Chapter 1
The first person who told me my father was alive was my three-year-old son.
Five minutes earlier, I had watched Vanessa Bellandi slap him into a swimming pool.
Mason came running from the poolhouse corridor with panic on his face.
He never reached me.
Vanessa intercepted him.
Her palm crossed his cheek.
Then both hands shoved him backward.
I saw my son's expression change before his body hit the water.
Shock.
Not pain.
The kind children wear when they realize an adult has deliberately hurt them.
I was already moving.
The pool disappeared beneath me.
Two strokes.
Maybe three.
Then Mason was in my arms.
I lifted him onto the deck and climbed out behind him.
He wrapped both arms around my neck.
His little body shook against mine.
“Dad…”
I held him tighter.
“I'm here.”
He pointed toward the locked service-room door beside the poolhouse.
“Grandpa isn't dead.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Mason began crying harder.
“I heard him behind that door.”
My father had been dead for four months.
At least that was what I had been told.
Julian had brought me August Bellandi's signet ring personally.
Vanessa had cried at the private memorial.
Every capo in our family had stood beneath black umbrellas while an empty chair represented the man we believed we had lost.
And now my three-year-old son was telling me he'd heard his voice.
I looked at Vanessa.
Her right hand was closed around something.
Brass.
A key.
Julian stepped between me and the service room.
“That little brat is lying again.”
Mason buried his face against my neck.
I handed him to one of my bodyguards.
“Take him behind me.”
Julian didn't move.
Neither did I.
Then he swung.
Bad decision.
I slipped the punch and drove my fist into his body.
Julian folded sideways and crashed into the tall parasol rack.
The frame tipped.
Folded umbrellas, canvas covers and rolled rugs collapsed around him.
Vanessa ran.
That was an even worse decision.
I caught her before she reached the terrace steps.
The brass key came out of her hand.
She tried to fight me for it.
She lost.
Seconds later, I was standing in front of the service-room door.
Mason watched from behind my bodyguard.
Vanessa was on the tiles.
Julian was dragging himself out from beneath the collapsed rack.
I put the key into the lock.
Turned it.
Opened the door.
The smell hit me first.
Sweat.
Damp concrete.
Old food.
Then I saw the bed.
And the chain.
One end was bolted into the wall.
The other was locked around my father's neck.
August Bellandi looked twenty years older than he had four months earlier.
His beard had grown wild.
His clothes hung from him.
But his eyes were still my father's eyes.
He stared at me.
Then at Mason.
Something in his face broke.
“My boy.”
I couldn't speak.
I crossed the room and dropped beside him.
The chain rattled.
I turned toward Vanessa and Julian.
“Now tell me who locked him in here.”
Neither answered.
August grabbed my wrist.
Weakly.
But urgently.
“Rocco.”
I looked back.
His voice was barely more than air.
“Don't let them reach the west house.”
Julian stopped moving.
That was when I knew.
May you like
Finding my father wasn't the end of what had happened.
It was the beginning.
