Page 2 of Silent Night With Adrian

“Good. Dante needs to know we’re serious. His sister for the territory—that’s the deal.”

I glance back at her, taking in the way her jaw clenches, her gaze hardening as she tries to figure out who I’m talking to. Dante won’t come for her easily; he’s too ruthless, too calculated. She knows it too, even if she won’t say it.

“She still in one piece?” Massimo asks, though there’s a dark humor in his voice.

I exhale slowly. “Yeah. No one’s touched her.”

Massimo’s voice hardens. “Keep it that way, but don’t get soft. Dante may not care about her as much as we think. She’s a pawn. Nothing more.”

I swallow, casting a look back at Mia. She’s smart enough to realize what we’re likely talking about, and I see the tension in her shoulders, her jaw set, as if she’s bracing herself for the worst. Her brother’s loyalty only goes so far, and she knows it.

“I got it,” I mutter, my voice flat.

“If Dante doesn’t fold, we’ll send a message. The other families need to know what happens when they cross us.”

Massimo hangs up, leaving a cold silence between me and Mia.Send a message.The words hang in the air, a reminder of what I might have to do.

Her eyes lock onto mine, her expression unreadable, but I can see the shift in her gaze. She’s not just angry. She’s hurt, betrayed in a way I can feel in my bones.

“Adrian...” Her voice trembles, just a little, but it’s enough to pierce through my defenses. “I thought you weren’t like them.”

I feel the lie forming on my tongue, a defense, something to protect myself from the pull she has on me. But there’s no escaping it. Not with her here, so close, every part of her tempting me to cross lines I can’t afford to cross.

“I’m not,” I whisper, the words tasting bitter.

Her lips press into a tight line, her anger dark and fierce, cutting into me like a knife. “Then why are you doing this?”

I open my mouth, but what can I say? She’s a Vitale. I’m a Luciana. There’s no room for anything else.

“I have no choice,” I say coldly, my voice hard as stone.

She glares at me, her voice low, venomous. “You’re a bastard, Adrian.”

I nod, accepting it, the words settling like a weight in my chest. “Yeah. I am.”

I let out a humorless laugh, my voice low and cold. “Merry Christmas, Mia.”

With that, she closes her eyes with a glimmer of tears on her long lashes, as the full weight of what has happened to her sets in.

Chapter 2 Mia

Ten days ago in Winter Haven, Colorado

I’ve lost track of how many funerals I’ve been to, but it never gets any easier. It seems like my entire life has been divided between weekends of weddings and funerals—mostly for people my father would callfamily. And we show up because of that one word. “Family.” At the end of the day, it’s just to show respect.

But it’s the funerals that have always stuck with me, even when I didn’t know the deceased personally. In our world, life always ends too early. None of the guests of honor live past forty. Most of them don’t even make it to thirty—young men who could have made something of themselves, if this life hadn’t taken that chance from them.

The outside world sees the mafia as some romantic vision of money, cigars, and “getting even.” In reality, there’s nothing butdeath in its wake. The lucky ones are men like my father, who lived long enough to become the boss of the Vitale family. Those who sit high enough can give orders and pretend the blood doesn’t touch them.

My brother Marco wasn’t so lucky.

For years, the deceased were always “somebody’s somebody.” I didn’t grieve because I didn’t know them. But now I do, and now that it’s my turn to feel that loss, I might just break. Not from grief, but from the anger boiling underneath it.

Marco was brilliant, ruthless—my father’s strategist, the one who held power and territory together for him, a wall that kept the empire intact. He knew the risks, but like everyone else in this life, he thought he was untouchable. Immortal. No one joins this world believing it will happen to them.

Yet here I am, clenching my jaw as I listen to speech after speech in this Catholic church filled with people I’ve seen at the same weddings and funerals all my life. Faces I recognize but couldn’t name if my life depended on it.

“Don’t worry,” my eldest brother Dante whispers, his warm hand closing over mine. “We’ll avenge him. Don’t you worry.”

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