Page 62 of Beautiful Vows

“If your dick didn't control your brain, you’d have realized for yourself, in Mexico, how much I look like my mother,” she says, her voice laced with contempt.

Ricardo chokes out a pained sound, his hand clamped over his ruined ear as he stares up at her, realization dawning in his pain-glazed eyes. “You?”

A feral smile curves across Lia’s lips, one that sends a shiver of primal appreciation in my spine. “Yes, me. The woman who refused to be your mistress. Not that I would ever agree to that because you repulse me. Do you want to know the other reason?”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“Oh, you do.” She holds up her left hand, wiggling her fingers, drawing all eyes to the faint tattoo adorning her skin. “I’m already a wife.”

Turning around, she presses a soft kiss on Dante’s cheek; but her gaze doesn’t look away from Ricardo’s shocked face. “You wanted me dead. You planned to kill my husbands.”

“Husbands…” The word hangs in the air as a ripple of confusion crosses Ricardo’s face. “Husbands?” he hisses again, his eyes narrowing in disbelief.

Lia’s smile widens, a gleam in her eye. “That’s how initiations work, isn’t it? I can officially marry one man, of which Dante de Luca is my wedded husband. But every man who takes me through my initiation is my husband, too.”

Her gaze flicks at me, and I nod, a silent confirmation of her claim. The gesture of her saying this while everyone is here seems to solidify that she is ours.

"No! Every head has to take you through an initiation."

Lia shakes her head.

"No. You're incorrect." Dante says. "At the request of my mother, I made it my mission to protect Lia. And in doing so, I knew if I kept with the current ideas, she would die like her mother unless I hid her. But I found out those ideas are incorrect." Dante shakes his head as he continues. "Because there's a doctrine written five centuries ago that Giuseppe Rossi knew about, but he tried to hide."

Lia smiles as she stares at Dante.

"And I've studied the doctrine. I checked it over and over before I knew what I was going to do." My father and Antonio now stare at Dante. "The Moretti female only has to be initiated by one head or one future head. And I went one step further by her being initiated by me and Rafe. Then I protected her forever by marrying her. She's a Moretti married to a future head of a family of the Syndicate, and if I was to die, she is also initiated by Rafe. And once my father hands me his position, or Rafe, she is untouchable."

Antonio drops his head and stares at the floor, and I have a feeling it isn't because he's upset at hearing Lia is initiated. I suspect he knew. He's upset at learning something today that would've changed his life.

"Nobody's untouchable," Ricardo grunts. "My brother and father are dead. Where was their protection?"

“The doctrine repels disloyalty,” Lia says calmly. “And what’s also in the doctrine is an allowance for retribution, but only if the person does it themselves—no assassin, no help.”

She smiles at Ricardo and says, “That's why I could kill your father, and Giuseppe. Both men were instrumental in the death of my mother. Both men spoke to assassins to eliminate me.”

“How do you know that?”

“So tutto,” she says.

“What was that?” Ricardo replies.

She clicks her tongue.

“She knows everything,” I tell Ricardo what Lia said in Italian.

“You must know Italian.” She stares at him, shaking her head. “Your father was Italian. If not, he must have thought that was very disrespectful for his son—a son of a leader to not know his father’s tongue.”

“We live in Australia. Not Italy,” he grumbles, holding his ear as his blood drips on the floor. “You killed my father?”

“Si.” She smiles and says in a perfect Italian accent. “Secondo la Legge del Sindacato. La dottrina non permette a una famiglia di estinguere un’altra senza conseguenze.”

Ricardo growls behind me and only the excruciating ache in my ribs thwarts my laugh, leaving me with a stifled smile.

“Lia confirmed that as per Syndicate Law. The doctrine does not allow for one family to extinguish another without consequence,” Antonio advises. “And she is correct.”

“And I confirmed I killed your father, but I’m sure even you know a simple yes.”

Ricardo hisses, “You won’t get away with this.”

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