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I was a Valentinetti.
We didn’t allow our emotions to take control.
We controlled them.
I refused to be like every other broken-hearted woman. That would never be in the cards for me.
My family raised me to stand on my own two feet.
To be strong.
To never show defeat.
To never cry in front of anyone.
I was the only daughter of Nicoletta and Valentine Valentinetti. The apple of my parents’ eye. The adored baby sister of five brothers. The Princess of the Valentinetti Family.
My family sheltered me my whole life, hiding me away from anyone who could use me as leverage in my father’s business. When my father died, my oldest brother, Giovanni, took over.
Despite that, he still handled me with kid gloves.
Well, I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I hadn’t been since I was nineteen and found love for the first time in my freshman year of college. I should have known then none of it mattered. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, men were all the same. All they wanted was an in with my family.
Over the years, I’ve been used for that very thing.
All my relationships started out the same. The loving platitudes, the sincere concern, the undeniable allegiance to me alone. In the end, I got my heart broken, and they secured a meeting with my brother.
I should have known that rat bastard wasn’t any different.
He was his own man.
His own boss.
He had everything he could ever want, except me.
I kept him at arm’s length until I couldn’t anymore. That was my first mistake, giving into him. My second was allowing him to worm his way into my heart.
No one understood.
They wouldn’t get it.
Hell, I barely understood, but there was just something about him. Something that made him different from all the others. Maybe it was his ability to command a room. Maybe it was because he didn’t want my money. Maybe it was because he was a selfish prick, who knows.
But what was done was done. There was no going back.
God help me though, because when my brothers found out, it would be war.
My big brother Giovanni was preparing to hand over the family business to Salvatore. I kept my opinion on that matter to myself. None of them cared what their baby sister thought. I understood why Gio was doing it. He’d had enough. His wife, Layla, was currently pregnant with their second child, and Gio wanted to watch his children grow up. This business, our family business, wasn’t like most families. While most of the world knew Valentinetti Incorporated as a world class business from entertainment to consumable goods, my family was a bit more than that.
Those who knew the truth, knew the Valentinetti name by one word... Mafia. In our hometown of Chicago, the Valentinetti name was synonymous with respect.
No one went against the family.
No one.
Regardless, the family name didn’t stop certain individuals from trying to take what didn’t belong to them. Over the years, we’d lost so many. Now the family name meant death. And while Giovanni tried his best to distance the family, we got sucked into a war that was not of our making. A war that started long before our grandparents left Sicily. A war that still raged on today.
