Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
He never held back.
The stories of gore and blood and innocent lives lost were vast.
Everyone in the five families praised us for being fair.
But we purposefully held the truth from them. In war, there was never a good side or a bad side. There was only the best decision in the moment with the least amount of casualties—there was still death—there would always be death.
I didn’t let Louis’s words penetrate my soul. My insecurity flared to life though. It told me that he was right. In what world did I matter? But he was shaking and it wasn’t from the adrenaline of it all. His eyes were clear, his body language so stiff that he looked ready to collapse on himself.
Footsteps sounded behind me. I quickly blocked the door with my body. “Yeah, Dad got a call, he’s going to be in a meeting for the next hour or so.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “Start dinner, we’ll be right up.”
“Sure!” The staff member was new, I hadn’t known I’d been followed.
My first mistake.
And my last in this house.
I quickly grabbed the gun from the table and then I reached for Louis’s hand. He jerked it back. I grabbed it again and pulled him toward the back door, it was hidden. My dad had shown it to me when I was little and said he wanted to know I was safe even down here. The small safe room was just beyond the indoor shooting range and led to a hallway that would bring us outside near the garage.
Wordless, I walked him through each step, and with each passing moment I sucked in sharp breaths so I could remember the scent of the hallway—of the house I would never be returning to.
I would not be welcome.
We would not be welcome even if Louis had possessed every reason in the world—he’d just started a war between the five families and the Vescovi’s.
No chance in hell was it over something small.
No chance in hell did he kill my dad over money or power.
The week went by a in a blur.
It was time to attend another funeral, and as I stepped out of the car, as my heels crunched against the gravel, I took quite a different walk to the graves I used to visit on a weekly basis.
This time I didn’t stop at Grandpa’s.
I stopped at my father’s.
I knelt down and dropped my rose after Uncle Nixon. I watched as Uncle Chase wiped his eyes beneath his sunglasses, I tried to hold in my choked sobs when King and Junior held my mom in place to keep her from collapsing. Sergio and Maksim stood over by Nicolai, and one by one it was like seeing a flurry of old bosses and new, like leaves changing with the seasons.
They’d all come so far.
From taking over the five families at Eagle Elite University—killing in cold blood in order to do so, and raising all of us to be better—to do better, handing over the reins one by one to the second generation, encouraging us to build more families, to laugh just as hard as we cried.
I sniffed as Raven and Ace stood next to Ivan and Bella. The De Lange boss, who wasn’t supposed to have a heart, was now part of the five families in a way nobody could have predicted a decade ago, joined by the syndicate, and off very far away where I could barely see them…
The Vescovi Family.
The family that had spun things into motion.
The family I would never forgive.
The one my husband owed his allegiance to.
“He marked him,” Uncle Nixon whispered the day after my dad died. I stared into my wine glass. “He marked him an Alfero that day because he didn’t want the burden to lay on any one of us, and Louis was willing to be the one to carry it. Not all warriors run headfirst into war screaming, some silently bleed for years and years on the sidelines taking hit after hit so the rest can shine. Louis took that hit for the five families and every fucking time he looks at you he’ll take it again until the breath leaves his body. Your dad wasn’t perfect, none of us are. He made a mistake. It was a mistake, but mistakes we own up to, and he knew his time would be shortened because of it. The truly beautiful thing is a secret was uncovered, a family hopefully restored, a man vindicated, and now we have a man with the only family willing to threaten us. He doesn’t want to be with the enemy. Louis stands watch in their camp—so you can sleep soundly in yours.”
“How do I forgive him?” I whispered.
“You don’t eat a hot cookie unless you want to get burnt.” He nudged me. “It takes time to cool. Give it a few days, then you talk, yes?”