“Everything?” Jordan said, skeptical. No one was perfect at everything.
“Everything,” Ferrara said with another humorless smile. “We all could handle a gun well by the time we were fifteen, but Damiano was something else. He could hit the bullseye ten times out of ten, he spoke four languages, he got perfect grades, and he could talk circles around all of us. It goes without saying that it didn’t exactly make him any friends. Teenagers hate being shown up.”
“You bullied him?” Jordan said quietly.
Sighing, Ferrara rolled his shoulders. “No. At least not that I know of. He was too strong and good at hand-to-hand and with a knife to be bullied in a traditional way. But there are other ways to make a teenager feel unwanted. Lesser.” Ferrara’s black eyes were solemn as he met Jordan’s. “As an adult, I’m not proud of it. We were rich, cruel brats. But I can’t change the past. And in our defense, we had no way of knowing that with our verbal cruelty and dismissive attitude we were creating a monster.”
“A monster?” Jordan said, frowning. While Damiano had made him uneasy, he had seen nothing that indicated that he was a monster.
Ferrara walked to the window and stared out of it. “There’s something broken in him,” he said without any inflection. “He doesn’t seem to understand what empathy is, and I’m not sure he understands that there should be a line you should never cross. He doesn’t care for anything but power and mind games. Watching us squirm entertains him. A therapist would probably say he’s a high-functioning sociopath—if not worse.”
“With all due respect, boss, but some people in the company call you a sociopath,” Jordan said. Sadistic, heartless asshole, to be precise.
A wry smile curled Ferrara’s lips. “I’m aware,” he said. “I would be the first to say that I’m not a nice, empathic man, but compared to Damiano, I’m the epitome of empathy. For Damiano people are just chess pieces he moves around to get the outcome he wants. He doesn’t see them as individuals. He doesn’t care for a single person. I’m not sure he’s capable of it.” He met Jordan’s eyes. “He’s the type of person who can casually pull out a gun and shoot all of us at the table and then go back to his dinner.”
Jordan stared at him. Was he serious?
“He’s trigger-happy?”
“No,” Ferrara said with a grimace. “He would do it in cold blood. Damiano doesn’t do anything without a good reason, but the way his mind works isn’t normal. He isn’t normal. Be very careful around him. He’s paying you even more attention than I expected. I don’t like the way he looks at you. Be careful.”
“I will,” Jordan said and left the room, feeling more alarmed than he had been in a long time.
And so very curious.
Chapter 4
Jordan tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. Partly it was anxiety, but mostly it was his curiosity. Ferrara’s explanation hadn’t satisfied it. He had so many questions now, his brain unable to turn off.
Around midnight, he gave up and got out of the bed.
The house was quiet and dark. The windows were wide open, bringing the sweet smell of flowers from the garden. Jordan padded toward the terrace he’d glimpsed upon their arrival and pushed the door open.
He stepped out and breathed in deeply, leaning against the wall. There was something about the scent of Italian air that made him want to stay outside and stargaze. Maybe he just missed being in the countryside. He’d barely left Boston in a decade, and when he did, it was always for work.
A sound snapped him out of his thoughts. Frowning, Jordan looked toward it before slowly heading in that direction. He rounded the house and saw a large pool. It was well lit despite the hour—and there was someone there.
A man was swimming in it with strong, sure strokes, cleaving through the water until he flipped over onto his back. The lights illuminated his broad, sun-bronzed shoulders and muscular chest, angular face and black hair.
Jordan’s stomach clenched.
He took a step back behind the thick oak, not wanting to be seen, not wanting to be caught spying. But he couldn’t make himself leave completely. He watched Damiano float in the water, his big body relaxed like that of a panther.
Now that he knew what to look for, Jordan could see what Ferrara meant about Damiano not being fully Italian. Something about his eyes, the harsh curve of his dark eyebrows, and his strong facial structure reminded him of those ruthless Ottoman sultans from the Turkish TV series that his mother liked watching so much. It gave Damiano’s face such strength and character, made it more striking than Ferrara’s more conventionally handsome face was.
He wondered how this man felt about seeing his nameless father’s features on his own face. Did he hate it? Or did he not care at all?