Thirty-fiveNiccolo Capaldi Kevlar vests were a god send, I decided, the moment that Audrina hit me with a bullet. I had a “friend” in the police station that had managed to get me some. I crumpled from the pain of the bullet Daniela’s sister shot at me. But mostly for dramatic effect more than anything. Once Daniela was inside, I waited a few moments and got up. “Fuck, that hurt.” Even though I wouldn’t bleed, it was mostly the force of impact that got me. Now, I just had to figure out how to get inside the house without being noticed. Old houses like these typically had basements. Usually with a back entrance to them. If there was shady shit going on inside, that was where I would find my brother. As long as he wasn’t unconscious. I made my way to the back of the house. I saw two guards standing in the back on the patio. Both of them were smoking. I had taken a couple of the syringes that I used to knock out Daniela with. I walked up to where the
Thirty-sixDaniela Berni I had a headache when I woke up. I recognized the feeling. My vision was blurred in and out of focus. I saw someone sitting in the corner. I blinked a few times and Niccolo came into my view. Without thinking, I got up from bed and lunged into his arms, hugging him tightly. “Easy, easy!” he laughed a little. A sound I wasn’t sure I had ever really heard. “You were just held hostage by your power-hungry sister. Take it slow.” “How’d you get me out? I don’t even remember what happened. I tried escaping, and I knocked Gabriel Ramono out but then someone caught me. I thought for sure that I was dead. That we all were.”Niccolo smiled. “He was a friend. He actually helped us escape.”“Luca’s okay then?” I asked.He nodded.“Good. What about Audrina?”Niccolo’s face fell. “Audrina’s made her choices. As have I.”I scrunched my face together. “What’s that mean?”“I handed everything over to Luca.”I stared at him. “Really? Are you okay with that? You were supposed
OneAudrina Bianchi “You screwed up.” There was a gun pointed at my head. If I hadn’t had it happen to me so many times, I would have been scared. The thing about having a family that’s part of the organization, the Cosa nostra, the mob is that I was used to this sort of treatment. When I was sixteen and came home late from my first party, my mom did the same exact thing. Except she wasn’t really my mother. Marie Bianchi was my guardian. My real mom, Luciana Barretta, decided to give me up because she didn’t want me. Her half-sister, my aunt, took me in instead. She claimed she did it because she couldn’t have children. But I know the truth. She did it so that she would have leverage with the Barretta family. The same way that she’d been used. I didn’t believe for one second that she had ever wanted children. When I was a kid, I had a lady at a mall give me her card. She told me I was pretty enough to be a model. Marie was there with me. “Oh good,” she said after the woman left,
TwoLuca Capaldi It was strange, stepping into my father’s office. Giuseppe Capaldi had been an intimidating figure that ran half of Boston. In polite society, people said my family was in “real estate”. In the criminal world, people knew what that was code for. Cosa nostra. The mob. Giuseppe had been our family’s consigliere. The don. The motherfucking Godfather. People kissed his rings, and did his bidding. But Giuseppe was dead. He’d been shot by the last person I ever expected to shoot him. My wife. I’d been married to Audrina Bianchi since we were teenagers. No one else knew except for us. And Audrina had gone out of her way to make sure that was the case. It had happened in Vegas, a last ditch attempt to keep her from being forced into a marriage with Russian Bratva. As long as Andre Antonov thought she was mine, Audrina was safe. But no one else in our world knew the truth. And I’d gone to great lengths to keep it that way. Because I was pretty sure if Daniela Berni, m
Three Audrina Bianchi Capaldi Industries was a huge, towering building in the Boston financial district. I only knew where it was because I googled it. The headquarters for PREPPY, my designer label, was in New York, not Boston. Boston was where I went to escape the drama that was my mothers family. It was why I’d chosen to go to high school there because the Barretta’s didn’t have a strong hold in the city. There, I could breathe a little. As I made my way through the building, being led to Luca’s office by the pretty, auburn haired assistant I was already breathing easier. The girl slipped into Luca’s office, and I could hear the confusion in her voice as she introduced me as “Mrs.Capaldi.” It was strange having that said outloud. The only time that I’d ever heard it had been Luca, right after we’d had sex on our “honeymoon”. I had to learn to embrace the role though. If this was going to work, I needed Luca Capaldi to be my little play thing. I heard Luca’s deep voice tell h
FourLuca Capaldi I should have killed her. She killed my father, it would have been fitting. An eye for an eye. But I had already killed Marie. Granted, the woman was only her guardian and not her mother. The thing was, Audrina didn’t care about anything or anyone except for money and power. I had told her that she could come to me at any time. Be my wife for real whenever she wanted. Audrina had never taken me up on that offer. I found it strange that she was coming to me now. Maybe what she said was true, and we really did have a daughter. I couldn’t be sure. I just knew that I had a chance to make her mine so I was going to take it. The first time I saw Audrina Bianchi, I was fifteen years-old. Giuseppe had some fashion botiques that he was interested in investing. So, he had taken us to New York for Fashion Week. It had been me, him, and Daniela, who at the time had just been the daughter of our maid. And the girl that my brother was obsessed with. Although that the two of
FiveAudrina Bianchi The first time I saw Luca, it had been during fashion week. I had been working for a designer who did modern takes on fairytale dresses for prom. I’d gotten Belle from Beauty and the Beast for my dress. I remembered walking down the runway, and I felt eyes following me. That wasn’t so unusual for a fashion show. What was unusual was the pull I had that made me look back into the pair of stunning brown eyes with blond hair that was looking at me like he wanted to eat me. I flashed him a smile, blew him a kiss, and sashayed backstage. The rest of the day was a blur of runways and interviews. I didn’t even remember eating. What I did remember was the after party. “Audrina! You were awesome. You know that picture of you blowing that kiss has gone viral.” This came from my friend, Kira Barinova, a pretty, blond girl with killer blue eyes. I smiled at her as we slipped into the night club where the after party was being held. “I know.My phone hasn’t stopped vibrat
Six Luca Capaldi I had one of my men take Audrina’s car home. I didn’t want her to get any ideas about running off. In the past, she had done that. Something always came up whenever we had tried to be together. Nothing was going to interfere this time. I wasn’t a teenage boy anymore. I was a man now, with power. I could protect her now in ways that I hadn’t been able to before. I’d seen Niccolo and the lengths he had gone to so that he could protect Daniela. I would do the same for Audrina now that she had come back to my life. She said she was going to be mine. That meant I was going to have her where I wanted, when I wanted. I thought about fucking her in the car on the ride home. Just to really let her know where her place was. Then, I decided, I had a better idea. Audrinna Bianchi had ruined my life in more ways then one. I was going to ruin hers. Before I left the office, I sent a message to my head of publicity at Capaldi Industries. I told her to draw up a press release stat