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"I know." Her voice is flat, lifeless. It perturbs me. This isn't the woman who questioned me even as she succumbed to me in the club. Where’s the fire? This is someone else—a shadow of Elena Fiori.
"Have you given up?"
"I have nothing to give up. Nothing is mine.” She turns her head to look at me. “It doesn’t seem to bother any of you, does it?”
“What?” I ask the question even though I don’t want the answer. I don’t like the feeling that she can see or sense something in me that makes me weak.
“Sure, you have power. You own me until you kill me or I’m returned to my father.”
“That’s right.”
“No one around you is here because they want to be.”
Her words are like needles in my heart. “They like my money.”
“They work for you. But they’ll work for the next guy if they live.”
“What is your point?” I snap.
“Just as I said. You have no one here because they care for you… you as a person, not you as the Don.”
Her words cut me. She’s saying no one loves me. If I didn’t have power and money, I’d be alone. But I know I’m alone. I’ve been alone since my mother and brother died. I had my sister, but I sent her to Europe.
“Are you saying you’d rather be with Romeo?”
She turns back to her side, her face no longer looking at me. “No. I’d rather be free.”
“Then why aren’t you? I paid you $100,00 dollars. That’s plenty to leave.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Since you didn’t leave, I can only assume you agreed to marry Romeo.” I wonder why. Does she know the truth of the agreement her father made with Tiberius Abate? Does she love her father and agreed to the marriage to protect him?
Elena's body tenses. "I didn't have a choice. No woman in our world has a choice.”
“It’s not so different for me.”
She scoffs, and it makes my blood boil.
“What?” I demand.
She turns her head to look at me, and I see derision in her eyes. “You have choices, Niko. You could walk out of here. You can decide what to eat. What to wear. Whom to marry.”
I know she’s right. My comparison is stupid, and yet, I don’t have a choice, not if my family is to be avenged. I had to kill my cousin for his part in my father’s death. And I have to kill Elena’s father and Don Abate for my mother and brother’s deaths. I have no choice. It is my duty.
“So, why not take the money and run when you could?”
“My father found it.” She turns away again, and I hate it. It feels like being dismissed. No one dismisses me.
“If you had it now, would you run?”
“You’ll kill me.”
“What if I didn’t?”
“If I could escape and live free, I would.”
I know I’m in trouble because her words bother me… hurt me. She’d leave me. She was right. No one is here because they want to be with me, Niko the man. They want what Don Leone can give them.
