Page 3 of Until You Break

DAMIANO

“So the opening was a big success,” I said, voice low, letting the words cut the evening air. “What did the street whisper?”

Luca smirked darkly, boots already on the table, a half-empty Negroni in hand, shirt open, sunglasses on, knife spinning slow between his fingers. “That Riccardo’s in trouble.”

We sat on the terrace, the city’s noise humming below while the family estate stayed still. Talk in the streets still circled Riccardo’s casino opening, his win flaunted like a crown. “And we all know that trouble makes better company than saints,” Luca muttered, spinning the knife once more.

He looked every inch the wolf he was. Three years younger than me, loud as sin, and nothing like my cool, efficient other brother Alessandro.

“You’re staring.” He didn’t look up, just let the knife flash like punctuation.

“I’m thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.” He flashed a grin. Quick, crooked, full of teeth. A flicker of motion, the knife twisting, catching light and moving on.

“Well, at least I’m not the one who flirts with waiters and forgets their names by dessert.”

Luca grinned. “Aww… you remember? Then you also know I did that poor guy a favor. Couldn’t carry water without blushing.”

I snorted despite myself. “You wrote your number on the check in lipstick.”

“He called me later that night. Told me he’d never blushed harder. Then sucked me dry.”

“Spare me the details, fratellino.” I shook my head. “You ever think about settling down?”

“Sure.” His tone was casual. “Right after I find a man who can outdrive me and outdrink me.”

“Or at least one who knows how to park without scratching your Maserati.”

“Low blow, bastardo.”

He spun the knife faster for a breath, bored, looking for a nerve, then slower, lazy, when he felt he’d grazed one. Luca’s tells were not for everyone. They were for me.

I let the banter roll off and took in the terrace.

The rooftop was set into the old stone like a secret, part garden, part watchtower. From here, you could see the whole estate. The courtyard, the lemon trees, the old paths winding through grass and flowers below. Mama’s idea. Power should celebrate where the city couldn’t see.

Heat rose off the tiles, carrying rind and oil from the lemons. Bougainvillea climbed the walls in violent bloom. A thin breeze moved the petals cleanly. Glass clicked. Ice sighed. The day had an edge.

It had been two nights since the casino opening. Riccardo had paraded his win like a crown. No Bellandi forgot the insult. That told me two things. His hands were dirty, and we were already cleaner with blood than he was with money.

“You’re wound tight.” Luca finally glanced up over his lenses.

“I’m awake.”

“That’s one word for it.”

The gates opened. Two matte-black SUVs slid in. Tinted windows, patient and watchful. No plates. Engines tuned to a quiet threat.

Luca leaned forward, squinting toward the path. “Son of a bitch took the SUVs? What for?” He snapped his fingers without looking back. “Lina, another Negroni.”

The clink of ice and the clean pour answered him before the glass reached his hand. Lina always moved like the next order had already been given.

I tracked the SUVs as they curved around the roses and slipped toward the back. Toward the basement.

“I guess the streets are making more noise than we thought,” I murmured, staring over the gardens and letting the thought settle.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Mama and Luciana had arrived.

Footsteps on stone. Alessandro stepped out, whiskey in hand, sleeves rolled, hair set like he’d walked through a storm and come out smiling. Sun had turned his skin to bronze; a faint scar near his temple kept him distinct. He looked smug, as if he carried a secret he had no intention of sharing.

“Where the fuck were you?” Luca barked, knife still spinning.

Alessandro smirked, eyes glinting with a secret he didn’t plan to share. “Sorry for the delay. Kitten had claws.”

“Kitten? Please do tell.” Luca’s eyes gleamed.

Alessandro only smirked, sipping his whiskey slow, letting the silence stretch.

Before Luca could press him further, heels clicked against stone.

Perfume cut the air first, clean, expensive, edged.

Luciana’s laughter followed. Then both of them appeared, shopping bags like trophies, pace unhurried, eyes already calculating.

Luciana talked fast. Mama listened with that half-smile that meant she’d arranged the ending and was letting us guess.

“Wow.” My baby sister surveyed us. “Three brothers, four drinks, and not a brain cell between you.” She kissed my cheeks, hair sliding over one shoulder, silk whispering trouble. “Good thing one of us inherited the brains. I’ll fix it.”

“Sorella.” Alessandro lifted his glass. “Late, as always. You find anything left in Milan after maxing out Mama’s cards?”

Luciana grinned. One shoulder tipped, maybe yes, maybe fuck you. She folded into a chair and owned the view by sitting in it.

“Trust me, I’m only here because Mama insisted it was important.”

Luca toasted her. “How was Milan? Still full of art dealers who think your last name makes you collectible?”

“Still full of men who think your abs make you tolerable,” she shot back. “Why were you out with both SUVs, Alesso?”

“He’s running errands for Mama now.” Luca smirked. “Something about kittens?”

Alessandro rolled his eyes.

“He’s right.” Mama arrived at my back like a decision. Perfect posture, tailored cream blouse, heels that made marble sing. She took the nearest glass and drank. She never asked if it was hers. “And I’m glad you succeeded, caro. I take it he is well?”

“He is.” Alessandro’s voice stayed calm, professional. “He’s downstairs.”

“He?” Luciana’s brows lifted.

The air cooled. No one answered. The quiet landed hard, instructional.

Luca’s knife slowed. Alessandro’s fingers went still on his glass. Even Luciana’s smirk thinned under the weight of what wasn’t said.

“So this isn’t just family aperitivo.” My words landed flat. “Mama?”

Mama’s smile was exact. “Nothing ever is.” Her gaze moved over us with the patience of a surgeon.

“At the casino opening I saw Riccardo’s smug face, parading his win over graves.

He called it Belladora, as if memory could be renamed and buried.

That man has taunted the devil so many times he shouldn’t be surprised hell came knocking.

That’s when I knew I wouldn’t let it pass. ”

“What did you do?” Luca’s tone was too bright.

“The only thing I could.” Her nails tapped the stem of her glass once. “He thinks memory rots on command.”

Her lashes lowered; when she lifted them, the decision was still there.

“So I did it. I took him.”

The table tightened.

“Who?” Luciana slowed.

“His son.”

I leaned in. “Enzo? No… Salvatore?”

Luca’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. You mean they’re not already dead?”

Mama’s mouth curved, my kind of smile. “No. Not them.”

She looked at me when she said it, but Alessandro delivered the blade.

“The youngest. Emilio.”

A pause. Not because I didn’t know the name. Because I did. His eyes had once caught mine across a crowded room and held, too long, like an unseen hand closing around my throat.

“You took him?” Luciana’s voice sharpened. “And you went shopping with me and didn’t say a word?”

“I had to be sure Alesso succeeded.” Mama’s lips did something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’m going to take that murderer down. I’m going to wipe the name Valenti clean. But Emilio… he looks so much like Isa. I won’t let him pay for Riccardo.”

Her gaze settled on me like a crown that cut.

“I didn’t just take him.” Her words hit like steel. “I did it for you, Damiano. My son. My heir.”

“Me.” Flat. Anything else would’ve been hunger.

I hadn’t asked. She’d heard anyway. This was Mama’s truest talent, arranging inevitability and calling it supper.

“He’s all I have left of her.” Her tone hardened. “And now he’s yours. Make him useful. Make him loyal. Make sure his father knows where he sleeps. You’re the heir. He’s the lesson. Teach him who owns him.”

The word owns slid down my spine, a lock clicking shut. Heat pooled low, steady and unhurried, and I didn’t have to picture his mouth under it; the image walked in uninvited and made itself comfortable.

My glass sat full. My jaw didn’t. A pleasant surprise, then. Pleasant like a loaded gun that finally found your hand.

“Where is he?”

“In the dungeon.”

Alessandro tipped his glass at me. “I kept him in one piece for you, fratello.” A flicker in his eyes; he’d enjoyed the courier work too much to say aloud.

Luca whistled, low. “Fuck.” The grin didn’t touch his pupils. “Don’t forget to say please when you make him crawl.”

Luciana rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath, but I caught the way her fingers tightened on her glass. Even she understood what it meant to hand a living Valenti to me.

“Don’t project.” My voice came sharper than the knife in his hand.

He laughed, bright and ugly. “I’d pay to watch you pretend you’re not enjoying this.”

I stood. The chair legs grated over stone.

That sound was a boundary crossing.

I left them with the view and the drinks and the mess of their mouths. Their eyes followed, a quiet that clung like smoke, the kind that told you they all wanted to see what I would do next.

The house took me back in a series of familiar thresholds. Glass, shadow, cool hall, the old portrait that refused to age, the long stair that dragged you down if you let it.

The air changed as I descended, warmer at first, then iron.

The scent of old water. The tang of rust. The honest press of stone.

A drip echoed somewhere unseen, steady as a clock without hands.

Heat from the lamps pressed low, mixing with the chill of stone, making the air taste metallic.

It smelled like patience, confinement already waiting to be filled.

I didn’t rush. The clipped rhythm of each step kept the tension sharp, not slow.

Anticipation is a tool. Waste it and you walk in smaller.

My steps didn’t echo. They landed.

Steady enough to pace another man’s heartbeat.

He’d be awake by now. Or pretending not to be. Or pacing the length of the cell to learn the edges of his trap. Emilio Valenti, son of Riccardo, had once stood in a room and recognized the shape of power without touching it. He’d do the same in a cage.

Good.

I preferred prey that map the maze.

I passed the corridor where we kept the old tools. The door was shut. The camera light stared. I caught myself wanting to turn the feed on my phone and refused.

Presence was the point.

Mama had given me a man.

It was insane.

And exactly right.

A gift. A weapon. A test. Each possibility tightening the leash around him.

I didn’t know which yet. Marcella wanted him displayed like a relic, a trophy dragged from someone else’s fire.

I wanted him hidden, caged, mine before anyone else remembered he had a name.

The family would see leverage. I saw the one thing that had ever made me pause. Different currencies. Same war.

Even if I hadn’t said what I wanted, she recognized the violence of my attention. She always has.

A memory scratched at my mind. The casino opening, Riccardo parading his win like a crown.

Emilio behind him, sketchbook in hand, drawing while the wheel spun and the crowd roared.

He hadn’t seen me. Not really. But I had seen him, steady and unflinching, silence louder than the gamblers.

That refusal to flinch had hooked me long before I had the right to touch him.

He’d felt me look back and hadn’t dropped his gaze.

Good.

Don’t, little ghost. Learn me.

The last door waited. The keypad blinked a slow, red pulse. I watched it cycle once, twice, like a heartbeat.

I set my palm to the plate, felt the polite shock of authentication up my skin, and listened to the bolts draw back.

The corridor beyond was clean, bright, honest about what it was. Cameras in the corners. Temperature steady. The low hum of a place that was always listening.

My shoes touched the first step down.

The light thinned. The air grew heavier, as if the stone had been told to keep secrets.

I let my fingertips trail the wall. Smooth, cold, measuring the space that would hold him.

Somewhere below, a strip lamp buzzed faintly, steady, inescapable.

The iron taste thickened at the back of my throat, familiar as ritual.

First, I’d take his choices. Strip them one by one, not with force but with patience, until he understood every path he thought he had already belonged to me.

Then I’d take his voice. Not with shouting or blows, but by making him speak only when I chose, until silence itself reminded him who set the terms.

The rest would follow.

I let the weight of each step carry me deeper.

He’d hear me coming. Good. Let him learn the sound of his owner before he’d see my face.