They would have the freedom to be musicians, as he put it, the furthest profession from that of a mafiya leader that he could imagine.
The long answer, on the other hand, is far more complex, seeded in reasoning that has little to do with convenience and everything to do with him. Not Mischa. Not Gino. Him, the man who taught me that I didn’t need a voice to speak.
Who always seemed to hear me...
Until he simply chose not to, that is.
Music is more powerful than any form of speech, too beautiful to be ignored. Too grating. Too boisterous. Donatello Vanici made me feel silenced, so I found my own voice. A way to make myself heard, no matter the number of people in the room. No matter if anyone listened or not.
I defied his last act of brutality against me.
Through the keys of a piano, I learned how to scream—but now, I can’t even fathom how to put it into words. How do you convey something so abstract, so childish? You can’t. In a way, I feel muzzled all over again.
“I know why.”
I’m not looking at him, eyeing the view from the window instead.
“Those pretty little notes can’t be overlooked,” he says gruffly, and my eyes begin to sting bitterly. I blink and blink, but the sensation only grows. “No one can ignore the girl at the piano, even if she herself is silent. That’s why you play. Isn’t it?”
I’m on my feet, returning to the balcony. The cool wind hits me at full blast, whipping my hair around and distorting the wails of the sirens still blaring from the west side of the city. It’s welcome noise, and I almost think I’m safe.
But even the outside world can’t drown him out.
“Was it Mischa…your father’s idea for you to go abroad? To Vienna, right?”
Despite every cell in my body warning me not to, I look back and find him still seated, watching me from the shadows bathing the room. His expression is neutral, but I don’t trust the question. It has to be a trap in some shape or form.
“I doubt you enjoyed it,” he suspects, and I blink again, my lashes fluttering to obscure my view of him. “You had to mingle with sheltered little socialites and people who couldn’t dream of belonging to the world you left behind. Why not stay in Hell’s Gambit?”
Why? I turn back to the view, exhaling slowly.
“Because the entire fucking world could never feel as large as this city feels small,” he says, speaking for me. “A claustrophobic little hell where everything you do and feel is magnified. A cage. But the people around you? They might as well be on another planet. They can’t see what you do.”
From the corner of my eye, I see him extend his hand before him, grasping at the air.
“Fucking bars.”
Mischa would deem his assessment bullshit—the words of a man so wrapped up within himself that everything revolves around his own point of view.
“You know I’m right,” he scolds when I turn away. “It’s not the city you were running away from, was it? A safe perfect family has safe, perfect expectations—even if your father runs the goddamn mafiya. Your life is far different than someone without two fucking cents to rub together. They’re like weeds, able to grow out in the open while you get smothered. Am I wrong?”
He is. He… He isn’t? Confusion muddles my thoughts. I can’t think.
“Look at me, principessa.”
When I do, his grin is an expression torn between smugness and pain. “I tried to do the same damn thing to Vincenzo.” He stands, crossing back to the bar cart.
I don’t know why I follow him, re-entering the suite as he lifts the still-full glass again. He inhales near the rim, and I get the sense that he’s purposefully torturing himself, playing some kind of internal game. How long can he withstand the urge to smother his emotions?
He sets the glass down unsteadily, causing some of the liquid to spill over the rim. This time, his fingers linger around it.
“You know what I wanted to be when I was a boy? Rich,” he says with a harsh laugh. “I didn’t care about the why or how, just the end result. I wanted to be powerful. Too big to fuck with.”
He smirks at the thought, leaning against the wall, his gaze fixated on the past. Gradually, his smile fades.
“I never sought more, because I never had more. I wasn’t smart like Vincenzo. Without this life, I would have been nothing. Though who knows, it might have been a better life...”
The pain in his voice startles me, so raw I can almost feel it, chafing against the part of me conditioned to hate him. I’ve never heard him talk like this. Openly. Drunkenly, without ever having to imbibe a sip of alcohol.
“Most men claim that they did what they had to. For a sick mother or their papa’s surgery, or to save a puppy. They had to sell their soul and pay the devil for a cause well beyond themselves. But me?” He sighs as if the weight of the world rests on his shoulders, a crushing burden. He’s ground down to almost nothing, enduring only through sheer pride. “Me? I wanted this life. The devil never had to twist my arm, you see? He always had a better offer than anything else this world could give someone like me.”
He lets that statement hang in the air. His voice echoes off the walls until it’s as if a hundred various Donatellos are speaking all at once.
Me?
The devil…
“People like Fabio and Vincenzo have to rationalize it away. The greed. The violence. The hate. They can’t accept the fucking truth—at the end of the day, me and Mateo Saleri are one and the same.” He extends his hand, crooking a single finger to beckon me
