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“Lucca.” Her voice was laced with sweet poison, luring the one thing I’d established.
I had vowed respect and protection to the woman whose Vitelli 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.
Greed for yourself.
Greed caused hatred, and greed was the ink of a rotting heart.
Mario Vitelli was splattered black by it, therefore decaying his own line. His legacy.
I would break that cycle, creating a legacy he would never be able to lay his eyes on.
I offered Katia a stir of a smile, knowing I would end it with us. The future Moretti line wouldn’t suffer at the hands of such wasted air and space of earth. There would be a time when our children would only be descendants of Mafia royalty, and their only lessons would be the cruelty of our underworld and nothing more.
We would be alive to guide and teach the ways of our life.
Because this life of ours was nothing more than a game of chess.
Calculating. Ruthless.
Some pieces fell and some were taken out. But, in the end, it was all a corrupted game. A game where the king and the peasants were ruled by one queen.
Dinner stretchedinto long and uncomfortable minutes, bursting taste buds that filled our mouths with rich foods, and surface conversations that no one carried further. Minutes passed by of Leo’s gaze fixed on his one failure—Davina.
She hadn’t cast one look. Not one care. I hid my smile, watching as the little raven-haired girl crumbled with time but remained aloof on the exterior.
But I could see it, and so could Ilias. His right hand hadn’t appeared above the table at all. Surely, a heated weight he had placed on her thigh. While Davina wouldn’t so much dare a gaze before her, Ilias had.
Leo and Ilias were playing a secret war, surprising not only me but Katia too as Leonardo sat peacefully in his chair.
Katia’s attention bounced from one head to the other, calm and yet careful to the rising tension as we chewed through our loss of appetite and silence because if we continued to take small bites, the less we had to speak.
I had nothing to say, and instead of playing with my food anymore, I sipped the glass Talia had refilled. I swirled my tongue into the bitter flavor of my favorite aged bourbon.
The last course had been served, and all plates were smeared with uneaten cherry-chocolate cake. I cut my cake once with my spoon, but it never entered my mouth.
I had never been a fan of sweets.
Until her.
The lone cherry tempted my gaze, and I plucked it from the swirling syrup it lay on. I popped it into my mouth, and with the leftover liquor taste, a faint taste of Katia lingered in my mouth. But I was missing something.
Her skin.
Her mouth.
Her lips.
So it couldn’t compare to the suffocating pleasure she brought along with that addictive taste.
Katia’s eyes fled to mine after she found the cherry she wanted to steal from my plate missing. Her eyes narrowed to my mouth as I played with the seed with my tongue.
