AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Strong. and smart.” She paused. “A bit wild at times. He was a good Don. We were very proud of him, and he ran our syndicate in the proper way.”
“What’s the proper way?” I tucked my feet up tighter and looked at her.
“With an iron fist.” She looked straight into my eyes. “You need to take a hard line. Family first. Don’t waste time trying to save souls. No soul is more important than your own.”
“Seems pretty lonely.”
“Gain, pain, sacrifice, triumph, those are the words the Coppola family live by. We don’t need anyone else to make us happy. We can do that on our own. But what we did need was a son.”
“And you got me instead.” I felt unwanted all over again, especially when she didn’t say anything. “Did anyone even love me?”
“Love is not what’s important. You have to understand. It’s not that we didn’t love you, but we needed a son, and Theo needed to try again. But your mother sabotaged any chance of that happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“Elenora insisted on bringing her brother to live with us while she was pregnant. Some nonsense about needing her own family, as if we weren’t enough. He stirred up all kinds of trouble and often got between my son and your mother, where he had no place to be. Then he wanted someone who was Theo’s. She was pregnant, too, for Pete’s sake. Then, apparently, your mother got herself mixed up with the Capris’ consigliere.” She scoffed in disgust. “As if her brother wasn’t trouble enough. He had entirely too much control over your mother. What a lot of hoopla it all was. He needed to leave before he twisted her head any more than he already had.”
“Leave?” My skin broke out in goosebumps, and the hair on my neck told me to get up and walk away, but I didn’t. I listened to the story that unfolded in front of me like a train wreck. “Did you…” I couldn’t find the words. “Was it…” Again, I fumbled.
“We are Coppolas.” She turned her head and met my gaze straight on. “When someone stands in our way, we deal with it. Your mother was stressed enough with just weeks left before your birth. So, we dealt with it.” She gave a light shrug like it was nothing.
Whoa…breathe…So she knew my mother was interested in Francesco. That must have been why they blamed my uncle’s death on the Capris, so she’d stay away from them. I couldn’t get over the level of evil these people would lower themselves to.
“What’s best to take away from this story, Alessia, is that I know everything that goes on in this house. Just like I knew everything that went on in your mother’s. Her parents tried to fix the books, thinking they could put something over on us. They were lucky we didn’t take them all out. Crooks, the lot of them. Elenora should’ve felt blessed to be here. It was only her slim frame and eye color that drew Theo to her. We weren’t the only ones who saw her family for who they were. There were others coming for them. We were kinder than they’d have been.”
Kinder…killing my uncle was kind? Stripping my mama of everything and taking her away from all that she knew was kind? It took everything in my body not to react to her words. Francesco didn’t lie; it was the Coppolas who killed my uncle.
“Do you have the stomach, my dear, to take over such a powerful syndicate and deal with situations as they come?”
It took a lot, but I pushed what I had just heard aside and answered. “I do.”
“All right.” She motioned for one of the soldiers to step forward. “To rule, you must be able to take without so much as a thought.” She pulled out a handgun and set it next to me. “Babies are born every day, but true leaders are rare to find, and—”
Bang!
I pulled the trigger, and the soldier jerked backward as he grabbed his chest in shock then fell to the ground. I flipped the gun around with my fingers and handed it back to her as the man still twitched in the fetal position.
“I have the stomach for it, Nonna, and my moral compass was compromised years ago.” For the first time, Nonna Rosa smiled her approval right up to her eyes. I leaned back in my chair and pressed my fingers together so as not to reveal my nerves. The thought that occurred to me in that moment was how odd it was that killing had become something I could separate in my head quite easily. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet. Not wanting to pull at that thread, I shook it off. “Have the Capris been spotted yet?”
“Yes. Stefano confirmed it.”
“Excellent.” I nodded approvingly and avoided the heap of a body in front of me. “I hope we can start to add trust to my list.”
“Mm.” I could tell she was trying to figure me out.Good luck with that.
“I’ll send someone to clean that up.” She stood and walked from the table. I waited a beat then hurried inside to my room.
As I sat on the bed against a couple of scrunched up pillows, I allowed myself to slip into the memory of how Elio discovered my plan to come here. My head still spun with the choices I’d made.
“What the hell are you doing here, Elio?”I shouted as he stood fuming in the hallway of my hotel room. “I don’t have time for this. You need to leave now!” He looked like he was about to kill someone with his bare hands.
“Me? What the hell are you doing, Sienna?”
“I’ve got this, Elio.” I tried to push by him, but he swung me around by the arm and pushed me into the wall. “Let me go.”
“Sienna. You’re going to hear me out whether you want to or not!”
“No, Elio.”
