Page 216 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

But that Jovi was gone now.

“I will follow you there,” he assured his cousin. “I might even beat you.”

Carlo obviously took that as a challenge, wheeling around and taking off toward his car.

Jovi almost turned back to take one last look in Rux’s direction, but he couldn’t let himself do it. It was time to be finished with this, once and for all.

Looking at her would only make it impossible to do what needed to be done.

He followed his cousin out at a far more measured pace, swinging into his car and noting the clouds of dust his cousin had kicked up behind him in his haste to win over Jovi in the only meaningless way he could. As if that mattered.

As if any part of this corrupt life mattered.

Jovi took his time driving through Palermo, accepting as he did that it was very unlikely he would ever see it again. The wild mountains, the ancient ruins. The hardy, independent people who had made him who he was.

He was proud he’d lived as long as he had a Sicilian to his core.

Antonio’s house was on the other side of the city, a seemingly modest affair at the end of a cracked and barely paved road. If, that was, a visitor ignored the views of the bay and the sea beyond. Or was unaware that all the buildings a person could see from his uncle’s front door were, in fact, also his. Outbuildings, warehouses, and sometimes even a place to visit a mistress or two. Antonio did precisely what he wished, when he wished it, as his father had before him.

When Jovi pulled up to the house, he saw that Carlo’s car was already parked haphazardly near the fountain in front. Instead of walking in the front door, he left his car near one of the garages and ducked around the side, nodding at the guards he saw along the way, and then letting himself in one of the doors near the back of the house.

It was always best to disrupt any potential ambush scenarios.

He made his way through the kitchen, which was quiet this time of night. And he found himself near the back room where his uncle had stashed him years ago. Jovi paused, then followed an urge that he could barely fathom to push open that door.

The room was empty. It was more of a closet than a room, to his eye. It still had a mattress on the floor, which was all he’d been allowed, and what barely passed for a window cut high in the wall—more of a vent, really.

This was where his uncle and aunt had kept him. This was where they had thrown food in through the door and made him do his business in a pail in the corner that he’d had to clean out himself.

The memories came back at him like gunfire. A hail of bullets, each one slamming into him hard.

The things they’d made him do, because it amused them to debase him.

Things he had learned to handle with that blankness, that ice.

Because, deep down, he knew that it was the only weapon he really had. The only one that got to them. It was what had convinced his uncle to let him live.

But only because Antonio had imagined he could control it.

Jovi shook off the memories, though his chest felt as if he’d been riddled with bullets. He could feel the agony of it like a blaze—but that wasn’t a bad thing.

Pain, he’d learned right here in this room, was clarifying. It brought the world into sharp focus. It made sense of things that otherwise seemed fuzzy and confusing.

The pain of what had happened here to the boy he’d been fueled him. It protected him.

It allowed him to step back out into the hall and make his way into the main part of the house.

Where he could hear his cousin’s voice, shouting already.

Jovi thought that boded well. It meant he’d succeeded in getting into Carlo’s head.

He made his way down the hall, inclined his head at the guard that stood outside his uncle’s study, and didn’t argue when the man indicated that he had to be searched. He submitted to the brisk pat down impassively. It was standard procedure if anyone wanted to get to see Don Antonio.

If he’d been anyone but Antonio’s nephew, he wouldn’t have walked into the house so easily. They would have taken him down before he made it up the drive and asked questions later.

When he was pronounced clean, Jovi let himself inside.

“I could hear you yelling all the way down the hall,” he said to his cousin, sounding something almost like pleasant. He looked at his uncle. “As ever, I congratulate you on your coolheaded successor.”