Chapter 44 -
The balcony had grown quieter. The distant thump of music seemed muffled now, as if the night itself was holding its breath. Nia remained pressed against the stone railing, her mind still catching up to everything Micheal had said. Real. He had called her real, as if that word carried weight in a world designed to crush authenticity.
She wanted to ask him more. She wanted to understand the mechanics of a family that operated like a well-oiled machine of violence and control. But there was something else nagging at her, a question that had been forming since the moment she learned about Andrea, about the ghost of a dead woman who haunted every room in the DeSanto mansion.
"I heard the Don took you in," Nia said slowly, turning the phrase over in her mind. "After your father died, right?".
Micheal's posture shifted infinitesimally. His hand, which had been resting casually on the railing, tightened slightly. It was the kind of micro-expression that most people would miss, the kind that only someone paying close attention would notice.
"Yeah," he said after a pause. His voice had lost some of its brightness, that practiced cheerfulness that usually made the darkness feel manageable. "After our dad died, yeah. The Don is my father’s close friend and boss.”
"So Leo and Christian are your..."
"Brothers. Full brothers." Micheal lit another cigarette, his movements precise and controlled in a way that suggested this was an old ritual. A comfort mechanism. "Our parents... they died together. The Don was close to our father, so when it happened, he took us all in.".
The way he said it was so casual, so matter-of-fact, that it took Nia a moment to process the full weight of his words. The Don's friend. Which meant there had been a family tragedy. Which meant there was blood beneath the polished surfaces of this mansion's elegant rooms.
"What happened to them?" Nia asked quietly. "Your parents?".aa
Micheal took a long drag on his cigarette. The ember glowed orange in the darkness, briefly illuminating the sharp angles of his face. When he exhaled, the smoke drifted away from them both, carrying with it the scent of expensive tobacco and something that smelled like regret.
"Murdered," he said simply. "Rival family. It was supposed to be a negotiation. Instead, it turned into an execution.".
The word hung in the air between them like a physical thing. Murdered. Not an accident. Not a tragedy of circumstance. A deliberate act of violence by people who understood violence as a language.
"I am sorry," Nia said, and she meant it with an intensity that surprised her. She had learned that apologies in this world were often hollow things, empty gestures that cost nothing and meant even less. But this felt different. This felt like she was apologizing for a system that had broken these men before they even had a chance to become whole.
"It was a long time ago," Micheal said, his voice taking on that distant quality that people used when discussing old wounds. The kind of wounds that had healed on the surface but never quite below. "We were kids. I was barely old enough to remember them properly. Just fragments, you know? The way he smelled. The sound of his laugh. The feel of his hand in mine when we walked through the gardens."
He paused, taking another drag on the cigarette. "Leo was older. He remembers everything. Every word. Every gesture. Every moment leading up to the night he found out that the Don had already started consolidating power. Leo learned that morning that love was a weakness and mercy was a luxury we could not afford.".
Nia felt something crack open in her chest. She thought about the boy who had taught himself to be cold and calculated. Who had learned before his teenage years that showing emotion meant giving people weapons to use against you. Who had eventually become a man so locked down that even now, he could barely admit that he cared about his nephew.
"Is that why Leo is so..." Nia trailed off, searching for the right word. Intense did not quite capture it. Neither did dangerous or controlling or ruthless. Those were all just descriptions of the armor he wore.
"Intense?" Micheal supplied, a faint smile returning to his face. "Yeah. He had to grow up fast. The Don took us in, and suddenly we were not just a grieving family anymore. We were an asset. We were potential. We were tools that needed to be sharpened and shaped and hardened until we could be useful.".
He gestured with his cigarette, the ember tracing patterns in the darkness. "Leo was the promising one. Smart. Ruthless. Willing to do what needed to be done without flinching. The Don saw potential in him, started grooming him for the position of Enforcer almost immediately. By the time he was sixteen, he was already participating in the family business. By the time he was twenty, he was a legend.".
"And you?" Nia asked. "What about you?"
Micheal laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I was the disappointment. Too soft. Too prone to asking questions that made people uncomfortable. Too interested in things like books and music and the fact that maybe, just maybe, there was a world outside of this that did not require you to be ruthless to survive. So the Don decided I would be the charming one. The face that people saw. The person who could make you feel comfortable before they stabbed you in the back.".
He took another drag, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment, then exhaled slowly. "I became very good at lying. At pretending. At wearing a mask so complete that sometimes I forget what is underneath it.".
Nia moved closer to him, drawn by something she could not quite name. Not attraction, exactly, though Micheal was objectively beautiful in that careless way that the DeSanto men seemed to embody. It was more like recognition. The recognition of another person who had learned to survive in a broken system by becoming a version of themselves that the system could accept.
"You are not what you pretend to be," Nia said quietly. "I have seen you with Gabriel. I have heard you talk about leaving. I know you want out of this life.".
"Of course I want out," Micheal said, and his voice cracked slightly on the words. "Everyone wants out. But wanting and being able are two different things. The Don does not let people leave. Once you are part of the family business, you are part of it until you die. And sometimes not even then, because your ghost becomes useful as a cautionary tale.".