Page 120 of Powerful Deception

No way in fucking hell am I letting this sad, pathetic excuse for a man, for a mafia man at that, to take my last breath away.

Hell, I’m willing to die at the hands of Arianna before I let this fucking rat take my last breath from me.

He can try, like he has many times before but like all those times he won't succeed.

I should have trusted my instinct from the very beginning. I shouldn't have let it get this far, but yet here I am. Tied to a fucking chair, beaten up, and waiting to see if it’s going to be Arianna or Roberto to pull the fucking trigger.

Closing my eyes, I remember everything as if it were still happening.

I can clearly see Arianna looking at me with tears in her eyes and with my name on her lips. She was going to tell me the truth. What truth that was, I don’t know because that’s when the car headlights came crashing in.

Then I remember clearly hearing her piercing scream and wishing that it was me taking the blunt of the hit and not her. Then it’s the car rolling and glass going everywhere that comes to mind next.

Somehow the car that hit us was able to hit us hard enough to cause the SUV to roll, but not hard enough to kill anyone in the car.

The three of us were still breathing, still aware. Arianna was looking at me with worried eyes and for a straight minute not a single word was said. It was as if this eerie silence passed by and encased us. No sound, not even from the city around us, was heard. It was complete silence.

Until I hear the footsteps.

At first I thought it was a passer-by coming to tell us that they had called the cops but when I heard the gun go off, I knew I was wrong.

I can clearly hear Arianna scream after that as if she were still screaming next to me and as much as I tried to go to her, I couldn’t.

Everything after that comes back a bit of a blur, but not enough of a blur to know it was Gallo and his men that pulled us out of that car and brought us here.

To some warehouse.

One that Gallo doesn’t own so he must be leasing it from someone under a fake name.

I should have caught this. I should have had more men keeping track of Gallo, his man and his dealing, because my gut told me that he was up to something. Yet even with all the men and surveillance I have on him, I missed this.

I never miss anything.

You were blinded by beauty.

That’s what pisses me off more. The fact that my men showed me pictures of Arianna at Gallo’s laundromat and instead of destroying her like I had planned, I ended up fucking her.

And then loving her.

I should have been more vigilant, I should have pressed more, but I believed her. I believed her and loved her and now her I am, fucking tied to a chair.

“Isn’t this what you had in mind when you came to me, Ms. Vitale? Have the bastard tied to a chair and let him suffer like your father?” Gallo’s voice echoes through the empty space.

I’ve heard enough of their conversation to piece together what has led us here.

Arianna thinks, or thought I’m not sure, that I’m the one that killed her father. My guess is that she came to this conclusion and went to Gallo for help to take me down.

How she connected me to Gallo, I have no clue and I really don’t want to know, but she did.

She’s smart, my woman.

I’m still trying to piece all the in between from her father’s death to here but I could take a wild guess.

Arianna lets out a yelp and I try my hardest to not look up and see what happened.

“Isn’t it Ms. Vitale. Isn’t it what you wanted?” Gallo growls out and I can only assume he’s grabbing her by the hair.

A sob fills the room. “Yes.”

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