Black Hearted (The Margarelli Brothers 1)

There. A little girl sat on a stone bench. She was so pretty, so perfect, that she looked like a doll. I almost didn’t believe she was real. And then she scowled at me, her little face looking even prettier somehow.

She was real, all right.

I smiled at the adorable creature sitting there, looking as fierce as an alley cat.

“What’s your name?”

She jutted her tiny chin forward and glared at me.

“Francesca. Who are you?”

I had to laugh at the way she stared down her nose at me. She was barely more than a baby, but she held herself like a queen.

“I am Vincent Margarelli,” I said proudly. My family was important. Our name meant something. But this little slip of a girl was important too. I could tell. “I’m going to call you Queen Francesca.”

She crossed her little arms.

“I’m a princess, not a queen. Little girls can’t be queens.”

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “You’re not a little girl. Just like I’m not a little boy. We are small, but that won’t be forever. We just need to grow into our size.”

She nodded slowly. We understood each other. Her scowl melted away, and she offered me her ice cream cone.

“Want a bite?”

I shook my head and sat beside her.

“No. But I will wait for you to finish. Try not to get any on your dress,” I added self-importantly. She was just a little girl. And I knew that if her papa was anything like mine, getting a stain on her pretty pink dress would mean a beating. I didn’t want anyone to hurt her.

Like she’d said, she was little, for now. Even a queen could be broken. I slipped my hand into hers and squeezed, feeling that something monumental had happened. Not the meeting happening inside the mansion. The meeting of a future king and queen, outside, sharing a moment in a rose garden.

I didn’t know it would be twenty years before I saw her again.

Chapter One

Vincent

I tapped my fingertips on the heavy oak table. It had been my father’s desk and his father’s before him. Now it was mine.

The windowless office was as dark as the thoughts in my mind. The soft amber of the Tiffany lamps did nothing to dissipate the gloom inside the room or the mood that was pervading the entire house, the entire family.

Things were happening that I didn’t like. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. There was a pattern emerging in the mishaps that had been happening lately. The kind of things that could go wrong but rarely did. Not on my watch.

It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders most days. But right now, my impatience was a pleasant feeling. I felt light. I felt hope.

My little brother was FaceTiming me from across the world. My niece had her bright blue eyes closed and her thumb tucked neatly into her Cupid’s bow lips, looking like a little angel. She was the future. She was the reason for every single thing we did.

Antonio grinned like a loon as he gingerly bounced the sleeping baby on his shoulder.

“You were going to tell me about the wine, little brother.”

“Be patient,” he whispered with a chuckle. “If I put her down, she will wake up! I want Evie to get a little more sleep.”

“You are a slave to that woman,” I said mildly. My brother was whipped with a capital ‘W’. But it was understandable. My sister-in-law was one in a million, beautiful, intelligent, kind, and for some reason, she seemed able to assimilate into our lifestyle, even though she was as sweet as an angel.

My brother was a lucky bastard. He had two angels on his hands. It didn’t really seem fair.

“Don’t I know it,” he said with a shit-eating grin. “To two women,” he added, rubbing his hand over his baby daughter’s back.

“So I guess we’re not touring the new bottling facility today.”

He gave me a rueful shrug.

“I can call you back when I get out there, or have Marco do it.”

“I’d rather wait for the real deal,” I said dryly. “Is everything on schedule?”

He answered in the affirmative, then gave me a softly worded rundown of what was happening. It was not the first time we’d bottled wine at the estate, but it was the first time we’d done it commercially.

It was a legit business. Our mother’s family name was on the bottle. There was nothing underhanded, even though we certainly could have used the place to launder money. In fact, we probably should be using it that way.

But I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t even think of it. The wine business was Antonio’s other baby. He’d been moving us away from gambling and shipping for years. He’d loved running nightclubs before he met Evie, for reasons it would be impolite to mention. My brother was determined to get us on the up and up. Now more than ever.