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  Finally, her eyes started to flutter open, her blue irises dark and glazed over. There was no color on her cheeks, and her chapped lips were starting to turn blue.

  I wiped away some hair that stuck to her forehead, hanging over her eyes. The smell of vomit on her breath was horrid, and I tried my best to avoid the stench by not breathing too much.

  “Tatum, look at me.”

  No response.

  I tightened my grip on her cheeks. “Fucking look at me!”

  Her eyes opened, and the moment her gaze locked onto mine, it was like new life suddenly got blasted into the color of her irises. For a second, she just stared at me as if she was looking right through me, seeing all my darkest secrets. The moment was so unnerving, I didn’t even notice her moving her hand toward my face.

  A cold, soft palm pressed against my cheek, and she leaned closer.

  “You,” she whispered, like she knew me. But she didn’t. No one fucking knew me.

  I took her hand in mine and slowly pulled it away from my face.

  She narrowed her eyes, studying my face. “How?”

  Vico came rushing into the room with Doc shortly on his heels, and I pressed her back onto the mattress, her eyes never leaving mine.

  While Doc was busy checking her pulse, her temperature, and setting up some meds, I lifted myself back up and stared down at the fragile, helpless young woman. I felt nothing. No remorse, no regret. There was nothing inside me that even remotely resembled any kind of sympathy or emotion—only complete emptiness.

  I took a step back while smiling wickedly at her. “Welcome to Hell, donna.”

  The fear and confusion on her face sent a flurry of sensations down my spine. It was downright euphoric. All the time I spent preparing myself for this day, embracing the darkness that has now become my soul, I never could have imagined that it would feel…good. But it did. It felt liberating, like I finally had the means and the reason to set free the darkness I knew had been hidden inside me all these years. I was not the least bit surprised it felt so fucking good. Something like this should feel good to a person without a soul, without a heart—to someone who was already dead and rotten inside.

  Doc pierced her ivory skin, pushing a needle into the vein in her arm. She didn’t flinch, and she didn’t fight. She just continued to stare at me like she had seen a ghost.

  If only she knew that, from today, this face would haunt her every second of her miserable life—or at least what was left of it. But no matter how much she suffered, it still wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough to fill the emptiness that now consumed every part of me.

  As Doc pulled the needle out of her arm, her body instantly relaxed into the mattress, but her gaze remained etched on my face.

  “Why?” she whispered, her eyes blinking as she struggled to keep them from closing.

  I smiled. “Today is the start of your penance, donna.”

  “Penance for what?” She breathed out as her eyelids grew heavy.

  Vico and Doc exited the room, and as I stepped out the door, I turned back to look at her. “For murdering my brother.”

  With the push of a button, the steel door closed with a loud thud, separating us from the person I hated the most in this world—the person whose pain would feed the monster that stirred in the darkest pits of my being.

  “That was close,” Doc said behind me. “Luckily, you stuck to the regular dose, or her heart would have given in with the amount of alcohol in her system.”

  I turned around to face him and straightened my suit jacket and then remembered I was covered in vomit.

  “Thanks, Doc. Don’t go too far in case we need you again.”

  “Of course, Castello.”

  Doc walked out, and I glowered at Vico, making my disapproval known by a single fucking glance. “Our entire plan almost got ruined because you screwed up.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t know.” He took an intimidating step forward, his eyes just as dark as mine. But he knew nothing about him intimidated me, never had. At twenty-five, he was three years younger than I was. And just like him, I once was what our family called a Capo.

  It was a mere four-point-two minutes that catapulted my twin brother into the role as Underboss. Four-point-two minutes made my brother the successor instead of me. Carlo, who now lay six feet underground wearing a morbid headstone as a crown, was the one destined to take my father’s place as head of our family.

  But now, with him dead, his birthright had now become my curse. I went from Capo to Boss within the blink of an eye. One bullet and a simple phone call was all it took to change my life and to turn me into the soulless bastard I was today.

  I inhaled, trying to calm the anger that had me clenching my fists. Vico had the tendency to provoke the anger in me.

  “We can’t afford mistakes like this, Vico.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I think your hunger for revenge is strong enough to let you make stupid mistakes.”

  “And yours? You cannot tell me that you don’t want revenge as much as I do.”

  “Oh, believe me, it’s all I think about. But I know how to control it, how to feed on just enough to make sure that in the end my need for vengeance will be sated.” I stepped closer, wanting to drive my point home long and hard. “Control yourself, Vico. I love you, but I won’t hesitate to remove you from all of this if I suspect that your lack of self-control will jeopardize our plan. This is bigger than you and me. This is bigger than any of us. This is about showing the entire goddamn world that if you fuck with a Fattore, not even God will be able to save you.”

  The way Vico’s eyes turned almost black, the way lines formed grooves on his forehead as he scowled at me, I could only imagine how much he would have liked to plant a fist on my face. Vico had always been the loose cannon, the one whose actions no one could predict. Before Carlo died, Vico was the one who stayed out all night, bringing home drunk girls and screwing them until dawn.

  Carlo and I were the responsible ones, the ones who understood that the family name was more important than anything. But even though I understood the need for loyalty toward my father and everything he represented, I also understood Vico’s need to fulfill his own desires. God knew I had desires of my own—dark, wicked desires that stirred inside me. I just didn’t flaunt them in front of everyone like Vico did. I didn’t bring my sordid affairs out into the light. Instead, I kept them hidden in the dark until the shadows could peel away the façade I carried while I smiled at my mother and father, pretending to be what they so desperately wanted me to be…the perfect Fattore—just like Carlo.

  Vico backed down, his fists still clenched at his sides.

  I straightened, then pulled my vomit-covered jacket off my shoulders and walked to the door. “I need a shower. Stay here, and don’t take your eyes off that monitor. And call Doc if she starts throwing up again.”

  Vico nodded, but there wasn’t even the tiniest hint of warmth in his eyes while he stared at me. That was okay, though. Our entire relationship had always been of love and hate. Vico and I never really connected—not like Carlo and I had, which was to be expected of identical twins. Carlo and I always knew what the other was thinking, knew exactly what the other one wanted to say before we even said it. Call it twin telepathy. Call it a freak show. Call it whatever the fuck you want, but the fact remained that nothing could have compared to the bond I shared with Carlo. But that bond was now broken, destroyed by death—by the damn woman currently unconscious on the other side of that wall. And because of that bond no longer existing, I no longer had any light left inside me. Because of the burden that now weighed heavily on my back, I had to succumb to the darkness. But I preferred it that way. Darkness took away one’s ability to feel, and for me to be able to pull this off, I needed to be the soulless bastard that I had become.

  Chapter 2

  Tatum

  Either I had the worst hangover of my life or I was on the
verge of dying. Only a large amount of alcohol or death could make a person feel this bad. My head was pounding, the sound of my heartbeat hammering against my skull. Nausea churned in the pit of my stomach, causing me to take small, shallow breaths. I was afraid that even breathing too fast would make me throw up—violently.

  My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, and my throat felt like I swallowed sand. It was scratchy and dry, and I was pretty sure my mouth had lost its ability to produce even the tiniest amount of saliva. Basically, I felt like crap.

  I moved my tongue, trying to get some relief from the sandpaper stuck in my mouth, and I realized why I hadn’t been swallowing. My mouth tasted like ass. Disgusting, vile ass that threatened to feed the already raging nausea in my gut.

  I tried opening my eyes, but a sudden feeling of dread settled over me, making my skin crawl. The way my body ached all over screamed that something bad happened—something real bad. For a few seconds longer, I kept my eyes closed, hoping the fear pulsing through my veins was just the remnants of a bad nightmare. But unfortunately, the second I opened my eyes and stared at the unfamiliar gray concrete wall in front of me, I knew this wasn’t just a nightmare. This was reality.

  Ice cold dread started to move through me, all the way up my legs, my spine, until it reached the back of my neck. I was suddenly hyperaware of the feeling of unfamiliar sheets against my skin, and when I pushed myself up, I stared with horror at the old, brown sheets beneath me. These were definitely not the three-hundred-dollar silk sheets I had on my bed back at my apartment.

  I grabbed hold of the cotton fabric and tightened my fist while I tried my best to remember what happened, how I got here—wherever here was. Then I noticed with horror what I was wearing—an old yellowed rag that seemed like it had once been a nightgown, like fifty years ago. Where were my clothes?

  “Welcome to Hell…”

  That voice resonated through my mind like thunder, together with the picture of dark eyes that resembled black holes of hate. And when I closed my eyes, I saw the familiar smile I had missed so much the last few months. But how…

  Could it be him? After all this time, could it really be him?

  “Carlo,” I whispered, but somehow, I wasn’t convinced. I remembered Carlo’s smile being light and kind, not dark and wicked. It just couldn’t be him.

  With narrowed eyes, I scanned across the room. Concrete walls decorated with nothing—not even a trace of paint—surrounded me. It felt cold and damp and empty. Besides the bed and a chair in the corner, there was nothing else in the room. It was grim and completely dismal, which did nothing to ease the panic that rapidly rose inside my chest.

  My gaze darted up to the wall, and what sounded like air rapidly escaping a tube came from the other side of the room. A piece of the concrete wall moved, and a hidden door opened. That door was so well hidden I never would have known that it was there if it hadn’t opened right before my eyes.

  Painful knots twisted in my gut as my heart started hammering behind my ribs. The softness of the sheets felt like gravel against my skin as I moved up the bed, pushing my back against the headboard. Adrenaline surged through my veins as I watched the door open. It was when I saw who stood on the other side of the door that I stopped breathing.

  “Carlo?”

  He smiled, and for a split second, hope flared in my chest like a thousand fireworks.

  He didn’t leave.

  It has been so long, yet I never could forget that face. I didn’t think I ever would. That was the face that haunted my dreams, my thoughts, my desires for so damn long. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move on without him.

  “Carlo, what…”

  But then he stepped forward, and I knew something wasn’t right. The eyes of the man before me were dark orbs of hate and not the warm chocolate eyes I remembered. These were not the brown eyes that had the power to captivate me with a single glance, making me forget everything bad in life. No. These eyes had the exact opposite effect.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my back now one with the headboard, the wood crushing against my spine.

  With his hands clutching a box, he moved, stepping right under the light, and I couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped me in a huff as I took in his features. His blue-black hair was neatly cut at the sides and down the back yet kept a little longer on top—exactly as I remembered. His sturdy, square jawline was dark with the outline of a five o’clock shadow. The Carlo I remembered was clean-shaven to perfection, with absolutely no facial hair outlining those invitingly full lips.

  The thick dark brows that framed his eyes were slightly curved up in what I could only assume was amusement. What is going on?

  Then I noticed a crescent-shaped scar that ran through the corner of his eyebrow, curling around his right eye and disappearing as it reached his cheek.

  Carlo didn’t have such a prominent scar. A scar like that wasn’t something anyone could have missed.

  “Hello, Tatum.” The corner of his mouth lifted into a wicked smile.

  A cold shiver ran up my spine at the sound of his voice. It was the same low, husky voice that had whispered sweet, tantalizing words into my ear once. When I heard that voice for the first time, I knew it was a voice I would never be able to forget.

  “What is going on?” I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Apart from the scar and the darkness looming in his eyes, he was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen—exactly like I remembered him…Carlo.

  “First of all, let me introduce myself.” He placed the box on the bed before holding out his right hand.

  I glanced down at his hand before looking back up at his face. “Why would you want to introduce yourself? I already know who you are.”

  He smiled at me like he was about to tell me something that would change my life forever, like he was going to enjoy whatever reaction I was about to give.

  “You don’t know me, Miss Linscott.” He placed his arm back at his side.

  I narrowed my eyes, furrowing my brows as I continued to stare at him with confusion. How could he say I didn’t know him when, in fact, I knew him so, so well? He was the man who broke my heart—the man who left without a word, leaving me to wallow in my own heartbreak without so much as a goddamn explanation.

  Anger bubbled like toxic lava in my veins, thinking about the hurt he had caused me. “You’re the man who broke my fucking heart in two, Carlo.”

  He continued to smile. “That’s the thing. I’m not Carlo.”

  I snorted. “Quit your games, Carlo. You disappear off the face of the Earth and then suddenly reappear—having me kidnapped, by the way.”

  He stepped closer, and the way his eyes darkened, the cold threat exuding out of him like rays of malevolence, had every instinct inside me screaming for me to run, to fight, to do anything in order to survive whatever was about to happen next.

  “My name is Castello. Castello Fattore.” He leaned closer, his gaze never leaving mine. “And Carlo was my twin brother.”

  A gasp slipped out of my mouth while I continued to stare into his eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. The depths of his black eyes had me entranced along with the revelation that just shook me straight through my soul.

  He slanted his head to the side. “What’s the matter, Tatum? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I…Is this some sort of joke?” My voice came out as nothing more than a whisper, lacking even the tiniest amount of confidence.

  “Believe me, Miss Linscott, this is not a joke.”

  Miss Linscott. Carlo never would have called me that. He knew how much I hated my surname, how much I loathed being so formally addressed. And the way this man said it was like my surname left a bitter taste in his mouth, bitterness that came all the way from the pit of his stomach. It scared me.

  I swallowed hard. “What is going on?”

  He shrugged, still holding on to his very nonchalant smile. “I’m merely trying to be courteous by introducing myself as
Carlo’s twin brother.”

  I studied his face, scrutinizing every contour, every inch…his eyes. And then I noticed it. Apart from the scar, the pupil of his one eye was elongated. It was easy to miss since his irises were already dark, but I saw it…and Carlo didn’t have that.

  I sucked in a breath, and his smile widened.

  “It’s the eye, isn’t it?” He touched the scar on his face. “Usually, it’s the scar, but you doubted even that, such a prominent sign…until you saw the tiniest defect in my eye. A defect my twin brother didn’t have.”

  I glanced down, unable to stare at him any longer. “I didn’t…he never…” I looked back up at him. “Carlo never told me he had a twin brother.”

  He straightened, his eyes seeming like they were mocking me. “Like you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t.” I shook my head. “I didn’t know Carlo had a twin brother.”

  The next thing I knew, he had his hand wrapped around my neck, gripping it so tight I could hardly breathe while he pushed my head painfully hard against the headboard. He brought his face inches from mine, and I could feel his hate as I stared into his eyes. I felt every ounce of his anger, his loathing…of me.

  “Do not play games with me, Miss Linscott.”

  “I’m not. I swear to God I didn’t know.” I pinched my eyes closed, unable to look into the darkness of his soul, feeling how his grip tightened around my throat little by little.

  “You knew he was a Fattore, so how could you not know he had a twin brother?”

  “He told me…” I swallowed hard, trying to suck in a breath against the strain of his grip. “Carlo told me his surname was Mancini.”

  Immediately, Castello let go of my throat and stepped back. I gasped and coughed, rubbing at the ache around my neck.

  “You’re lying,” he said simply.

  “No, I’m not. His name is Carlo Mancini.”

  He stiffened, his eyebrows slanted inward. “Is? What do you mean is?”