Chapter 82

Red lights rolled across the paved entrance, and my father was gone as quickly as he'd arrived.

"My father never intended to stay overnight. My apologies for hissudden departure." Aldo's careful tone expressed. "Meanwhile, we-" His hand waved from Dante then back to him. "Don't want to decline the offer out of respect for the agreement we made. That's if your home is still open."

What was happening?

My eyes shot to Massimo who watched Aldo too closely. He saw the same thing I did. There was a wedge between the Zanetti men. Broken ties and clashing views.

"Alessandra?" Massimo asked.

Massimo was asking me to decide. His face was blank, and I couldn't read his expression.

"Could I have a minute alone with them?"

His eyes hardened as his jaw twitched. He glanced at my brothers for a moment, then turned his attention behind them to his scattered men who walked through the premises.

Massimo didn't want to leave me alone with my brothers, but I wasn't afraid or worried about Aldo or Dante. They'd never caused me physical pain. Because in an odd way that I hardly comprehended, they cared for me in their own twisted way.

"Please," I added.

Massimo took a deep breath and tilted his head.

"I'll be in the dining room." His fingers woefully slipped away from me, and he cast a glance over at the men he was leaving me behind to. "Aldo, Dante."

They both nodded, and Massimo stepped away from me and into the home.

I closed the distance between my brothers and me, allowing the door to shut. A loud click echoed behind us, and I faced Dante first.

"What's the matter with you?" My mask was long gone as I regarded him without a filter.

"Good to see you too."

"Cut the bullshit," I sneered.

Dante took a deep breath and smirked.

There he was.

"Done. What exactly do you want to know?"

"Dante," Aldo warned.

"You didn't interfere, snap, or say anything to make matters worse. Why?"

"Did you want me to?" Dante skidded my question.

"Why?" I asked again.

Dante shrugged. "Tomorrow is a day to celebrate."

My wedding?

I laughed. Dante gave two shits for it, even though it was meant to bring peace between both families and resolve his fuck up. It was a bad joke, but his features didn't change. They were calm and casual.

"You are serious," I murmured.

His head rose, and under the pendant light, the long scar that traveled through his brow was clear for me to see.

"Like the dead."

And I believed him.

My head jerked to Aldo, who shared Dante's seriousness.

"Fine, all I ask is for you both to keep this dinner and your stay civil."

"That's the plan," Aldo chimed, but Dante's lips swayed to the corner.

"Dante?" I asked.

"Mia sorella."My sister. "I wouldn't do anything to ruin tomorrow. Of that you can trust."

What I didn't trust was his smile.

MASSIMO

The door shut behind me as my muscles twitched in rage. I shook my shoulders, finding my brothers near and itching for news, but all I could think of was the woman I'd left behind with the wolves.

"Is-" Elio began, but I raised my hand to cut him off.

I picked up the glass I'd left by the entry table and pointed at Nate, then to the corner of the door.

The silent order was given. Stay behind and be alert for her.

It had taken a lot to walk deeper into the home instead of staying where I'd placed Nate. But Alessandra needed me to respect her wishes in front of them. I trusted her judgment and her need for time alone with the two men she shared blood with.

The smell of basil and freshly baked bread thickened the further I walked. With each footfall, I struggled to quiet the stress and anger Franco had built inside.

He showed up on my doorstep to lay out our differences. But they were never blurred, not for a minute.

The truth was, I would kill her father.

I knew this the day I turned sixteen after Leonardo spoke to me like a man. While I didn't blow out a candle, I'd promised to see it through.

Franco and my father started a war after a bad deal was made and promises were broken. A few years later, my father turned up missing, and so did my mother and me. But we weren't dead, no. We ran as my mother feared my fate would be the same as my father's.

She'd never explained to me who I was and why she'd always looked over her shoulder. She never explained why her suitcase hid a gun and spare bullets. Or why she needed to teach me how to shoot a gun and fight, when the other boys my age played outside ball or punched their fingers into rectangular video game systems.

I never questioned her. I listened and learned.

A Catholic doting son.

It was never proven who had killed my father. However, when my mother was found with the same wounds as he had, the accidental car wreck couldn't be overlooked, and the message was clear.

For years, I worked my way up in the syndicate with Leonardo by my side.

For years, I waited, planning and slowly working to become the head boss Miami needed.

Because when you were at the top, the one who made the orders, and the one who people feared, nothing was out of reach. Not even the head of another syndicate within the Mafia.

Any rule could be broken.

It only took patience and smart thinking to avoid leaving a trail.

Alessandra delayed my plans. It worked even better as this union could dismiss our bad blood to others and create an alliance for those left alive in that syndicate instead of searching for vengeance.

While at times, I had a consuming hatred for my own reeling mind, it kept me one step ahead and focused on my endgame.

Today was no different. That was after his suggestive admission of my father's death. Then when I'd seen his hand rise, ready to strike Alessandra, I lost all reasoning with the need to shoot him on the spot.

My God, I was so close.

So close to losing everything, and she had been the one who had created such a turbulent will in me.

It was Aldo's response to hold his father back, as well as Dante's quiet attitude, that brought me back.

Something wasn't right, and I knew I had to see tomorrow through.

As I sat at the head of the formal set table, I sipped and watched the brown liquor swirl inside the cup. I paid my brothers no attention and focused on the melting ice and the sweating drops that ran through the wedges of the clear-cut glass, trying to comprehend what had been happening in New York and had occurred outside of my doors. Hell, what continued to brew on the front stone steps.

"Do you think Franco will show up tomorrow?" Elio asked.

I cleared my throat. "He can't afford not to."

Franco had to. He wouldn't disrespect me so boldly. He didn't possess the balls it would take to show his true colors to the Mafia.

"Any word on Leonardo?" I asked, needing assurance to relieve some of the dragging anxiety that clutched my chest.

"He's awake and eating."

Good.

Leonardo had to be there tomorrow. Not by duty, but for me.

"Should we be staying?"

I heard Davina's voice quiver and drew my eyes away from my glass and aimed them at her.

"Are you afraid?" My question was detached.

Davina sat between Elio and Vadim on my right, and as she glanced at both sides, she shook her head.

"No," she replied, meeting my gaze.

"Would you like to leave?"

"I stay where Vadim stays." Her answer was expected.

"Vadim?" I asked next.

His icy blues didn't like where I was heading, but it was necessary. He wanted Davina, and while she'd grown and hardened since I first met the skittish girl, she was still too inexperienced to this life. She still struggled to hide her emotions and fears. She didn't understand our way of life, which was why we rarely married someone toonormal.

Davina was strong, but her own doubts enabled her to accept the underworld.

"Where else would I be?" indifferent, Vadim replied.

My eyes dropped to Davina.

"When you agreed to him, you agreed to this family. Don't question where you should be, child."

Her eyes narrowed at the word I'd called her the first night I met her. The night I threatened her with another target on her head.

My point wasn't to belittle her, it was to awaken her, and I had. Because now her brown eyes darkened to the point of becoming pure black.

Anger, memories.

That was what I sought to bring out of her. Now, Davina was ready to face Alessandra's family.

To face Dante, the man who'd drained her blood and left her to die on the snow.

The swinging sound of the heavy front door followed by an echoing shut alerted Alessandra's return. I drowned the contents of the fiery liquid of my cup and waited for her sage green eyes to emerge into the room.

I saw Nate first. He stepped out of the way, and Alessandra entered the quiet room. She looked fucking gorgeous. Confidence was high on her shoulders and eyes that searched mine to show it. Strength, power, malice. They all revolved around her like storm clouds of might.

We weren't as different as she believed.

We weren't as different as I believed.

Both stained by death and childhood nightmares of punishment.

Both scared and welted into adults of pain.

Meanwhile, I tried to shield the screams and absurd cruelty of the underworld from her. It was the one moral thing I could do. It was the proper way to protect and keep at arm's length the woman I would spend my life with.

Through all this time, I was a fool.

A blind man.

Too stubborn to see, she was just like me.

A mold of clay that kept spinning on a potter's wheel while time carved the solitude, smoothing the scars and joining the damages until casting a fickle heart.

All created by the blood-drenched hands of those in our lives.

Too driven by tenacious cruelty.

Two descendants of Mafia royalty whose pasts kept colliding until our present caught up in rolling hatred of those who came before us but bleeding into each other.

I stood and stepped to the chair on my left and pulled out, open and offering where she belonged. Our gazes wouldn't break apart, and my mind whispered the words she'd once uttered into deaf ears.

"I can't leave. I can't cry myself to sleep, and I can't care for what I see or hear." Followed by, "This is my world."

This washer world.

And I was a stubborn man for ignoring it.

Questions popped inside her gleaming gems, but I was learning those answers, petrified of what they meant and where they led. Therefore, I had no reply in my eyes as our distance vanished by the clicking sound of her heels.

"Massimo." Her voice was laced with sweet poison, luring the one thing I'd established.

I had vowed respect and protection to the woman whose Zanetti blood coursed through her veins and branded her with a part of the killer who'd destroyed mine.

I had agreed to an arranged marriage without knowing we were both the outcome of one man.

Some said hate was the beginning stage of a rotting heart. How could they forget greed?

Greed for power.

Greed for money.