Page 17 of The Devil's Fire

“Not the wooden spoon!” Cara and Michael said, and we all burst out laughing. Whoever misbehaved, my mother would whip out the wooden spoon, regardless of who they were. And since we grew up together, Michael received his fair share of whooping as we had the habit of making trouble.

“I’ll talk to her; she never says no to me.” Cara bragged, and I rolled my eyes at her.

“Sucks to be an only child, and not even be the favorite.” I joked and let out a dramatic sigh. “What’s the dinner party about, anyway?” I asked.

“They say it’s for making up about the engagement party, but it’s most likely to do damage control. It’s nothing major, only Lorenzo and Damiano are coming.” Cara explained. I tried not to show a reaction at the mention of Damiano. I knew I shouldn’t, but the temptation to see him one more time clouded any rational thought.

“Again, I’m so sorry about that.” I apologized, but Cara simply waved me off, not bothered about it.

“Bah, you guys are so boring!” Michael complained and threw his head back. “I thought we would do something fun.” He sulked.

“I told you we were just going out to eat and do some shopping. Nobody asked you to come. You just dragged your ass with me.” Cara rolled her eyes at him.

“I was bored, and there wasn’t much to do, anyway. Besides, wouldn’t you rather have me around instead of… what’s his name?” Michael snapped his fingers as he tried to remember. “Oh, Maso!” He exclaimed.

“Maso is a great guy. He just takes his job way too seriously and basically breathes down my neck, but still a great guy.” Cara chuckled. Her father wouldn’t allow her to leave the house without an escort, and Maso was assigned to be with her wherever she went. He was a very serious guy and not a type that would smile. At all.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s just go. My ass is getting numb.” Michael rose from his seat and stretched out his arms. The white t-shirt he was wearing rode up and revealed some of his toned stomach.

I gazed for a little longer than I should have. He was nowhere near the build of Damiano, but his physique was quite nice, actually. My eyes roamed his body till they met his eyes, seeing he was already looking at me with a smirk on his face.

“Like what you see, gorgeous?” He winked. I felt my face flush with embarrassment that he had caught me openly eyeing him. He didn’t seem to mind, though.

“Stop flirting and let’s go.” Cara hurried us, rolling her eyes in a playful manner.

Michael put his arm around my shoulder as we made our way to the boutiques. Feeling his stare, I peeked up at him and he had a playful grin.

“I definitely liked what I saw earlier.” He whispered in my ear.

“Shut up.” I smacked his chest, my cheeks heating, and he just let out a chuckle.

eight

Althaia

Mother wasn’t happy.

In fact, my mother was mad.

She became so enraged that she stumbled over the English words and had to switch to Greek. That was how you knew she was mad when she had to switch languages.

She wasn’t that angry about me not coming back; she was furious that Cara had ‘forgotten’ to mention that she was marrying into la Famiglia Bellavia. It was apparently a big deal because she started yelling and cursing Cara’s father, then she cursed my father for allowing this to happen.

I, on the other hand, knew nothing about la Famiglia Bellavia. So, I did some digging with a Google search. It turned out they were rich and powerful as fuck. Like next level shit.

They owned all sorts of businesses, including hotels, nightclubs, and casinos. Mind you, that was the legal part of their businesses. The other part? Well, they controlled everything from the street-corner drug trade to the highest levels of government. Obviously, there was no concrete evidence to back up the claims made by journalists who were trying to do some digging on them as well.

But I believed it.

Damiano’s powerful presence, how he carried himself and the way he radiated deadly, made me believe all of it. It was incredibly fascinating. I also wondered if he owned the hotel I was currently staying in. Would make sense given how he suddenly had access to my room.

Or he simply broke in.

Who was going to stop him? Absolutely no one when he had this much power in his hands.

I haven’t told Cara or Michael about Damiano showing up. Why? I wasn’t too sure myself.

Since I had time to kill before the dinner party tonight, I did some more digging on la Famiglia Bellavia. I read articles on how law enforcement had tried to detain Damiano, but since they had no evidence against him, he was untouchable. Of course he was if he had the highest levels of government in his pocket.

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