Page 51 of Mafia Betrayal

Something wasn’t right. Why was Dad holding and torturing him? What had happened when he was gone? Was that why he hadn’t answered my texts?

“You should trust me because all I want is revenge. I want to kill that man. Ricinni, Sicilian Mafia don. After I do … you can do anything you want to me. I’ll let you kill me, torture me for sleeping with your boyfriend. Just let me kill him first.” She actually sounded desperate and not in that whorish way. She needed revenge for something. And … by the sound of it, that something was bad.

My hand tightened around the gun, and I wanted nothing more than to put a bullet straight through her head, yet I couldn’t get myself to pull the trigger.

“You help me find Alessandro, and I get to do whatever the hell I want to do to you.”

She nodded and turned toward the door. “Come on.”

36

chiara

“We’re goingto Alessandro’s place. He has everything we need.” I slid into her car and stared out the windshield, my chest tightening more with every moment that went by.

She started the car and sped down the road, getting onto the highway toward Alessandro’s place as if she had been there many times before.

Was I stupid to blindly trust the woman who had slept with my boyfriend? Hell yes.

But if what she had said was true … that Alessandro was in trouble? He might not want a relationship with me now or ever, but I cared about him and wanted him to be safe. In this entire family, he was the only person I could trust. And that was saying something.

“Why’d they take him?” I whispered.

All I could imagine were the cruel things they were probably doing to him. Beating him. Torturing him. Hurting him. All for what? What had he done that was so wrong?

She stayed silent for a long time, then glanced at me. “We were kids,” she whispered. “Just kids … and they took some of us from our families. Others were willingly given to the Sicilian Mafia for money and drugs and alcohol.” She turned on to the exit. “They did stuff to us and made us do things with other people, grown men and women, in dirty hotel rooms until we were crying. Some got traded away, some were killed, and others stayed and endured it until they couldn’t any longer.”

All I could hear was pain in her voice. Her hand tightened around the steering wheel, and she shook her head, as if trying to get rid of bad memories.

“Alessandro was one of the first to get out alive, six years old …” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Seven.”

After swallowing hard, she pulled up to the side of the road and parked. “Changed his name, grew up, joined the same mafia that had hurt him, just to get us out. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably be dead.”

My heart sank as I heard the horrifying things that had happened to Alessandroandher in the past.

The Sicilian Mafia was trafficking children, selling them off and hurting them.

“The Sicilian Mafia started to question him, and he knew that the only way he’d be safe was to prove himself and his importance to the family so they’d keep him, and then he could continue to save children. So, he admitted to drug charges and went to prison for the don. But in prison, he cut a deal to tell the authorities about what was really going on for a lighter sentence.”

My hands balled into fists, and I shook my head to try to stay strong.

“And my family? Why does my family have him?” I asked.

She looked over at me and didn’t say anything for a long time.

My eyes widened, and I shook my head harder this time. “No. No, I don’t believe it. I … you’re lying.”

“Chiara, I’m sorry.”

But I couldn’t believe it. The family I had grown up with was in the business of taking children and selling them to the highest bidder, letting them get molested and hurt and raped by anyone who could pay? What the fuck had happened to racketeering and drugs? Had that not been enough for them and they had to resort to taking fucking children?

I punched the dashboard over and over and over until my knuckles bled. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My vision blurred. “No,” I cried. “No. They couldn’t. They can’t do this,” I said.

She pulled me to her chest, holding me steady until I stopped freaking out. I grasped on to her arm, knowing that I had no right to cry when she had been through this and experienced this herself.

“Why? Why would they do this to innocent children?”

“Alessandro told me that your family always gives you bullshit to do for them. Why do you think they didn’t want you to have any responsibility? Always telling you that you could go on business next time, just never with them?”

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