Page 13 of The Wages of Sin

DORIAN

Si, mi chiamano Mimì, ma il mio nome è Lucia.

Even though nearly a week had passed since I’d walked by one of the rooms and overheard Mary quietly singing the aria from La Boheme to herself, her voice still echoed in my head.

Not because she was a great singer, not by any means. The hushed tone she used was several octaves lower than the high soprano of the Met Opera recording, and even with that handicap, some of her notes were still flat.

But the emotion in her voice was anything but.

Knowing the Italian lyrics to a hundred and seventy-five year old opera wasn’t something I expected from a maid.

Clearly, there was more to her than I’d originally thought.

Especially given the way she sang gave the impression that she knew what the words meant.

Yes, they call me Mimi, but my real name is Lucia.

I’d lingered just on the other side of the door long enough to hear her sing a few more lines, wondering if she was simply an opera fan or if it went deeper than that. Did she love the aria because she related to it?

They call me Mimi. I don’t know why.

I stay alone, all alone, in a little white room.

I look out over the rooftops and sky.

Those bittersweet lyrics certainly matched the tinge of melancholy I’d spotted in her dark eyes, making me curious about what had put it there in the first place.

It wasn’t like me to be caught up in thoughts of a woman.

“What do you think, Dorian?”

Damn it. I’d been so distracted by the memory of her singing that I’d missed whatever question my brother Gabriel had asked.

Clasping my hands in front of me and forcing myself back into the present moment, I shifted my gaze his way. “Say again?”

“We keeping you from something, boy?”

I glared over at the man who dared to call me that derogatory diminutive. The only man alive who could get away with it—Salvatore D’Angelo, the current head of the D’Angelo family and Gabriel and Matteo’s uncle.

Technically, since I’d been legally adopted into the D’Angelo family after my own father’s death when I was nine, he was my uncle as well, but he’d always made it clear he never considered me real family.

At first, I thought he was simply resentful that I had kept my original family name after the adoption, staying Dorian Marchetti in honor of my parents instead of taking on the D’Angelo name. But I soon learned his bitterness ran far deeper than that.

Several times over the years, I’d heard him mutter that a judge’s signature on a court document didn’t make me blood.

Not even if my biological father had died saving his brother’s life.

Of course, Sal’s opinion hadn’t mattered much back when my adoptive father was alive. Giuseppe had been the boss, and, as underboss, Sal’s job was to follow his older brother’s orders. When he declared me his son, equal to Gabriel and Matteo in all ways, that ended the conversation. No one dared question him.

But just because Sal learned to hold his tongue didn’t mean his concerns went away. To him, I was nothing more than the son of a low-ranking soldier, one who he worried would take advantage of the family and become a burden.

But that wasn’t the kind of man I was.

Eternally grateful for Giuseppe’s generosity, I dedicated my life to serving the D’Angelo family. I pushed myself hard, training to be the best soldier Giuseppe had ever seen, honing deadly skills to protect my new family, and determined never to lose anyone I loved again.

And for a while, my plan worked. For over two decades, the D’Angelo family thrived.

Until one night when an unknown gunman broke into Giuseppe’s home, snuck past every guard, and shot him to death in his own bed.

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