Page 1 of The Devils in the Details

Chapter One

~ Aristoteles ~

The weight of three centuries pressed down from every limestone block of the Romano villa. I’d walked these halls before, but never like this—never as the man who owned them, rather than the bastard the family kept in the wings. The main corridor stretched ahead of me, wide-plank floors creaking under my boots in a rhythm that sounded like acknowledgment.

Or maybe a warning.

Leon was a half-step behind my right shoulder, where he’d been for years. I didn’t need to check to know he was there. His breathing was steady, his gaze scanning the same rooms I was scanning, but from a different angle—security first, decorations somewhere down the list.

The silence between us was comfortable. We’d built it on the docks, in the dark, in places where talking got you killed.

The ceilings in the formal rooms soared high enough that our footsteps echoed. Voices carried. My father Geno Romano had probably liked that—the way a quiet word could fill a room, make a threat sound bigger than it was. It meant every conversation was public whether you wanted it to be or not.

I didn’t like it.

Gold and burgundy tapestries lined the library walls, faded to the color of old blood. Nobody had touched them in years. Dust sat on the shelves in a fine layer that caught the light from the arched windows.

Through the glass, I could see the formal gardens—or what was left of them. Ragged hedgerows, gravel paths disappearing under weeds, late-season roses hanging on by stubbornness more than anything else. The lavender beds had gone wild, spilling over the stone borders like they’d given up on being contained.

It smelled of dust and history and something else underneath—lemon oil, wood smoke from the deep stone fireplaces, and the faint tang of neglect.

Staff appeared in doorways and at the ends of corridors as we passed. Housekeepers, groundskeepers, security men whose faces I recognized from Geno’s time.

They stood at attention, backs straight, eyes forward. Wary. Every one of them clocked and filed away. The older ones looked at me and saw a dock worker who’d gotten lucky. The younger ones looked at me and saw whatever Leon had told them to see.

I didn’t care what they saw. I cared what they did.

The study was the last room on the east wing. I stopped in the doorway. The smell hit me before anything else—that expensive, wrong cologne Geno had worn, something with too much cedar and not enough honesty.

It lingered in the fabric of the leather chair, in the curtains, in the air itself like the man had stamped his presence into the walls and the reparation payments hadn’t been enough to scrub it out.

“All of this needs to be replaced before Mother arrives.” She needed no reminders of the man that had betrayed her.

My lighter flicked open in my fist. Closed. Open. The tiny flame caught the light from the window, held it for a second, then died.

Behind me, Leon was silent. He knew better than to fill the space.

I moved on.

The glass-roofed atrium came next. The indoor pool lay still and dark, the underwater lights switched off. At night, Leon had told me, the whole room glowed blue from below, turning the water into something alive. I made a mental note to see it. Not for the beauty. For the security angle—all that glass, all those sight lines.

Pretty meant vulnerable in my world.

The basement corridor was colder. Bare stone walls, fluorescent strips overhead casting everything in that flat, institutional light that made even healthy people look sick.

The armory door stood open at the far end, racks of weapons visible inside. Beyond it, the cells. I didn’t go in. I didn’t need to. The smell of cold earth, damp limestone, and a hint of copper told me everything about what those rooms had been used for.

The fifteen-car garage was the one concession to pure function I could respect. Modern steel roll doors, concrete floor, the kind of space built for utility rather than show.

A row of vehicles sat under covers—Geno’s collection, most of it. I’d have Leon move them. Sell what we didn’t need. The family was bleeding money and sentimentality was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

We finished the circuit and came back to the main hall. The wrought-iron staircase rose overhead, dark walnut banister worn smooth from generations of hands.

Under it, the staff had assembled. Two dozen people lined up in silence, waiting for the man who’d inherited a broken family with a ruined name to tell them what came next.

I looked at their faces. I looked at Leon, standing at my shoulder like he’d been carved there. The lighter was warm in my palm. I didn’t flick it.

Not yet.