The silence was deafening. I could detect every single sound on either side of the phone. My father’s no was still steady and mine was as well. I’d played this moment several times in my head and each time, I pictured myself fumbling my words and losing my shit in the critical moment but it didn’t happen today. My words were clear and I was eloquent. I glanced at the wall clock chiming above my head, no one had said a word for the past five minutes. I tried to envisage what would be going through my father’s head but I couldn’t. He was similar to Alessandro in this regard—they were both complicated men whose minds you couldn’t read. “I can only hope that this is a joke, Gianna.” My father said in an icy tone. I recognized that time. He was beyond pissed but I was past caring about other people’s feelings now. This was my era of being selfish and I was going to use every tool in my arsenal to make it work in my favor. “You know me better than most people, father. There’s nothing re
Salvatore’s POVThere is that sensation you feel when your life is in danger, it feels like a knife lodged in your gut with each passing second time squeezed in deeper elongating the pain till you feel suffocated. People think that hope keeps you going, that faith spurs you on to do the impossible, and that your belief is capable of getting you out of any situation, but that's a lie. It doesn't. It makes the pain from the sharp edge of the blade even worse. Because, with each chiming on the clock, you're reminded of what you've lost and what you stand to lose. I put my hand underneath my shirt as I clutched on the familiar feel of the cold metal of the crucifix. This was all I had left of my father. Rubbing the cross between my thumb and index finger, I let myself slip into the past as I remembered the good memories I spent with my family. Christmas was always the best, Tiffany would snuggle up to me on the couch while I held our children on my lap as we watched old movies. I let
The chirping coming from the crickets got cut off abruptly before starting again. It was midnight. Time was running out. A few days ago, I’d told my father that he had two options — make me his heir unfailingly and I’ll help him sort out his mess or he can decide not to and lose everything he’s worked for in the past thirty years. This was the opportunity I had been looking for and it’d been delivered perfectly.In a game of confidence, the moment just before you play your cards is the most nerve-racking. It is the point of no return. Once you make that right move, you settle down, your mind and body relaxing automatically.I crushed the butt of my cigar on the concrete as I stood and stretched my back and neck. I wasn’t a regular smoker but I liked to indulge now and then, it was a habit I picked up from watching Peaky Blinders and it’s stuck. I could hear the siren going off in the distance, I wondered what crime had been committed this time. It was becoming a daily occurrence, peo
Alessandro had advised me to drop any investigation I was planning on opening against Syrius but I couldn’t. I had to know what he’d promised my father and what my father had promised in return. Alessandro was trying to downplay the impact of this merger but I knew that he was worried as much as I was. This was easily one of the biggest and most shocking news that the mafia world had gotten in a long time and everyone who knew about it was trying to keep it under wraps before it blew up and turned into a full-blown war. “You don’t ever listen to me, do you?” Alessandro asked as he took a look at the computer screen in front of me. “You know I do, Alessandro.” I sighed, rubbing my temple. “But this is different and I know that you’re well aware of it.”“Whatever you might think it is, you don’t go around poking a bee’s net while it hasn’t stung you yet,” Alessandro said. I knew what he was trying to do. He wanted to drop the case entirely because he wanted to handle it himself but
I shook my head. I couldn’t let him proceed with his plans. He had a lot to lose and I did as well, more than everyone involved and war was the last thing I wanted as it stands. Only the strong would be left standing while the weak ones like myself would be crushed like the insignificant grains of sand that we were. I had to do everything in my power to ensure that I’d exhausted all other options available to me before giving up and letting Alessandro wage war on my father and Syrius. “I’m sorry, Alessandro. But I can’t let you do this, not before you give me a chance to fix things.” “I think you need to give yourself some sense of perspective right now, Gianna. I’ve tried listening to you, I’ve also been open-minded as well but if you think I’ll do nothing while I’m being disrespected by your father and Syrius, you must be out of your fucking mind.” His words cut right through me but I ignored it. I would react the same way if I were in his shoes. No one would ever want to be dis
Natasha’s life fell apart when her parents died unexpectedly. Her father had been a big-shot construction contractor scaling up the ranks in the mafia pretty quickly in the market. Life was very good and she was getting ready to finish high school and fulfill her dream of becoming an English major but tragedy struck her father’s business, bringing his entire career to the ground. He was implicated with financial fraud and there were several documents to prove that he was guilty of the charges levied against him. The media was having a field day camping day and night outside their house, hoping to speak to the hotshot contractor turned fraudster. Her father had wanted to send his family away till everything died down but her mother vehemently refused to leave the house and Natasha wouldn’t put her life on hold because of some scandal she was sure would pass as soon as my father proved his innocence. My father tried to get involved but it yielded no result. Nothing was going to separa
Even though I’d agreed to this, I still wasn’t comfortable about the whole situation but I couldn’t back down now. I’d already said I would and going back on my words would make me look filthy in Alessandro’s eyes. “You’re what? Nearly seven feet tall and you’ve got over 150 pounds on me. What do you mean by bullying you into silence?” “That’s not the bone of contention, Gianna. You’re diverting and trying to gaslight me again.”“What do you mean by again?” I scowled, my eyes fixed on the road ahead. Syrius was simply the most annoying person I had ever met. He knew how to get to me without even breaking a sweat and I hated it. Things had to change and they had to change fast. “Surely you know what the word means, right?” Syrius asked. “I mean, it’s a simple word that even a child understands.”“I wasn’t asking you for the meaning, Syrius!” I practically yelled. “But, you—““Are you always this annoying?” I asked. “You’re baiting me and you’re having fun while at it as well.”“Do
“I saved your life, Gianna. The least you can do is be grateful that I was in the right spot at the right time. Do you know what would’ve happened if I wasn’t there?”Whatever he did, he was only trying to justify his actions and make it seem like I’d be indebted to him afterward. The truth was that he was a narcissistic piece of shit who would do anything to benefit him before anyone else. “I need to see Maya, Syrius. You’ll take me to wherever she is and you’ll let her go after I confirm you’ve done no great harm to her.” I said.Syrius stared at me with an unreadable expression plastered on his face. Whatever was going on made me scared but I was struggling to maintain my composure. “If you want to see Maya, I’ll bring her to you.” Syrius eventually said as he snapped his fingers twice and a man appeared. He mumbled something, out of my hearing and the man bowed before walking away briskly. “What was that all about?” I asked, wanting to stay abreast of the situation at hand.“H
Alessandro's POVIt's been a week since Gianna left and we've searched virtually everywhere she's ever been to and reached out to nearly everyone she's connected to here in the United States but we haven't managed to find her just yet. My best guess was that she had left the country or worse. Yoda had pleaded with me to refrain from any negative thoughts but I knew better than to leave any angle exposed anymore. I had to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario and that was it.The board meetings that my half-brother had incited ended with me putting a gun inside his mouth and threatening to kill him and every member of his family if he ever dared to use this situation to make his move for my crown ever again. He'd been the number one name on my suspect list but after a thorough investigation, he was found clean and I moved on to the next target–Lydia. She'd somehow gotten news that I was about to hold her hostage and she managed to leave the house amidst the commotion. It wasn'
Alessandro's POV"What the hell did you just say to me?" I yelled, pushing myself off the chair as it clattered to the ground noisily. "I–I, She's, I–" The guard stammered, making me more irate as I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall."I'll give you one more chance to talk and if you don't, I'll kill you," I said in a menacing tone before releasing my hold on his neck and watching him crumple to the floor, coughing."Where's Gianna, my wife?" I asked again."She's missing." It felt as if my whole world had come crashing down on me. I was so close, so close to actualizing my dream so why did this have to happen at this point? "We've searched the grounds and we've managed to track the car she escaped into the airport but there's no CCTV footage of her ever getting into the airport and her name isn't on any flight list. We've run multiple checks into possible aliases she might used, but we've come up with nothing. Her phone was found inside the car and her mess
My eyes flung open as I let out a huge sigh of relief as I tried to normalize my haggard breathing. It had been all a dream, a very bad dream that I had just woken up from. I peered around the room, trying to figure out where I was and at the same time I was struggling to see with all the bright lights making their way into my eyes. Segments of the dreams flashed before my eyes, accelerating my heartbeat for a few seconds before I calmed down. It was only a dream, none of it was real. I wasn’t going to die. I tried to get rid of the bad dream that I had just woken up from and I was trying to figure out where I was. I was lying on a bed in a white room, the environment seemed oddly calm and peaceful enough. I lifted my hands towards my eyes to see that I had a cannula with a drip stuck in my left hand. I was beginning to piece everything together from my state, the room, and other equipment that was coming into my line of sight. I couldn’t do this anymore. Waking up every morning a
Alessandro has been trying to talk to me ever since I walked in on the moment he was having with his secretary. He’s called me dramatic and deemed my actions as a result of my pregnancy hormones but I knew I wasn’t driven by emotions rather, but by the truth. I knew what I saw when I walked into his office and I knew Alessandro as well—to some extent and that included knowing he hated being touched inappropriately and that meant the secretary wouldn’t have flung herself at him if it hadn’t happened before. It was pretty obvious that they had a relationship. I didn’t know what nature and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him but it was far from formal. Something had happened between them before or during our marriage. “You’ve refused to speak to me ever since you got back from Alessandro’s office, Gianna. I’m worried and I don’t like the look on your face.” Lydia had incessantly bugged me about telling her what happened but I didn’t know how to express the shame I felt. I feel so stup
It was almost as if that particularly good week didn't exist because everything went downhill after that. I had believed that my marriage was going to experience a turnaround and everything would be back to the way it once was before I got pregnant but it was all in my head. I exactly pinpoint what went wrong because there were so many things happening at the same time and I didn't have any control over any part of it. It all started when I had a brief talk with Lydia–telling her that my marriage was back on track my insecurities seemed to have vanished away and I was planning on doing something for Alessandro that would serve as a form of apology for even thinking that he would cheat on me with his secretaries. "I never pegged you as a lover girl, Gianna." Lydia laughed as she sipped wine from the glass cup in her head. "Well, I've always been one. Besides, I don't think I've done a lot of things for Alessandro for a while now. He's always turning down my offers, claiming he ha
A week had passed since my late-night discussion with Luciana and I hadn’t stopped thinking about her last words before she left. Gianna isn’t Mara, she never will be.If I wanted her to stay, I had to give her a good reason that wouldn’t make her want to leave if the chance ever arose. I had to make her feel loved and make her see that I was in love with her as well, hoping that someday she would fall in love with me and become mine when we were certain that this was what we both wanted. Lydia had been feeding me some bits of information and I didn’t know what to make of it. She was a close friend and she’d always been around for the past two decades so I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t want to lie to me but hearing what she was saying about Gianna was a lot for me to take in.I felt bad after brushing off her offer of having dinner earlier so I had to make it up to her by coming home earlier than I’ve done for the past few weeks but I was reluctant to talk to her yet.“I’ve been
Alessandro’s POVI was starting to catch feelings for Gianna despite our initial agreement and I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t want it to happen but it seemed I could do nothing about it despite how hard I tried to keep a leash on my feelings, it kept on gnawing at me, forcing me to see her in a different light. It’s been nearly a year since I stumbled upon her in the club and within that period, she had grown into her own woman. Maturing beyond her years and becoming a favorite in the pack. Her pregnancy was starting to show even more and it added to her beauty if that was even possible or maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me, trying to force me to acknowledge how I truly felt. She rarely spoke about her former home anymore but I knew she hadn’t forgotten. The baby was the only thing on her mind right now and when she’d given birth, she’d focus on taking control of the mafia.Oftentimes when we’ve spent the evenings taking a stroll through the woods, I’ve come
Lydia’s POVIt had taken me several months to come up with this plan and I wasn’t going to fail. Not now, not ever. Everything I’ve ever worked for depended on the success of this plan and I was willing to risk everything and anything to ensure that it succeeded. Not everything I told Gianna had been a lie. The truth was that we were a lot more similar than I would’ve loved to admit but that was the truth. I had a father who wanted to hand over everything we built to my brother who was unfit for the role despite my protests, he wasn’t going to change his mind and I didn’t have it in me to stay calm and watch everything be taken away from me. What neither Alessandro nor Gianna knew was that I’d left home for the past three years and I’d been bouncing around countries, trying to build a name for myself before going back to Russia to claim my birthright. During my visits to the United States with my family when I was a teenager, I fell in love with Alessandro, who was a decade older
Having Lydia around wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and for the first few weeks, she had carried herself accordingly. A small part of me had believed she was here to take Alessandro from me and despite the conversations we’ve had in the past, I wasn’t quite convinced until I saw it for myself. We’d grown closer as the days went by, she often joined Delight, Andra, and me in the gardens now and then as we shared a bottle of wine and traded jokes about our love lives.My relationship with Alessandro was deteriorating rapidly as we had both preferred to act delusional about the incoming split rather than discuss it like civilized adults. He would often give me the excuse that he had a lot to do at the office and between that and combining controlling Syrius’ investments, he never had any time for me. Every morning before I woke, he’d be gone and his side of the bed would be cold.I couldn’t talk to Yoda about this and I couldn’t tell the girls either, so I kept it within myself,