Page 54 of Bound to the Mafia King

A lot had been said on that plane ride. Her words still hung heavy in the air, and I didn’t know what else to say. There were no words to comfort her, and there was no way for me to change her past.

If I was being completely honest, I wasn’t sorry that I had met her that night. I was sorry for the pain she had to endure, but I was not sorry that she had fallen into my life. That night was what kickstarted our journey.

When the plane landed, I unbuckled my seat and checked my phone again. Alex had told me that he would be in by morning to convene with me on how best he was going to handle his nephew.

I waited for Anastasia to get up and lead her off the aircraft.

It was just after dawn in Mallorca, and the air was crisp and cool. I had just stepped off the jet when I met the one face that I had been dreading on the ride over here, resting on the side of our car.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

“Brother?”

Ana and I spoke in unison.

Danill looked between his sister, then me, then back again.

He then pointed his little stubbly finger my way.

“Him? You started a war for this idiot? What the fuck, Ana?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Anastasia

“Idon’t like you.” My brother uttered the first words he had spoken since we had left the tarmac. He had been glaring at Valerio the entire ride to the villa. You would think that his face would have frozen like that with the scowl he had been giving him.

Had we not been in such a shitty position, I would have taken time to admire the Tuscan villa that we were staying in.

“The feeling is mutual,” Valerio answered him.

We were seated in the living room, my brother sat on the armchair opposite the loveseat that Valerio and I occupied.

A lot had taken place in the last twenty-four hours, and there was a lot to digest. My mind was still reeling from the plane. I had told him about the baby. There had only been two people who had known about the baby, and that had been me and Leonardo. Now, Valerio knew about him, too.

He had taken the news much better than I thought he would.

“You have some nerve being that close to her after the shit you pulled.” My brother glared at the minimal space betweenValerio and I on the loveseat. “You literally blew up her entire life.”

“With good reason. You were going to sell her to that psycho. Going to? No, I need to correct myself. You already had.” Valerio was just as angry at my brother as Danill was angry at him. “I saved her, unlike what you did. Do you know what that monster has done? And you wanted her to lay with him?”

“She would have been catered for,” My brother shot back like that was enough. “She wouldn’t have a mad man chasing after her.”

“He would have killed her after the first heir.” The ice in Valerio’s voice was cold enough to rival the north pole. “You did her an injustice. I'm the one who saved her, and I am the one who is correcting the wrong you have done. If anyone should be angry, it's her, not you.”

My brother flashed his angry eyes my way. “Are you? Are you angry with me? You know I was only trying to protect you!”

“Don’t yell at her,” Valerio interjected. “You gaslit her into taking on this union. You won’t do the same to the way she’s feeling now. You are the one at fault here. Not her.”

“Stay out of this!” My brother stood to his full height and towered over Valerio. He kept about a few feet between them, but the tension only increased. “You just blew everything we worked for!”

“You,” Valerio said calmly. “Everythingyouworked for. She never asked for this. She never wanted this.”

“You don’t know anything. You are nothing but a selfish, good for nothing monster who only cares for himself.”

“I didn’t sell my sister for a lick of power,” Valerio shot back with the intensity of a thousand suns. He stood from his seat and stared down at my brother. “You took money in exchange for your sister, from a man who could give two shits about brotherhood or the Code.”

“The Code? You want to talk about the Code? Does she know? Does she know what you did? The kind of monster you are?” The venom in my brother’s voice was so lethal that even I could taste its bitterness in my mouth. “Tell her how you spilled blood. Tell her how you held a gun and murdered a ten-year-old girl.”

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