Page 60 of Anastasia

Sadly, my happiness for the food didn’t last long because a pissed-off Vincenzo walked down the stairs and straight toward me. His facial expression scared me to the core. I didn’t understand what I had done, so I stayed frozen in my spot.

“You,” Vincenzo called out. “Come here.”

I walked toward him, feeling as if I were walking on shaky ground.

“I’m going to ask you a question. Then, I’m going to need you to think long and hard about the answer. If you try tolieto me, I will have no problem showing you what happens to a liar,” he threatened. “Where the hell is Orabella?”

My body completely froze. I honestly didn’t know all the details about the plan. I had no clue where she was, or how exactly Valentino planned to hurt her father. All I knew was that he was taking a huge risk.

“I swear I don’t know,” I told him, my voice breaking in fear. Raising a brow, he folded his arms across his chest before nodding his head slowly.

“You don’t know, huh?” he quizzed. I looked up at him pleadingly, just hoping he understood that I was telling the truth.

Recognition coaxed his face as he hurriedly walked out of the house. A frown took over my features as I quickly grabbed my phone from in my pocket. When I tried to call Valentino, I couldn’t help but worry when it went straight to voicemail.

“Orabella is missing?” Sarah asked, setting my plate down in front of me.

As worry filled my brain, I ate my food, hoping that everything was okay. If anything were to happen to Orabella, I didn’t know how I would ever forgive him. I promised I would always be by his side no matter what, but Orabella wasn’t just some pawn he could manipulate. She was a human with a heart of gold.

I tried to rack my brain for all the possible situations that Valentino probably put her in. He informed me that he wanted to use her to get to Dmitri.What the hell could that mean?

“I don’t know,” I answered Sarah.

Picking up my phone, I called his number again and again. Each time I called, it went straight to voicemail.

I ran into Valentino’s room, where I began looking for something…anything. There had to be some way to know what he planned for her.

Then, my mind raced over to a folder I had seen a while ago. It was right by his nightstand the last time I had seen it. With my brows pulled together, I wandered over to the nightstand, but the folder was no longer there.

It wasn’t until I opened a drawer that I finally found it. I picked up the folder and sat it down on his bed, where I could see several photos of Dmitri, and then Orabella when she was younger. There were threatening notes from Dmitri, stating he wanted to start a war. Not only that, but Dmitri went into detail about what he had done to Valentino’s family. He mentioned how he began with his mother, and how funny he thought it was when he moved on to Valentino’s stepfather. Dmitri even went as far as mentioning how Valentino was nothing but a boy working too hard to get back something he would never have again.

My shoulders fell as I read over the notes, all of them graphic and painful. It made sense now why Valentino was so adamant about revenge. It was hard not to when the murderer of every person you held dear only served as a reminder of them.

Valentino

When my brother told me about his suspicions of Orabella possibly being pregnant, I almost lost it. There was no way he wanted to take part in the plan we had been constructing our entire lives. Even when I told him that Dmitri was coming in a week with plans to bring down our entire organization to get his daughter, Vincenzo didn’t care.

It didn’t make sense to me how he could be so careless over that girl. I wished I actually wanted to respect my brother’s request for us to drop the mission, but I couldn’t. He didn’t have to go through the nightmares of that day?I did. Luckily for him, he couldn’t remember the way our mother’s eyes stared at me as she begged for someone to help her. He wasn’t able to understand that our whole family looked to me in order to save them, and I didn’t. Vincenzo was so fucking lucky that he didn’t have to go downstairs and clean up all the splatters of blood left in the house. He didn’t have to live through that shit, but I did.

To think that he wanted to save the girl who was raised by the man who did this to me drove me insane. He could get any girl in the world pregnant to carry-on our name, but he chose that stupid whore who deserved every bit of wrath because of her father.

It was the only reason why I called her down to my office, where I explained to her that her whole life was a lie. I wanted to smile at the tears that fell from her eyes when she realized her father wasn’t as innocent as she thought he was.

It was the only reason why I convinced her to come with me to pay him a visit. Hate fluttered around in her eyes at the thought of him, but she agreed. Just like I wanted her to,she agreednow knowing that my plans weren’t just for her to go talk to him. I wanted her to kill him. That was what he deserved. He deserved to have the person he loved most in the world be the same person who struck him with a bullet. She was so entranced with the love she grew with my brother, that my bad intentions evaporated from her eyes.

She got in the car with me, and we drove off to Dmitri’s place. My men had helped me track it down. I could tell she was angry.

“I just want you to know that I am sorry he did that to you. There is no one in the world who deserves what you and Vincenzo had to go through,” Orabella let out. “I’ll talk to him and tell him to back off about trying to get me back because I want to stay. I want to stay with Vincenzo and never speak to my father again. I promise you that.”

I only glared at her in response. It didn’t take long for us to arrive at Dmitri’s safehouse, which remained less guarded than normal.

Orabella let out a loud sigh before looking at me. “I really am sorry, okay? I hope this proves where my loyalty lies.”

“Go talk to him, and if they ask where you came from, say you escaped from Vincenzo. I’ll be waiting right here,” I lied. There was no way I was going to wait. As soon as she went in there, I would be joining her shortly after, to force her to partake in the death of her father.

Orabella glanced at me nervously before getting out of the car and heading straight to the door. I noticed one of the guards had opened the entrance, and he immediately recognized Orabella. Thanks to the bush that helped hide my car, when he looked around for anyone, he found nothing.

Soon, the man let her in.

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