Page 4 of Christmas Vows with the Devil

Teddy, my father’s trusty driver, doesn’t take long to come to my pin. He spares me a worried glance and ushers me into the dark sedan. The tinted windows, bulletproof of course, hide my tears from the world. I weep the entire way home, lamenting my fate.

I couldn’t have known then, that the storm had just begun, barreling right through my life to tear it all apart.

I didn’t know I was about to be a single mother.

I couldn’t imagine that I’d be leaving New York, my family, and the only life I had ever known.

I had no idea there were so many worse things than a broken heart. But I was about to find out.

Chapter Two

Dante

The city sleeps, but I don’t. I never do. Not since…

I push the thought away. I don’t have time for memories today.

Manhattan looks tranquil from my high-rise office.

I watch the glittering skyline slowly being devoured by the early morning light. The buildings are still sparkling like beacons as the fresh flow of sunrise washes over them.

Fat snowflakes drift aimlessly through the air, blanketing the ground below in a soft carpet of pure white.

We’ll have to be careful about spilling blood today.

It might look peaceful from the forty-second floor, but I know better. New York is rotting beneath me, drowning in secrets and blood.

Much of it is my family’s blood.

The Manzos built this city—brick by bloody brick—and I’m the only one left to keep it standing.

My city. My empire.

They call me Il Diavolo. The Devil. Ruthless. Cold. Feared.

It fits, I guess. We built this empire on fear. My father always told me that power isn't given, it's taken.

And he lived that motto ‘til his death.

That was the thing about my father—he never gave me anything. Just lessons—lessons carved into my back and into my mind, until there was nothing left but his way of thinking.

Brutal.

Hard.

Il Diavolo.

I’ve only been soft once in my life. For her, I was soft.

That taught me an important lesson too.

I take a slow sip of whiskey, the burn in my throat fading compared to the bitterness I live with. The father I buried was a cruel man, harder than the streets he ruled with an iron fist.

I was five when he first hit me. Eight when he locked me in a room for three days with no food because I lost a fight with a bigger kid at school. He didn’t care that the kid was bigger—only that I lost.

“Weakness is death,” he’d said as he stood over me, watching me with those calculating eyes. By the time I was twelve, the violence didn’t faze me anymore.

I learned fast. Pain isn’t the worst thing in this world—failure is.

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