Page 2 of Mario
Not visibly. Not enough for anyone outside these walls to feel it.
But something old and buried cracked open between them.
Mario said nothing.
Francis let out a dry, humorless breath. “She thought she saved him from me.”
Not rumor.
Not bitterness.
Truth.
Luca Conti was not merely their cousin.
He was Francis’s son.
Mario’s brother.
And the man ruling Atlantic City had lived his entire life beneath another man’s name.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Mario asked quietly.
Francis’s gaze hardened, the old authority flashing through the weakness of his body.
“Remember it.”
A command.
A warning.
A weapon.
Mario looked down at the man who had built an empire on control—and lost one woman because of it.
For the first time, he wondered whether his father hated Elio because Maria chose him…
Or because Luca had loved him.
Francis’s breath rattled in his chest.
“Do not trust them,” he said. “Not Elio’s line. Not Maria’s sons. Not the family she stole from us.”
Mario’s jaw tightened.
Stole.
Even now, Francis could turn loss into possession.
“She chose him,” Mario said.
Francis’s eyes flashed, sharp with something that refused to die.
“No,” he rasped. “She betrayed me.”
Then the strength left him.
The old don sank back into the pillows, the fire in him finally dimming.
