Page 1 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
Hey, readers!
Firstly, if you haven’t read Renata Vitali, it’s the prequel novella to Damiano De Luca. You don’t need to read it to read Damiano De Luca, but I recommend it because it’s the story of how these two met.
A part of me wants to skip the author’s note and send y’all on your way to the prologue, because that’s what it was like writing this book for me. It was passing my normal stops and diving into territory I was unfamiliar with.
Truth. Deception. Two sides of one coin. Two opposites intwined so thoroughly, you can’t appreciate one without acknowledging the other.
I’ve written about a ton of heavy themes before, themes that all mean a lot to me—courage, forgiveness, resentment, and duty. But nothing intimidates me more than speaking of truth and deception, because these two cuts deeper.
So, I found myself wondering what lessons I needed to learn, what lessons I wanted to teach others… And here it is:
Thinking you know someone and learning later you couldn’t have been more wrong, that you’ve been deceived, is gut wrenching. It annihilates relationships in ways nothing else can. Friendships, love, companionship—none of these survive without trust. In the face of deception, deception always wins.
You can’t ask people not to deceive you, but you can choose not to stick with them when they do. You can choose not to deceive others, to be pure of heart and intentions. And above all, do not deceive yourself.
With so, so, so much love,
Parker
Foreword
Have you ever tried walking backwards? It’s not bad the first few steps, but after ten minutes or so, it gets old. I know. What am I going on about?
Purgatory.
Specifically, a special place in Purgatory reserved for people who pirate books. I’ve talked about it before—pirated books read backwards in Latin; politicians with their tongues removed, forced to read books aloud. Ya know, that kind of thing.
Today I want to talk about Fred. Fred loved to read. He volunteered at Soup Kitchens, spending his food breaks reading instead of eating. For all intents and purposes, he was a genuinely good guy.
So, how did he end up in Purgatory?
The books he read? Pirated. He devoured them in the hundreds, possibly thousands. And now he’s down in Purgatory, forced to walk backwards as he listens to screamo bands record non-fiction audiobooks.
Fair warning.
Note: This eBook is exclusively sold and distributed on Amazon.
For Chloe.
Always for Chloe.
Who gives a fuck about your first love? Give a big round of applause for your second love, because they taught you love still exists after you thought it never could again.
That One Pinterest Pin
de·cep·tion
d?'sepSH(?)n/
(Noun)
The action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth.
Deception is an act of twisting the truth. Betrayal. Distrust. Suspicion. All bred by deception and blossomed in relationships. Sometimes, when you spend your life deceiving others, the line between fact and fiction is blurred, and you begin to deceive yourself.
That’s the worst type of deception. Self-deception. If you’re trying hard to convince yourself something is true or untrue, take a step back and re-evaluate. Be true to yourself. Above all, be true to your heart. Know what your heart wants and chase it relentlessly.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Leonardo da Vinci
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all.
Nana used to say this. She’d pass it off like it was her quote, as if Oscar Wilde wasn’t a prolific writer any decently read human being would recognize. The words, however, were true. I felt them each time I yearned for something more, though I’d never tell Nana that.
Nana also used to say, you get what you’re brave enough to ask for. Except this particular line was bullshit. You get what you’re an asshole enough to take. I knew that the second I met Renata Vitali, and her amber eyes widened and her lips parted like she was already mine.
Only Ren didn’t know it yet.
And back then, how she felt about me hadn’t mattered.
Not until it was too late.
We could never have loved each other. We were too different. Too haunted. Too jaded. Too volatile. Too combatant.
We fought, and an earthquake rumbled the earth across the world. We touched, and lightning struck the same place twice. We kissed, and a tornado tore through towns nowhere near Tornado Alley. Being together meant destruction, and I may have been a Vitali, but no matter how much I tried, I wasn’t bred for cold-hearted carnage like the rest of my family.
And Damiano De Luca was carnage, the secret De Luca son, wrapped in designer clothes and a faint, too-cool-for-me sneer, whereas I was the mafia princess, out of my league but too stubborn to admit it. Thing was, I’d never done anything to antagonize him. Not immediately, at least.
So, I never understood why he’d hated me from the second I moved into his home, exiled to De Luca territory by my own father. I may have been mafia royalty, but Damiano De Luca was the distant prince. Him, the conqueror; me, the conquered. He ruled the land I walked on, and it was his laws that governed my life.
It took me years to learn what I should have known from the start.
Twisted princes didn’t love.
And when they became kings, they destroyed.
