Page 1 of Secret Bratva Twins

Chapter 1 - Gianna

“I can’t kill him,” I whispered through tears, hoping, wishing, praying that my father would look at me just this once and feel something. Not love. No. He wasn’t capable of that, but maybe pity.

My father was Tony Deluca, leader of the Chicago outfits in New York. I’d run away from him six years ago, but he found me.

His dark eyes met mine, and emptiness was the only thing looking back at me. His gaze was so cold that a shiver ran down my spine. This was the man I knew, the man I grew up with. He was the man my mother loved until her last breath—a heartless monster.

Despite that, I believed he loved my mother in what little way he could. He never showed it much except when he gifted her flowers and new designer bags, but he did care for her.

I remembered him sprawled on the monochrome carpet in the living room the night she died, holding her limp, bloody body in his arms and screaming in pain.

I had hated him most of my life, but that night, seeing him so vulnerable had broken something in me—and I knew that something inside him was gone forever, too. I knew whatever was left of his soul was destroyed, dead and buried along with my mother.

When he spun his head to me, his eyes filled with hatred, he said, “You killed her. It’s your fault she died.”

It was my fault she died.

I wasn’t going to deny it because he was right. If I’d never met Maxim and hadn’t fallen in love with him, Mama would still be alive.

Maxim and I met in a club one night. My father had sent me out with his men to seduce and kill one of his rivals, and then I met Maxim, so handsome and mysterious that I lost control for the first time and genuinely flirted with him.

He didn’t react to my seduction. He was the first man who looked at me with respect. He’d made me feel like I was more than my body and killing abilities.

One of my father’s men had noticed what I was up to and came to hit me. They all had my father’s permission to hit me when I misbehaved. Maxim saved me, threatening to kill anyone who touched me and took me away from the club. I fell in love with him that very moment. I thought he was something good, someone to save me from the hell I’d been living in.

But he wasn’t. He was my biggest nightmare. A fucking traitor.

After the night he killed my mother, I wanted to die. To slash a razor across my wrist and soothe the pang of guilt and pain wrenching through me, but I couldn’t. How could I be that selfish when two lives were growing inside me? Two lives that were made with love, or so I’d thought.

Thinking back, everything that’d happened since was of his making. The man I loved. The father of my children. And the man I despised with everything in me.

Still, I couldn’t kill him. I wouldn’t be able to face my children someday, knowing I killed their father.

My father laughed, his dark eyes crinkling with hatred as he tilted my face to his. “He killed your mama, you fool. He abandoned you. Do you still love him that much?”

Love. I hated that word. Hated the feeling of it.

“I don’t love him, papa,” I said firmly, glaring up at my father and ignoring the ache throbbing in my chest. “But I can’t kill him.”

Another hoarse laugh reverberated in the living room. My father’s icy fingers gripped tighter on my chin. “You ran away from me, Gianna. Did you think I’d never find you?” he growled angrily.

“You know why I left. I needed to protect my children from you,” I retorted, anger brewing in my gut. “I couldn’t let them become pawns for you to play with whenever you wanted.”

My father was the head of the Chicago Outfit in New York. He was cruel, ruthless, and heartless.

After my mother died, he’d wanted to ship me off to a syndicate boss in Mexico as his whore. In return, my father would get a new business partner for his illegal arms business. I found out I was pregnant the same night, and refusing to let my children suffer the same fate, I fled to Chicago, hoping to give birth and raise them in peace.

I managed to pull it off for five years. I rented a small apartment with my savings and got a job in a coffee shop shortly after. I lived a low profile even after I gave birth.

Everything had been great until he found me this afternoon.

My father raised his hand, and before I could as much as flinch, pain shot up my jaw, and copper filled my mouth.

Tears welled in my eyes. I’d gotten used to being beaten by him, so why was I in so much pain? Maybe because I’d lived without him abusing me at his leisure for five years.

“I am your father, you will watch your mouth when you talk to me,” he snarled.

“You’re not my father. You’re a monster.” I spat at him. “Where are my children?”

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