Page 5 of The Seventh Circle (The Lost Cantos #1)

ANTONIO

The streets of Trastevere welcomed me home like an old friend—familiar in their narrowness, comforting in their poverty.

Children played in gutters, women hung laundry from balconies, and old men smoked and played cards in doorways.

These streets knew me before I became what I was, before my hands learned violence instead of honest labor.

I slipped the knife I'd taken from Vito beneath a loose floorboard on an abandoned home's porch three streets from our tenement.

No weapons came home with me—that was my rule.

The day's collection money, however, made the journey tucked safely inside my jacket, pressed against my heart like a secret.

Our building stood five stories tall, crumbling around the edges but still standing, much like its inhabitants. I climbed the worn stairs to the third floor, my body remembering every crack in the wood, every loose board that might creak and wake Papa during his afternoon rest.

The door opened before I reached it.

"Tonio!" Enzo flew at me, all gangly limbs and boundless energy. At fourteen, he was growing too quickly for our mother to keep his trousers properly hemmed. "Did you fight anyone today? Did you break any heads?"

I ruffled his hair, forcing a smile that didn't match the heaviness in my chest. "Nothing so exciting, piccolo. Just collected payments for the Benedettos."

"But you work for Don Salvatore himself! All the boys at school say he's the most powerful man in Rome and that his men are the toughest in the city." His eyes shone with admiration that made me sick with shame.

"What nonsense," Mama called from the kitchen. "Your brother is a business assistant, not some common thug."

I met Mama's eyes over Enzo's head. We both knew the comfortable lie we maintained, though neither acknowledged the bruises I sometimes came home with, or how my knuckles occasionally arrived split and raw from "business."

"Where's Papa?" I asked, following the smell of minestrone into our small kitchen.

"Resting," Mama answered, wiping her hands on her apron. "His back gave him trouble this morning when he tried to help Signor Bianchi with deliveries."

My father had once been strong, capable of loading crates at the docks from sunrise to sunset. Now his broken body betrayed him daily, leaving him dependent on what I earned. What I did.

I leaned down to kiss Mama's cheek, slipping the envelope of money into her apron pocket in the same motion. She pretended not to notice, but her shoulders relaxed slightly.

"Any letters today?" I asked, as I did every day, though I knew the answer.

"Why would the postman come here?" Enzo laughed. "Nobody we know can write fancy letters."

"Your brother can," Mama said proudly. "He taught himself from books."

"And I'll teach you too," I promised Enzo, "if you finish your schoolwork first."

"Why bother? I'm going to work for the Benedettos like you someday." He pantomimed throwing punches in the air. "Lorenzo Benedetto himself will ask for me by name, just like he asks for you."

The soup Mama had been stirring suddenly needed my full attention. I stared into its depths rather than meeting my brother's innocent eyes.

"There's more to life than working for the Benedettos," I said finally. "You're smart, Enzo. You could be something better with your life."

"Better than you?" He sounded genuinely confused. "All the neighbourhood respects you, Tonio. They move aside when you walk down the street. Even Signor Moretti gave us credit at his shop because of you."

Because Moretti feared what would happen if he didn't. Because he knew what I was capable of doing.

The bedroom door creaked open, and Papa emerged, leaning heavily on his cane. His face brightened when he saw me.

"There's my boy," he said, his voice still strong even as his body failed him. "Good day's work?"

I nodded, helping him to his chair at our small table. "Everything went smoothly."

"No trouble?" His eyes searched mine, asking the question he couldn't voice in front of Enzo.

"None." The lie came easily. "Just routine collections."

Mama ladled soup into bowls, and we gathered around the table, saying grace before eating. In these moments, I could almost pretend we were just another working family, that the money in Mama's apron came from honest labor.

"Signora Peretti asked about you today," Mama mentioned casually. "Said a man was looking for the Romano family, specifically asking about our Tonio."

My spoon paused halfway to my mouth. "What kind of man?"

"She didn't say much. Only that he had a scar on his face and dressed like he had money to spend." Mama's eyes held a question she wouldn't ask in front of the others.

A scar on his face. Vito. He'd wasted no time.

"Probably someone from the shipping office," I lied smoothly. "They sometimes need extra hands."

"With a fancy suit?" Mama raised an eyebrow but said nothing more.

After dinner, Enzo pulled out his schoolbooks, and I helped him with his arithmetic while Mama darned socks and Papa dozed in his chair. The normalcy of it felt like a dream—one I desperately wanted to protect.

When Enzo finally went to bed, I retreated to my corner of the room we shared, pulling out my most treasured possession from beneath the mattress—a worn copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, purchased with three weeks' savings from a secondhand bookseller.

The pages were dog-eared, some passages underlined in pencil, notes scribbled in margins where I'd struggled with meaning.

I lost myself in the words, in the journey through Hell's circles, finding echoes of my own life in the poet's vision of damnation. The violent boiled in rivers of blood, the fraudulent suffered in pits of excrement—where would I end up when my time came?

"Still reading that book?" Papa's voice startled me. He stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane.

"I like the words," I admitted, closing it carefully. "The way they fit together."

He eased himself onto the edge of my bed with a grimace of pain. "You were meant for better things than this life, Tonio. You have a mind."

"I have what I have," I replied, tucking the book away. "And we need to eat."

"At what cost?" He looked down at his own twisted hands, once strong and capable. "I never wanted this for you."

"It's just work, Papa."

"Don't." His voice hardened. "Don't lie to an old man who knows better. I see the way you wash your hands when you come home, scrubbing too hard. I hear you sometimes, at night, when the dreams come."

I looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "I do what I must for my family."

"The man asking questions today—he means trouble, doesn't he?"

I considered lying again but couldn't. Not to him. "Possibly. I'll handle it."

"Like you handle everything." He sighed heavily. "Your mother believes you're some kind of clerk. Enzo thinks you're a hero. I know better."

"And what am I to you, Papa?"

His weathered hand found mine, squeezing with what strength remained. "My son. My good boy trapped in a bad world." His eyes filled with tears he wouldn't let fall. "I failed you by breaking my back. Made you carry a burden no young man should bear."

"You didn't fail," I insisted fiercely. "You worked until your body broke. I'm just doing what a son should."

"No." He shook his head. "A son should become better than his father, not sell his soul piece by piece to feed his family."

We sat in silence for a long moment, the weight of unsaid things heavy between us.

"The young Benedetto," Papa finally said. "What kind of man is he?"

The question surprised me. "Lorenzo? He's... different than I expected."

"Different how?"

I thought of Lorenzo's eyes when he'd spoken of violence being measured, not indulgent. The way he handled the vendors with genuine respect. His words about Dante.

"He thinks," I said finally. "Sees things others miss. Uses his head before his fists."

Papa's expression grew thoughtful. "Be careful of men who think too much in this business. They're either the best allies or the most dangerous enemies."

"And which is he?"

"That's what you need to decide." He patted my knee and struggled to his feet. "Just remember—in this world, loyalty buys nothing but a prettier grave."

After he left, I sat with the book in my lap, not reading, just feeling its weight. The world I inhabited during daylight hours felt impossibly distant from this small room with its peeling wallpaper and the sound of Enzo's soft breathing from the bed across the room.

I thought of Vito asking questions about my family, of the rage in his eyes when I'd humiliated him. I'd made it personal, and now he'd brought that danger to my doorstep. To my family.

And Lorenzo... Lorenzo complicated everything. He wasn't just another Benedetto thug. Something about him pulled at me—his contradictions, perhaps. The ruthless heir who quoted poetry. The privileged son who fought his own battles. The dangerous curiosity I felt growing whenever we were together.

I put the book away and checked that Enzo was asleep before pulling out the scrap of paper I'd been working on for weeks—my handwriting becoming neater with each attempt, copying passages from Meditations, adding my own thoughts.

This secret practice, these written words, felt like seeds planted for some future I couldn't yet imagine.

Outside, someone whistled a three-note warning—our neighborhood's signal that strangers were in the area. I moved to the window, peering through a crack in the shutters. Two men I didn't recognize walked slowly down our street, pausing to look at buildings.

Looking for me, perhaps. For my family.

I glanced at Enzo's sleeping form, at the door beyond which my parents rested. Everything I loved, everything I protected through blood and broken bones, gathered under one roof.