Page 5 of Luciano

I wanted her.

I understood the inconvenience of my own selfishness to her, but it wasn’t enough to make me change my mind. I wasn’t interested in fairness. I didn’t believe in it anymore. The day my mother was murdered, something in me died. A switch flipped.When her screams stopped, everything became clear—crystal, sharp, and cold.

There was no mercy. No justice. Only power and who held it. Only violence and those who wielded it. Only possession and those who took. Fairness was an illusion. A lie for people who still believed the world owed them something.

Everything I knew now boiled down to two rules. Kill before you’re killed. Take what you want.

I took a step forward, closing the distance between us. Leaves crunched beneath my feet. She turned at the sound, her eyes lifting to meet mine. She caught her plush lip between her teeth.

She was beautiful—not in the way the world defined it, but in a way that made something inside me twist and claw and want. She was natural, earthy. Warm beneath the broken shell. She was warmth. And I was so cold.

I reached for her.

“Come,” was all I could manage after all that practice—one word, heavy with everything I couldn’t say.

Chapter 4

Ava

The soil slipped through my fingers, gritty and damp, as I stared up at the three-story mini-mansion that held my past. This was the house where I grew up. Where I had been safe. Where Daddy was still alive.

Ron Porter had moved weight from Miami to New Orleans, built an empire from blood and powder, and had a crew that answered only to him. He was ruthless and deadly. He never hesitated to lie, cheat, or put a man down.

To the rest of the world, he was a drug lord, a killer, a thief.

But to me?

He was just Daddy.

Big and broad like an oak, his skin dark as night, with a voice so deep it could shake a man to his core when he raised it. But he never raised it at me. To most, he was thunder. To me, he was warmth and strength. I was his baby girl. He taught me how to throw a punch before I knew how to tie my shoes. He put a gun in my right hand and a doll in my left. He showed me how to break down a kilo like it was as natural as teaching me my ABCs.

I loved my daddy. But I never put him on a pedestal.

He wasn’t just dangerous to his enemies—he was toxic to the person closest to him. From him, I learned that love came with collateral damage. He cheated on Momma like it was a habithe couldn’t break, and when she found out, she didn’t cry or beg. She fought back—sometimes with her fists, sometimes with whatever she could grab. A bottle. A lamp. A kitchen knife. She cheated back or cheated first.

And then, like clockwork, the cycle would reset.

He’d smooth things over the only way he knew how—money, gifts, and sweet words she wanted to believe. A diamond bracelet. A weekend in Paris. A new car, just because.

And she’d forgive him. Pretend none of it ever happened.

Until it happened. Again.

Their love was messy. Dangerous. Addictive.

People said Daddy would meet a bad end. That he had ruined too many lives to walk away untouched. They were right. One of his rivals buried him alive near Alligator Alley, then sent Momma a map with directions to his body.

Momma unraveled after that. She turned paranoid, withdrawn, obsessed with keeping me close. A year later, when I was fourteen, she remarried out of nowhere.

Vito Genovese.

Daddy had run Florida, but men like Vito ran the world.

He was nothing like my father. Short, pale, squat, and old. And Momma? A thirty-four-year-old brick house dipped in Godiva chocolate.

It made no sense.

By the time I thought to ask her why she had married him, it was too late. She was dead.

---