Page 136 of Arianna

My finger hovers over the end button, but she speaks. “Is she happy? She looks like she is…” There is no bitterness in her tone. Only sadness.

“She loves you. Both of you.” Then I end the call, not caring for her feelings or hang-ups, but knowing that Kadra Parisi is one of the ghosts haunting Arianna that I cannot erase.

* * *

The naked man in the corner of the room sits up slowly once one of the Parisi made men escorts me inside the room. “You have 10 minutes.” The guard dressed in all black with a slight Russian accent tells me. “Make good use of them.” With that odd comment, he leaves, closing the door gently behind him.

Fuck, it smells putrid in here.

And just as bad as it smells, the fallen consigliere looks.

I step closer to the bloodied man, his eyes scanning the hundreds of knife cuts that have been given to him. Every single mark he had given to Arianna’s heart meant a thousand for him.

“Oh, the Great Kenton heir?” Gabriele’s voice mocks, and his dark eyes narrow as I walk in farther inside the room. The ex-consigliere looks like death itself. Covered in his filth and with new and dried blood staining not only his skin but his yellowish dress shirt, as well. The ex-Parisi boss raises his head to look behind me, waiting for something or someone. “Did my firstborn not come to say her goodbyes?” He chuckles, amused. “You know… you haven't thanked me for the gift I gave you. Arianna might be useless, but she is a real beauty. Just like her cunt of a mother.” Gabriele laughs so hard that blood starts to spurt out of his mouth, making him grimace.

Good.

Just him mentioning Arianna sets me on edge, but the more he talks, the more I am reminded that scums like this son of a bitch must be put down and do everyone that favor.

Taking my time, I undo my cufflinks. “You gave me nothing, Gabriele, because your daughter is not an object to give. To sell as if her choice did not matter. I took her, yes, but she saved herself.” She did. She never backed down. She didn’t come to me crying and begging for her life. She changed her fate the second she opened her mouth and showed me what she was made of.

Not ice.

She is all fire.

Burning so fucking bright.

I don’t tell him exactly how his daughter saved herself.

Gabriele’s maniacal laugh has blood spitting out his mouth again before his crazed gaze returns to mine. “You didn’t marry her. What? Did you find her lacking? Is that why you went back on your word?”

“I did not,” I admitted. “I don't need to force a woman into marriage, and your daughter has a choice with me. She has everything with me. You did not break her, motherfucker.”

“Oh, but I did.” Gabriele smiles evilly, clearly remembering a fond memory. It takes everything in me not to reach for the whip hanging on the black wall above his head and choke the cunt with it. “She left this city, broken, and alone, with nothing. Just a useless girl who could never be or do what was expected of her.” Gabriele smiles, wiping the blood from his mouth and causing it to smear across his lips. “All of them are useless. Useless and fucking defective.”

“You are one dumb motherfucker,” I say. Seeing this would take longer than expected, I pull out a cigar, light the end, and then reach for the knife that’s been burning a hole in my pants pocket since I stepped foot inside this basement.

“You want to know something, Bastian?” Gabriele asks while staring at the knife in my left hand.

Exhaling deeply, smoke fills the small room. “Not really, no.”

“I wish she were born a son,” the evil bastard reveals. “The three of them. Such disappointments. With sons, I could be running this city. Fuck, running the other two families, but I was robbed of it all the moment my heir died and Arianna was born.”

Filth.

Fucking piece of shit.

He has no idea how lucky he is.

Arianna is not a curse.

She is a fucking blessing.

A dream come true.

Smiling as I sit down at eye level with crazy, dark orbs. “You didn’t get a son, yes. But you do have an heir. One who rules your men and might be running three families soon enough. That is your heir and your eldest? The one you so cruelly think of as a mistake and disappointment. That one will rule mine.”

“Ah, the great Kadra!” The devil smiles from ear to ear, but I see only resentment in his eyes. “I made her.”

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