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Ottavia
chapter one
In New York City, night always began with a scream.
A siren wailed in the distance, a sad and mournful sound that signaled the end of the day. Humans, if they were smart, were locking themselves indoors as the sun slid behind the glittering skyscrapers of the city skyline. After sundown, the Abhartach reigned supreme.
The Abhartach were blood-sucking monsters. Vampiric beasts that were equally hated and adored by humans. According to the news, there was a tentative peace between mortals and vampires. But in the streets, peace didn’t exist. It was kill or be killed; eat, or be eaten.
Out there, I knew there were whole groups of people that worshiped the Abhartach like gods. I knew that they willingly gave themselves over to the bloodsuckers as blood bags, and part of me was grateful for them, even if the thought turned my stomach. Because the more willing donors there were meant less vampires prowling the streets in my father’s territory.
I paused in getting dressed in my workout gear and walked to my balcony doors, placing a hand against the chilly glass as I peered outside. I wanted to watch the day fade into night, but that was a luxury no longer afforded to me. Rain sluiced down the panes in gray sheets, further obscuring my view more than the iron bars across the doors already did.
The bars were a new addition. My brow furrowed in annoyance.
My father, Mattia La Rosa, was the current Don of the La Rosa Mafia in the northern half of New York City. Under his thumb, humans and vampires alike were held to the strictest of rules as growing unrest broiled even higher between the living and undead. He enacted the nightly curfew to keep humans safe from ghouls—half-demonic creatures that never fully transitioned into vampires.
Becoming a vampire was a lengthy and difficult process that took multiple nights of swapping blood, not just a simple bite like the movies made you believe. When a human didn’t complete the transition, they risked becoming a ghoul. As the strongest—and supposedly the oldest—Abhartach in the US, Eoin Ó Ceallaigh oversaw keeping the ghouls’ numbers under control.
Just thinking about the monster put a sneer on my face.
Hewas the reason behind the gilded cage my father carefully crafted for me. Anger burned in my belly and I clenched my hands into tight fists.
My great-grandfather had been wholly dedicated toward crafting a peace treaty with the Irish vampire when he first took charge of the La Rosa Mafia back in 1940. He had wanted to unite the north and south sides, wanted to have them stand as a united front against outside threats. But instead, when they met at their agreed-upon spot in the neutral lands of the Wastes, Eoin had allowed feral ghouls to nearly attack mygreat-grandfather, who barely escaped with his life but learned an important lesson that day: never, ever put your trust in an Abhartach.
Since then, my family had been at war with the vampires and the Irish mobster, Eoin Ó Ceallaigh.
Ottavia
chapter Two
Left jab.
Right jab.
Left jab
Sweat dripped down my temples, trailing over my face and falling from my chin as my right fist arced through the air and connected with the heavy weight of the punching bag before me. My shoulder blades burned from overuse as I shook my arms out, curling and uncurling my fingers to mitigate the pain. Blood stained the leather of the bag, and I knew that when I took the wraps off my hands tonight, I’d see fresh cracks in the scars and scabs scattered across the pale skin of my knuckles.
I licked my lips, tasing the salt of my sweat. I grasped the swinging bag, halting its movements, and leaned my sticky forehead against it, panting. Inhaling deeply, I held my breath until the count of three before releasing it slowly, willing my galloping heart to slow to a moderate pace. My biceps were trembling as I hugged the sand-filled bag and I relished the ache. There was something deeply satisfying about pushing your body to and beyond its limits.
Persevering through the physical limits of my body was something I did on a regular basis—I didn’t have a choice; I lived in a man’s world. If I wanted to succeed in my dream of someday becoming the Don of the La Rosa Mafia, I needed to be the best; needed to be able to beat the best, which meant not only being business savvy and smart, but being brutal with my mind and my body. I needed to be able to hold my own in the streets, against humans and monsters alike.
I was built like my late mother—gods rest her soul—with large curves and deep dips that grew larger with activity rather than shrinking. As one of the very few women on the property, my body earned me lascivious looks from numerous men in my father’s keep. Of course, they hid the longing glances from the La Rosa Don, as my father and brother would not take kindly to any of the men eyeing theirpiccolina—their little one—but I was hoping to eventually use their lust against them. All men, no matter if they were human or beast, had one simple weakness: their dicks.
Lust frequently overrode their better judgment, and I knew, better than most, how very little men in positions of power thought of women. We were little more than trophies created to sit on their laps. No one expected me to vie for the position of Don. No one, not even my father, knew of my true goal.
Because of my father's controlling nature, very few of his men were allowed to associate with me, as I was kept under lock and key, like a princess trapped in her tower. He truly thought he was doing what was best for me, but I felt like a panther, stalking from one end of my cage to the next. The east wing of the La Rosa mansion was forfamigliabusiness, while the west was for me. I roamed freely within my wing, under the watchful eagle eye of the cameras.
I grew up with a personal guard and he currently stood at the entrance of the gym, body tense and poised to strike at any moment. I rolled my eyes at his back.
"Luca, take a breather. We are underground. Eoin and his cronies would quite literally have to bomb us before he reached me," I said as I let go of the punching bag and walked toward my gym tote. Bending down, I unzipped it and dug through it until I could nab my water. Condensation beaded the exterior, cool and moist against my palm as I gripped the metal bottle and gulped down the blessedly cold drink. I drank so quickly, some of the water escaped my lips and dribbled down my chin and landed on my heaving chest in chilling droplets.
At my words, Luca had turned and glanced at me, but his cornflower blue eyes never strayed from my face. He also did not comment beyond a raised brow, because he knew as well as I did that if he took me at my word and relaxed and something happened to me, death would be the easy way out for him.
My father, as gracious as he was to me, was not a kind man.
Alessandro, my personal trainer, whom I suspected was Luca’s current lover going by the weird, nervy tension and longing glances between the two, was currently racking weights on the bench press for me. I continued to gulp down water as I watched the two men eye each other in the wall of mirrors, my racing thoughts tripping over themselves as they pinged from one subject to another.
