AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ChapterOne
NICO
Hours before the dinner party…
Obligation sucked. Duty, family, honor, all things I had lived by for years, even before I understood the meaning of the words. So when my father ordered me to marry Vittoria Vitale, I couldn’t refuse him.
He wasn’t just my father.
Salvatore Luciano was the boss.
We gathered in the dining room at my father’s penthouse with the entire Vitale family on one side and mine on the other. Even Paulie was here to witness the worst moment of my life. Well, the worst moment would have been marrying the ugly bitch.
It wouldn’t come to that.
I hoped.
Vittoria sat beside her parents, with her brothers on her father’s right. They called her oldest brother Greasy Joe, which wasn’t because of all the product he wore in his dark hair.
He was a sneaky fuck.
Even his men didn’t trust him.
He’d gotten the nickname in high school before becoming a made man. Carlo, the asshole who’d given Angelo the scar on his right cheek, sat beside his older brother.
People started calling Angelo Little Scarface afterward. And my brother repaid Carlo by making a sex tape with his wife and sending it to him.
His wife kept sneaking glances at Angelo. Even though he’d only fucked her to get back at her husband, she still wanted his dick. She was married to an ugly bastard. All of the Vitales were varying degrees of grotesque.
I never thought we’d be peacefully sitting across the Vitales. Dante put a bullet in the wall right next to Carlo’s head the last time we met like this. He hadn’t forgiven them for what happened to Angelo. Dante was fiercely protective of the twins.
Before the Vitales got here, Dante pulled me aside and said, “You better fuck that bitch up good. Because if you don’t, the three of us will.”
My father stood at the head of the table, then tipped his head at me. He’d already given a toast and smoothed things over with the Vitales.
That was my cue.
I rose from the chair and removed the ring box from my pocket. Then, going through the motions I’d rehearsed, I walked to the other side of the table. My heart thumped, trying to claw its way out of my chest with each step I took toward Vittoria.
My heart wanted Ava.
Every part of me did.
I didn’t want to do this.
Fuck.
I glanced over at my mother. She was in town with her dance group for a show at the Portofino. For a woman in her early fifties, she didn’t look much older than me. But you would never know she had a son who was almost thirty years old.
Mom sat beside my dad in a gold dress that, paired with her blonde hair, made her look like she was glowing. My mother had a certain magnetism about her. A special something my father spotted the first time he saw her on stage.
She flashed a bright smile and tipped her head to encourage me. We’d spoken about the engagement when my dad handed me the ring. No one ever questioned my dad, not even her. If he believed this was the right thing to do, then so did she.
So did my brothers.
Angelo would have chopped Vittoria into pieces and sent her back to her brothers in a box. Dante would have gone a similar route. And Stefan would have tortured her daily to get revenge for his twin.
Dad knew what he was doing.
