Chapter 1
Angelo
Bobby gives me a suspicious look as I stroll into breakfast, his big dark eyes running over me with their customary combination of hunger and hatred. He has half a sausage on his plate. The other half is in his mouth, and barely gets swallowed before he snarfs out the obvious question.
“Why are you so dressed up?”
I check my cuff links. “I’m getting married today.”
Mark and Bobby exchange looks with each other. I wanted to remain composed, but I can’t help it. My upper lip curls in a smirking smile. I do love to surprise my boys.
They’re both very different in appearance and temperament. Mark is tall, blond, broad shouldered, responsible. He used to work for the FBI, before I ruined his life. Now he works for me.
Bobby’s really more of a rescue. He’s a vicious little thing, a dark haired, pale skinned beast of a young man who was on the verge of setting up his own illicit empire when I took him and broke him thoroughly to my will.
Our lives are complicated. Our relationships even more so. In the house of Vitali, love and loathing are the same thing. That is why Bobby looks at me with those deep, dark eyes, sparking with jealousy.
“Who are you marrying?” Mark asks the question casually. He might think I am joking. I am not.
“Her name is Matilda Braybrooke. She’s the daughter of an old British friend. He died this morning. I’m going to fly out and bring her back here.”
Mark’s expression is difficult to read. Bobby is less practiced at hiding his anger and outrage. His jaw drops, and he stares in fury.
“But you’re gay,” he declares.
“Am I? Thank you for informing me.”
“You are though, aren’t you?” Mark adds.
I understand their confusion. Since I have known them, I have not sought the company of women. I have enjoyed my captive male lovers and all the difficulties which come with them. Women are physically more delicate and one could argue, emotionally far more dangerous. They rarely hold my interest. But on this occasion, it is prudent to marry this one. I have my reasons for it, though I have little intention of sharing them.
“What’s going on, Angelo?” Mark asks the sensible, if somewhat redundant question.
“I believe I’ve explained myself, more or less. I’m going to collect my bride.”
“A woman doesn’t belong here with us. No woman could stand our lives. She won’t last a day,” Bobby says with a particularly vicious twist of his lips.
With that porcelain skin, and those big dark eyes, he looks like an angel, but he has the heart of a devil. My bride would no doubt have a very short life expectancy if she were left to his tender mercies.
“You will not be permitted to lay a finger on her, so I think her survival chances will be adequate.”
“What about Mark?” Bobby looks over at him, preemptively jealous.
“Mark is a gentleman. And he understands consequences, so he no doubt already knows what will happen to the pair of you if a hair on her head is touched, let alone harmed.”
I turn my gaze to Mark, my square-jawed, chiseled-featured, all-American burnout with his blond hair just a little too long, and his morning stubble just a little too long to be strictly clean-cut.
“Mark, you're in charge while I’m gone. Get a haircut.”
“Get a haircut,” Bobby snorts.
“Get him one too,” I say to Mark, while pointing at Bobby. “I want you both presentable for the lady.”
Chapter 2
Tilly
I am eating toast.
It is dry. No butter. Just a little marmalade. It’s bitter and unsatisfying.
My father is chewing bacon and eggs at the other end of the table. We have breakfasted like this every holiday morning for nineteen years. I wasn’t aware of the first few years, but I’m assuming they were the same. It has been the same forever.
He’s reading his newspaper. The same newspaper with the same stories that have been running since I learned to read. Something about immigrants. Something about loose morals and the decline of the empire. Something about poor people being poor aggressively at rich people.
He wears the same thing every day. A dark gray suit. A white shirt. A red pocket square. His grandfather’s watch. I’ve watched his hair turn gray and then fall out over the years. There’s not much left now, a few wisps around the crown which he refuses to have cut because of the vanity of his ego.
The kitchen door squeaks. It has needed oiling for as long as I can remember. But, like everything else in this old house, it has been left to decline. Our home is ancient. My ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years. Dozens, if not hundreds of my blood have sat right where I sit, in this chair, at this table.
We didn’t say hello to one another when we sat down. My father hasn’t spoken to me in a week. I don’t think he has noticed. I am as much a part of the furniture as the chair in which he sits.