CHAPTER FIVE

ADELINA

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“Gianna has a guy?” I ask. Although I’d been trying to read my steamy romance—not advisable when hiding out in your bedroom is a sexy tattooed gangster you watched stroke himself just days ago—but his conversation kept pulling my attention.

Whether I like it or not, I am a part of this world and Dante’s sister is a friend of mine. We aren’t close, but we all grew up together.

If the man she’s with is a spy, I can only imagine she’s hurting right now. And she’s just lost her father because of this traitor.

Poor girl.

I’ve always seen her as a loyalist to the families, so this will destroy her. Despite our differences, I can’t help but feel for her.

Dante might see me as coldhearted. Hell, even my father might, but I’m not. I’m strong and determined, and I’m compassionate and extremely loving.

Even loyal.

That’s what’s taken me so long to act, I’m sure of it.

My mother died ten years ago, and I felt beholden to my father. My grandmother was grieving deeply, along with my aunts and uncles.

I was eighteen. I was aware I didn’t fit in and feel the same as the rest of my family. Leaving never felt like an option. Not after Mama had just passed.

Two years later, my father remarried. Lola is everything my mother wasn’t. Young, beautiful, and submissive. If anyone else was shocked by this sudden marriage, they never said anything.

“Meet your new mother.” Carlos told me one day.

My mouth fell open. Just being told the woman who gave me life was being replaced was repulsive.

Lola didn’t look that much older than me.

A few weeks later, I overheard my father talking to his brother—his right-hand man and also my uncle, Georgio.

“I need more sons. If something happens to Leo...it’s a risk,” Carlos had said.

“Adelina is smart,” Uncle Georgio had replied.

“She’s soft. Has no passion. No brains for business.”

Fury had plowed through me. Not that I wanted to work in the family business, but that wasn’t the point. Maybe if he’d sent me to college, I might have. I was homeschooled by a tutor all my life and when I said I wanted to go to college, my father had refused.

“I’ll use Mama’s money.” I argued, but my father had just laughed.

“Her money? What money?”

Opening my mouth to reply, I realized he was right. She’d told me I would inherit half of her wealth if something happened to her, but no one had given me any information since her passing.

Eight years ago now.

“She told me...”

“Then she lied to you, Adelina. Now go. I have work to do.” Carlos had said, dismissing me as he always had.

I couldn’t let it go. It was one of the most important conversations of my life. Surely, he didn’t think I would just accept his answer.

I was his daughter, after all.

His determination was in my blood.

“Papa, I want more education. I want to get a business degree.” I argued.

He dropped his pen and shot me a dark look—one I’d seen him use with his soldiers. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He did that already by dismissing me.

“No. I gave you my answer. You will marry and you will do your part for the family. You’ve had enough education. Put your efforts into learning to cook with your grandmother and your aunts.”

I’d felt sick.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not the fifties.” I’d shaken my head, but Papa rose and slammed his fist down hard on the desk.

The surrounding soldiers reacted, their guns clicking and feet shuffling. My father ordered them to get out of the room.

By then, fear and adrenaline had filled every pore in my body, and I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

Uncle Georgio stepped into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Your niece thinks she’s going to college to become a businesswoman.” Carlos hissed. “What the hell was your mother telling you all these years? It’s bad enough she only gave me one son.”

“Carlos,” Georgio warned him.

My uncle is the only man able to speak up to my father, and he rarely does. I’m sure it was the tears in my eyes, the ones I was fighting to hold back, that made him speak up for me.

I was always taught to show no weakness. My mother said it was the only way to survive this world. Then again, she never showed strength, either.

Sometimes I think she died just to escape this world.

“Fine. You want me to be the perfect little wife? To cook and entertain, then I’ll do that.” I lied, storming across the room.

Before I was able to open the door, he stopped me.

“Adelina,” he growled.

I didn’t turn. I didn’t want him to see my anger, my fear, my hatred.

“Do not disrespect this family or our name. Go, do whatever you need to express your anger today, but do it privately.”

Bastard.

I’d been twenty-one. Old enough to drink, so I went straight to The Bonjourno Bar and drank my body weight in vodka.

Gianna and Dante had been there that night with Nick, Jono, and a few of the other soldiers.

“You need to slow down,” Dante had told me, as I danced around a pole on the dance floor.

“Do I?” I laughed, bumping my hip against him. “Or do I need to do all the naughty things I’ve wanted to do?”

“Don’t say naughty.” He groaned in a voice so deep I could just hear it over the music.

“Naughty,” I mouthed at him and spun away, laughing.

Dante caught my hand, but Gianna danced over, and I was dragged away. I smirked over my shoulder, and he stood there still among a sea of dancing bodies, watching me darkly.

Three days later, I searched for a business school online and signed up. There was every chance my father’s accountant would tell him about it, after all, the credit card bills all went to him.

What was he going to do?

Toss me to the fishes like he did to all the people that crossed him.

It was a risk I was willing to take.

But as it turned out, it never happened.

A year later, I’d completed the online training and had a certificate in business. No, it wasn’t Yale or Harvard, but it was the knowledge I wanted, not some fancy college to brag about.

During my training, I’d thought about what kind of business I wanted to run. After hundreds of hours of research, I started one.

I discovered I had creative skills as well as a business brain. Through my love of reading, I followed authors online and began to design book covers for them. I shared my designs on social media and people loved them.

Readers and authors.

More authors reached out and suddenly I found myself running a company. Illicit Ink . I started a bank account with an independent money transfer company and the rest is history.

It’s perfect.

I make money from my computer without leaving the house. Heck, without leaving my bedroom. Even better, no one in the family is aware of what I’m doing.

I am creating financial independence and soon freedom. Well, I will when this damn gangster gets out of my house.

You see, several weeks ago, I realized I had enough money to make my move. Searching online, I found a rental in California and put a deposit on it. I was both exhilarated and terrified at the same time.

It’s not furnished, so between designing covers for my clients I’ve been buying beds, sofas, and kitchenware. It’s all going to arrive the same day as I do.

In fifteen more days.

So I need Dante to move his stupidly sexy ass out of my house so I can get organized and finish my...plan to escape.

If my father finds him here, there is a risk he could send me to one of the families he’s planning to marry me off to.

I know he’s close.

I’m twenty-six, and he’s mentioned it many times.

But I’m curious about Gianna.

Dante turns in response to my question and stares at me like I’m his next meal. I hate that I wish I was, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting him touch me again. Everything I’ve worked for would be thrown out the window.

I know him.

If I let him fuck me, he’d claim me like the dominant gangster predator he is.

I also hate every second that he’s on my computer. What if he finds Illicit Ink ? I closed down all my browsers and my business files are all encrypted, but for all I know, Dante knows his way around a computer.

Like he does a weapon.

And a woman’s body.

God, the way his tongue weaved its way through my flesh as I flickered into consciousness. I knew it was him. I allowed myself to remain in a sleepy state, not wanting the pleasure to end.

Until I had to.

I trail my eyes along the roped muscles of his arms down to the ring on his hand that signifies his position as a senior member of one of the five families in New York.

Now the don.

His t-shirt is tight around his biceps and sits on his hips. I know it shows the round curve of his ass—I’ve been staring at it all night.

But if I’m honest, it’s not the dark curls and scruff on Dante’s face that has held me spellbound—as I know many other women have been affected—it’s his icy-blue gaze that gets under my skin. It’s cold, mysterious, and deadly. Yet when it lands on me, I feel like I’m falling into a black hole where I’ll never be able to breathe.

Dante consumes me.

I’m running from my father, this life, and him.

“Braxton Rossi,” Dante replies, rubbing his jaw. “She’s missing, but I suspect she’s with him.”

“Missing? What do you mean?”

“He’s the reason we were busted. Salvatore had him checked out while Gianna went gaga over him.”

Wow.

That’s not like her. Men are normally tripping over themselves to be with Gianna. For obvious reasons—she’s absolutely stunning.

I know I’m a pretty woman. My long dark Italian hair isn’t so different from hers, but where I repel men who show interest, she...well, she uses them as much as they use her right back.

But to go gaga over one? That’s new.

“How did she meet him?” I ask, now even more curious. Dante lowers his brows and stares at me without answering, and I shake my head. “What?”

“Fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair as he begins pacing at the end of my bed.

“I mean, if it’s some confidential story, that’s fine, you don’t need to t—”

“No.” He turns, rubbing the back of his head, looking stressed as hell. “No, it’s...fuck. Mia Mancini.”

Mia?

“What about Mia?”

Mia Mancini—now Barrett—recently married the billionaire Connor Barrett and left the crime world. Okay, so that’s a very simplistic way of putting it. If the rumors are correct, she was kidnapped by her brother after becoming engaged to Connor. He found her and demanded her father let him marry her.

At the wedding, one of her father’s men turned on the don and it turned into an absolute blood bath.

Her entire family was slaughtered.

All except Mia, who was in hospital for months recovering from being shot.

She’s lucky to be alive.

Trust me, I followed the entire thing closely because I was so envious that she was getting out. Not the part where she was kidnapped or the horrendous actions of the men at her wedding, obviously.

But living in wait, knowing my father could pawn me off to some stinking gangster, while I was still building up the funds to leave, I had to wonder if Mia wasn’t secretly relieved.

Although she loved her father, I know that.

Like me, she’d lost her mother early in life, and while we weren’t close—our fathers have always been less friendly than the other dons—I’ve always felt that I understood her.

I’ve wondered if she fell in love with Connor and then decided to rebel against her family. Or did life throw them together and offer her an escape?

I have questions.

Which will probably never get answered, as I’ll be gone in fifteen days. No one will find me. I have a contact in California who sells fake identifications and then I’ll start a new life.

“Gianna said she met him at a girl’s night or something.”

They’re having girl’s nights and not inviting me?

Rude.

“Not much of a girl’s night if the guys were there.” I shrug and go back to my book, feeling miffed.

“Missing the point, Addy.” He growls and I glance back. “Gia said he was a friend of Mia and Connor’s, and our background check cleared him.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him then.”

“It was him. I watched him deceive us. Right fucking there in the middle of the warehouse as he looked me in the eye.” He growls darkly.

His gaze locks with mine as I swallow, imagining how terrible it would have been to see your father killed right in front of you. What they do is bad, but love is love.

“Then why didn’t you kill him?” I frown because this is what gangsters do.

Dante doesn’t blink.

He doesn’t even swallow.

Neither do I, as I wait for his reply.

“Because Gianna loves him,” Dante finally says.

He tears his eyes away from me and walks back to the computer while I stare at his back, wondering if I really know who this man is.

Even after almost twenty-six years.