her.

I mentally made the decision to tune out every noise and make an excuse to leave immediately. But when my step mother's eyes shot towards her children, Rio and Josiah, I knew she would have said something to make my brain simmer in anger further. A scene worthy of being contributory towards a telenovela would have broken out.

My old man looked like shit, I thought to myself, as I approached him and quietly seated myself by his side. He looked like he was suffering from jaundice too, but considering his organs were pretty much failing on him, he was bound to be frying inside and exhausted. Jesus, had I been away for that long?

Was 5 years really a long time?

After a few years of Business school far away from Italy, —I'd left Europe altogether permanently and eventually cut off contact with anyone —throwing myself into the hospitality industry internationally to try and find my own footing in the world. It was almost like I had been disowned.