Damiano didn’t even glance at Gustavo. “See?” he said, looking at Jordan. “You will find that I value family and honesty between family members above all else.”
Jordan held his gaze unflinchingly, even though it was taking all his willpower not to look away.
Did Damiano know that he wasn’t Nate? It was impossible to tell. The mention of the value of honesty could be a hint that he knew—or it could be a simple coincidence and Damiano might be referring to something else entirely. The man was an enigma, his eyes unreadable and his motives impossible to discern.
It made Jordan all the more curious about him. Curiosity and a thirst for knowledge had always been both his greatest strengths and his greatest weaknesses.
He barely managed to wait until the meal was over before laying a hand on Ferrara’s arm and saying loudly that he’d like to retire in a way that probably made it obvious that he was taking Ferrara away to have sex. At least from the way the older generation sneered, barely hiding their disgust, Jordan was successful at conveying that. Paolo leered and gave them a knowing look as they left the room. Gustavo was too busy looking at something on his phone to pay attention. Jordan couldn’t resist glancing back at Damiano, unsure what kind of reaction to expect. But Damiano’s face was impassive, his eyes giving nothing away as he watched them go.
“Why is everyone scared of him?” Jordan said the moment he and his boss were alone in Ferrara’s room.
Ferrara gave him a rather pinched look. “I’m not scared of him,” he said. “But it would be stupid not to be wary of him. I know what he’s capable of.”
“What is he capable of?” Jordan said.
Ferrara sighed, loosening his tie. “Damiano is… He’s always been different from the rest of us, even when we were kids.”
“Isn’t he your brother?” Jordan said.
“Stepbrother, and even that is a stretch,” Ferrara said. “He’s the son of my father’s first wife.”
“Really? Aren’t you close in age?”
“We are.”
Jordan barely swallowed a sigh of exasperation. Seriously, it was like pulling teeth. “Your father mustn’t have been married to her long, then, if she had him before her marriage to your father.”
Ferrara’s expression became grim. “She got pregnant with Damiano while she was married to my father,” he said, his tone stiff. “She was kidnapped by a Turkish mob that had a bone to pick with my father. She was raped for days. By the time she was recovered, she was already pregnant. Apparently, my father wasn’t sure if the child was his or the rapist’s, but the DNA test after the child’s birth confirmed that it wasn’t his. It destroyed their marriage. She took her life, leaving the baby in my father’s care—her relatives didn’t want to raise the product of their daughter’s rape.” His lips twisted. “Frankly, I think it also bothered them that he’s mixed race. He was given their last name, against their wishes. They wanted nothing to do with their grandchild, didn’t even want to see it. They were the worst sort of rich snobs, truth be told.”
Jordan felt sick to his stomach. Poor kid. The child of a rapist, unwanted and abandoned by his own mother and her relatives, left in the care of the man who must have hated his very existence…
“Were?” Jordan said.
“They were shot when Damiano was sixteen. The killer was never caught.”
Jordan stared at him. Surely…
“I honestly don’t know,” Ferrara said, shrugging. “People assume he killed them, but there’s no proof. He did inherit everything they had, as their only biological grandson. Anyway, my father remarried very fast after his first wife’s suicide and I was born just a year after Damiano.”
“So you grew up together?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Jordan said, watching dispassionately as Ferrara changed into more comfortable clothes.
“I was the heir to the clan. He was an orphan no one wanted around and who wasn’t blood related to us.” Ferrara sighed. “Gustavo, Andrea, Paolo and me… You know how cruel kids can be, especially privileged kids. We never really treated him like one of us. My father didn’t treat him badly, but he wasn’t exactly an affectionate man, either. Damiano grew up as an outsider, despite being surrounded by a large family.” Ferrara rubbed his forehead, shaking his head. “As an adult, looking back, I can see where it went wrong. He was unloved and underappreciated. Lonely. He grew up with an immense thirst to prove himself, to show us that he was as good, that he was better than us.” He smiled humorlessly. “He did prove it and then some.”
Jordan frowned, trying to reconcile the lonely, unappreciated boy Ferrara was describing with the cold-eyed, unnerving man he had met, and couldn’t. “What happened?”
“We all grew up,” Ferrara said. “My cousins and I were privileged rich kids, so we were more complacent, assured of our place in the food chain because of who our fathers were. Damiano had no such assurance. He was single-minded in his determination to earn his place at the top, not to be a simple henchman. His ambition has always been like no one else’s, and it drove him to be perfect at everything.”