Livia Ximena Di Vittorio

"Matteo," I call out, looking around for my second-oldest brother.

"Hey, what's up?" He replied, looking up from his book, he was buried in the library like he always seemed to be. It was his coping mechanism.

"I'm heading into the university for a couple of classes this morning, Dad said might be good for you to come with me and I show you around, maybe sign you up for some classes and whatnot."

Matteo stops and scrutinises me, almost like he couldn't tell if I was kidding or not. "Do you want to come or not, you'll have to it with me through my classes though and I know you don't want to study business."

"No, I want to come." He says far too quickly. "Let me go get dressed quickly."

He retreats quickly and I watch after him. I think Matteo was the most different from me, he didn't have the drive I did for more and more, and he didn't want to put himself on display for the word and command armies at his will. Matteo is going to build a nice life for himself, he's going to get a nice job on the right side of the law, and he's probably going to get a lovely wife and have a couple of kids meanwhile I'm not even sure if I want kids or to get married, I know I need an heir of my own but that was a future issue.

"Aren't you meant to be at school, Luciano?" I scold as I walk into the kitchen and see my little brother still there, sitting with Martino and Romeo. He and Allegra had been staying with Uncle Massimo for the past few days after the gala just to let things settle down a bit here. Dad had always tried to shield the two of them since they were still young but Dad didn't believe in just missing school for no reason so I was surprised he was still home at almost eleven in the morning.

"Dad let me have the day off?" Luciano spoke innocently, I found it hard to believe as the man had only let me miss school a handful of times when I was deathly ill or I had to go out of the country for business trips or training with him.

"Did he now?" Luciano nodded his head furiously, I couldn't detect any lies in his tone but I was still sceptical so I did the only thing I could think of, turning on my heels and marching towards my dad's office.

"Daaaaad!"

"Cos'è, Livia?" What is it, Livia? My father was seated behind his large desk, and many files piled up around him. "Don't you need to get going to your classes?"

I couldn't help it, I let out a scoff and take a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. "You're going on about me going to class but you are letting Luca bunk, the hypocrisy."

My father looked at me with a deadpan expression. "And how many classes have you been to this month, Livia Ximena?"

"Technically all of them, just not in person but that is because you have been keeping me soooo busy." I lie sideways across the chair, my head hanging off one of the armrests and my feet off the other. I was being very dramatic, I know but if I didn't act like a kid once in a while I'd be acting like an old woman in a few years.

My dad tilts his head so he can see me straight, a sad and soft look gleaming in his eyes. "When did you grow up so much?"

I sit up straight and give him a shrug, somewhere in the last few years it had turned from Nerf guns with my friends to rifles on the battlefields, confronting girls I didn't get along with at school to opposing hard-core criminals. I don't know when the lines blurred so much.

"If it's so much Livia, I can handle your mother." My father spoke earnestly, I immediately shook my head. I had been adamant from the beginning that I wanted to be the one to handle her. My father had loved my mother for many years, she wasn't the same then as she was now from what I knew, and I knew my father respected my mother a lot, not for who she was as a person but for the kids she had blessed him with many times.

"I can do it, Papa, I was just whining." I relent. "But why did you keep Luca home today, that isn't like you."

"I knew you would be away today and your mother and sister are away again, I need to run some errands with all the turmoil going on with your brothers I just wanted someone here with them," Dad explains.

"Makes sense. I need to get going, Matteo is probably waiting for me." I stand up. "He's really excited."

"I can imagine," Dad says, he had suggested it and I had thought it was a great idea. It would start to get the boys out of the house and not feel like they were stuck here. "I love you so much, Livia."

"I love you too Dad."

I start walking out of the office when he calls out after me. "Don't forget about the meeting tonight."

All he hears as I walk away is my groan.

+

"I heard no one goes in your cars." Matteo questions, he had been thinking about it the entire ride and slowly working up the confidence to ask me it. It was strange to me that people didn't have the will to just say what was on their mind, I had never had a filter to what I was thinking much like Luciano but at least I didn't ramble my whole life story away to strangers the way he did.

"I don't prefer it, but I sometimes I let people in this one but never in my Lambo."

"I know it's a gorgeous car but so is this one."

If it was any of the other brothers sitting in my passenger seat I would have made some comment about how curious they all were but this was Matteo and if I said something like that he most likely would have never asked me a question again.

"This car dad gave me for my sixteenth birthday, well not this exact model he upgrades it every year for me." I say in regard to the white G-wagon we were currently in. "It's still special but my Lamborghini is something I bought with my very own hard earned money from jobs I've done for dad. I only got it a couple months ago."

"It is a very beautiful car." He says in reference to my polished black Lamborghini Miura SV. That was my pride and joy, I had inherited my love for a certain specimen of cars from my grandfather, my dad's dad and it was a common trait away from the mafia and the family we could bond over. I was so excited when I had enough to buy it, I had called my grandfather straight away and the two of us had gone to Milan and drove it all the way back home together.

"It is."

I had kept the conversation going to try and calm Matteo's nerves on the drive to campus, we had kept it out about small things we had in common but he had fallen silent as we approached the campus.

"You don't have a reason to be nervous, Teo." I assure my brother. "Nothing's happening today, you are just going to see if maybe you'd like to attend here with me if you don't then we'll find somewhere you'll be happy." Matteo was looking at me funny. "What?"

"You called me Teo?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to it just..." I ramble but he cuts me off.

"No, I liked it, no one's ever called me that before."

"Well have an unhealthy habit of calling everyone by a nickname so you'll be hearing it a lot more from me, don't you worry." I jump out the car and made sure I had my bag that carried my school laptop and my notes for my classes. "Now come, if dad found out I was late to class he would have my head on a stick."

"I don't think you mean that." Matteo says sceptically.

I laugh. "Well you haven't seen how passionate the man is about school work."

+

"Did you enjoy yourself?" I ask Matteo.

"It was nice, I never understood a work about what the lecturer was going on about though." Matteo mumbles talking about my International relations class he had sat through.

"It is a class you have to be in from the beginning that's for sure. Are you happy to come with me to meet some of my friends and then to my other class or would you like me to call a driver to pick you up?" I give him the options.

"I'll come with you, it's nice being out of the house for a change." I can't imagine being cooped up in a strange place, I don't think I've ever even spend as much time at the house in one stretch as these boys have. "What other class do you have after this."

"Business management, I think you'll enjoy that one more." We walk side by side out of the building and into the courtyard, it wasn't too hard to spot Esmeralda and Genevieve as they sat in the same place they always did but normally it was just the two of them but there was a third figure with them, a man hanging off the side of Genevieve. I was too far to see who it was but I was a little bit surprised. Genevieve was a very beautiful woman but she hardly ever entertained men, she wanted to grow her modelling career while studying so she never gave anyone the time of day even though she had many men longing after her.

"Do you want to come with me to meet my friends?" I ask Matteo, he gives me a quick nod but looked a little bit sceptical. He was really introverted.

"If it isn't the stranger." Esmeralda calls out, seeing us first. She stands up and walks over to me and pulls me into a tight hug.

"Hey Esme," Gen circles me next. "Hi Gen."

"You do know there's a boy following you." Genevieve whispers to me, before her voice drops into an even lower tone. "One that isn't Nikolai."

"You know there is also a boy with you, one that isn't Cason." My tone also drops even lower at the end of my sentence, Genevieve pulls back just in time for me to see her roll her honey brown eyes. "Gen, Esme this is one of my brothers, Matteo. Matteo this is Genevieve and Esmeralda, some of my friends."

Matteo slides his hands into his pockets and rocks back and forth as he greets my friends softly but politely. For the first time since I had arrived I scan Genevieve's mysterious guest who she had allowed to sit with her. I found the man's eyes on me surprisingly, and something even more shocking was that I knew him. Bright amber eyes almost hidden by a mop of dark curls greeted me bringing me back to a night from a few weeks ago.

"Santino?"