Page 94 of Bittersweet Endings
“You see this woman?” I said. “She isn’t just a fucking prize I stole from my enemies.” I glanced in her direction, my jaw tightening. “She ismine.”
The chatter started again.
“And that means she is family now. Youwillrespect her. And our unborn child?” My voice dropped, sharp and deadly. “You will protect them like you protect me. Because if anyone so much as looks at them wrong, I’ll cut their fucking heart out and make you watch them bleed.”
Not a word or reply.Good.
I glanced over at Octavia, and that damn smile of hers was still there. Her eyes were gleaming with something dark and wicked. Like she already knew what was coming.
I grabbed her hand and held up the bloodstained ring I’d stolen from the corpse, and without hesitation, I dropped to one knee. A sharp inhale rippled through the room. But I didn’t look at them. I only looked at her.
“Octavia,” I spoke her name reverently. “You’re mine. Forever. You’ll be at my side as I burn down our enemies. As I kill anyone who dares to fuck with our family. You’re the perfect queen for a monster like me.”
A normal proposal would be sweet. A normal story had romance and quiet touches and candlelit dinners.Fuck normal.Nothing about us had ever been normal. Even if she told me no, I’d still marry her. Against her will, if I had to.
I watched her. I couldn’t tell if she was planning to run orscream. But deep inside, I knew she would do neither. The days of running were over. And if she wanted to scream at me, she wouldn’t do it in front of my men.
She sighed, reached out a hand, and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t hear a question in there, Carmine.” She slipped the ring on her finger, the blood coating her skin.
“I love you, Octavia,” I admitted loudly.
“You better.” She pulled me in for a rough kiss. “Just remember, you belong to me too. Or next time, the scalpel won’t miss.”
Fuck. This woman knew how to get my dick hard.
Epilogue
OCTAVIA RAGETTI
If you thought our love story was easy, you were fucking wrong. There was no softness in how we started. No sweet romance, no slow-burn tension that built into something tender. Ours was twisted from the beginning, tangled up in violence, obsession, and blood.
So much blood.
And that blood didn’t end when Carmine put a knife through his father’s throat. It didn’t stop staining our world when he took his rightful place as Capo of the Californiafamiglia. It followed us. It lingered in the air we breathed; it clung to our skin.
Power shifts to introduce a new Capo were never clean, never easy. There was always someone lurking in the dark, waiting for their moment to take you out. And for a while, it seemed like everyone was fine with Carmine’s coup. Hell, some of them celebrated it. They lifted their glasses and swore their allegiance like good little soldiers.
But loyalty was fickle. It frayed at the edges and unraveled when power was challenged by the masses. Some of the menwho’d once backed Carmine started whispering their discontent. Not about him, per se. About me. About my family. About the alliance with New York.
New York and California had been enemies for so long; the blood between them permanently darkened the streets red. And that was something not a lot of people would forget.
Some thought Carmine had made the right call by aligning with my father, with Lucky. Others? They saw it as a betrayal. And betrayal bred war.
Things started to calm when my father officially handed the reins over to Lucky, cementing a new order. Butcalmdidn’t mean we had peace. It just meant we had control over the chaos.
And through it all, Carmine was good to me. Almost too good. So good that sometimes, I thought I’d wake up back in that freezing room where it all started. Chained to the floor, my body bruised and trembling. My mind lost to itself, not knowing what to feel or how to process the situation.
But I wasn’t locked away anymore. I wasn’t fighting against him. Now, I stood beside him. Just as ruthless. Just as unhinged. And the world had no fucking idea what was coming next.
I’d taken a page out of my mother’s book and immersed myself in California’s culture. Politics. Money. Donations. All of it.
Carmine was now stepping away from his father’s twisted shadow, and we were garnering respect from civilians. The order had been restored.
“Enzo!” I screamed across the beach. “I said no!”
My darling son was seven going on twenty-five. He was so lucky he was cute and could charm me like his father. Because he was a damn nightmare. He didn’t listen to anyone, got in trouble all the time, and had this wild streak we couldn’t control.
We named him Enzo since Lorenzo was the one who’d deliveredhim.Don’t ask.The short of it, Lorenzo was protecting me, Carmine wasn’t answering, and I was pretty stubborn. I would’ve died if it weren’t for my brother-in-law. And thankfully, all those gross pregnancy facts he’d learned came to good use.
