Page 37 of Marcello DeLuca

“You killed them,” I hiss, my voice trembling with fury. “For money. You killed my family for money.”

“Yes,” he replies, his tone devoid of remorse. “And now, you’ll give me what I want.”

I want to scream, to lash out, to tear him apart with my bare hands. But I’m bound, helpless, forced to listen to this monster who has ripped my world apart. My father’s face flashes in my mind, his smile, his strength. Would he think it was worth it? All this death, this suffering, for a fortune?

“I hate you,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I’ll never give you what you want.”

He leans in close, his breath hot against my ear. “You will, Safia. You will become a Grecozi queen. Because you have no choice. You will live here in this warehouse, right here in this chair, where you will be tortured every day until you are ready to submit to my will. Or you will come home with me of your own will and take your place as my bride. Your choice.”

His words sink into me like a blade, cold and sharp. My world narrows to this moment, this man, and his demands. But deep inside, I know I will never submit to him. I will never let him win. I can’t. I’ll fight with everything I have, even if it costs me my life.

My mind races with desperate plans and half-formed ideas. I can’t let him take my father’s legacy. I can’t let him turn me into a pawn in his game. I have to find a way out, a way to make him pay.

Chapter Fourteen

Marcello

The Past Returns

The phone slips from my hand. It clatters onto the hardwood floor, as the guard’s words crush the air from my lungs. Safia. Gone. A bloodbath at the furniture store. My mind races, the world narrowing to a single point of clarity: find her.

I fumble to retrieve my phone, my fingers trembling as I dial my father’s number. It rings once, twice, before his calm, fatherly voice answers.

"Dad." My voice is barely above a whisper, yet it feels like a scream tearing from my chest. "Safia... She's been taken. There's blood everywhere, people dead, but no Safia. No one knows where she is."

There's a pause, a moment too long, before Ramiri speaks. "Marcello, listen to me. Stay calm. I just received the same call you did from our security team. They told me James is in the hospital. He’s stable, but it was close. He took a bullet to the stomach."

“Yes, he’ll make it, but Safia is missing.” My knees buckle at the sound of that admission. “They took her!”

“We’re going to find her,” he says, his voice a rock in the storm raging inside me. It didn’t matter that he was my uncle, in my heart, he would always be my father. "You need to alert your team to the emergency plan. I'll reach out to your brother for reinforcements," he said, bringing me back to the urgent need to instate a plan for Safia’s return.

He’s reaching out to my brother.

Brother…

Hearing him refer to Vito makes me remember the night I found out he was my brother. It had been a call like this one where I alerted my father that Safia’s name had been found on the dark web, along with a bounty. I had called Ramiri and he told me that he would reach out to my brother. And that was when I froze.

Brother? The word hung in the air. “Brother? What do you mean brother?”

He hesitated, just for a fraction of a second.

My suspicion flared, a hot, searing pain in my gut.

“Now is not the time to go into that,” he said, a note of finality in his voice.

“Now is the time, Ramiri!” I snapped, the facade of calm shattering. I had never called him by his first name, but what in the hell was he saying? “I find out my fiancée is being hunted down like an animal, and now you have a slip of the tongue saying that I have a brother? What aren’t you telling me?”

Silence. The kind that stretched and suffocated.

“Vito is your brother,” he finally said, the words landing like a blow.

“Does that mean he is your son?” I asked, my voice cracking, each syllable an assault on my understanding of my own life.

“No.” His voice was flat and devoid of the warmth it usually carried.

“Then...” The pieces clicked into place, a jagged, horrific puzzle. “Are you saying I am Alfonso’s son.” That realization tore through me, unraveling every memory, every belief I’d held about my father. “My entire childhood… my relationship with my father... has been that of a nephew?”

“Your childhood, your relationship as my son, has been a real one. You are his biological son, yes. But you are my son,” he insisted, but his words did nothing to stem the tide of confusion and betrayal crashing over me.

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