Kill her

DELANO

"YOUR FATHER ASKS YOU TO COME," JAY SAID.

"If he needs me, he would call me," I muttered in reply. The old man knew better than to disturb me on a sunny morning.

"He's angry."

It was enough to make my head snap towards Jay, "Angry?"

"He seemed to have found out that you were trying to take over the port." He reported.

"He didn't care to find out before. Now he cares?"

"He cares because you were the one who pulled the attention of Saint D'Angelo to you?" It was a puzzling question from Jay.

"But I also brought him something, didn't I?" I asked, my brow moving upwards and Jay sighed, his fingers rubbing on his temples aggressively.

"Delano, you-"

"If he wants to see me, he should call me. It's my business I did on the port, not his. He doesn't have the right to interfere."

"This is exactly why Saint tried to kill you, because he knows you are just so hard to crack. Only if you try to keep your head calm would you move attention away from you."

"Let them keep their attention on me. It'll bite them that they have nothing to find. I'm not the one who asked Saint to try to kill me because I tried to ship in a port that's not his." I shrugged lightly, letting out a puff of smoke from the cigar in my head. Let them send their men after me and watch them burn to death. I wasn't going to do as much as bat an eye when I fire bullets past their fvcking heads.

When Jay went silent for a minute, I assumed he'd left out of annoyance and I was right. Turning my neck to the side, he was absent.

A sigh escaped my lips as I watched my phone vibrate, over and over again. D'Leonardo was calling.

*****

My legs ghosted over the stairs with deliberateness as I walked over to my father's study, hands in my pockets. He'd wanted me to come, he would see me.

"I didn't expect you of all people to act recklessly, Delano." My brows cocked at the welcoming sentence.

I didn't think he expected anything of me. Unrecklessly, at that. If there was not a word like that, add it to the dictionary.

"Why did you do business on the port, without my permission?" His voice was hard, calculating. He was angry, but D'Leonardo would rather eat a cigarette stick with bread before he showed it. I took after him in that regard, needless to say.

I couldn't tell if he was angry because I did business on the port or because it was done... without his permission? D'Leonardo wasn't like me. He fished in his territories. I....tested other people's waters. We were two different people. He'd known that by now and instead of classifying it as reckless, he feared me. Everyone did.

Except maybe, the girl who'd been on my mind the past few hours...days, probably.

"Delano," My father called my name again when I didn't give a reply.

"The port does not exclusively belong to Saint. Many people can do business on it."

"But you know that's not things work. I and Saint have been over the port for many years and if we made a deal, we should agree to the our end of the stick."

"I don't give a hoot about the deal you made." I replied and my father scoffed lightly, his head swinging around lightly. He was mad. I could see the fire showcase in golden specks of his eyes and oddly, it gave me satisfaction. Few people were able to irk him this much and I was one of them. I considered that an achievement on my part.

"Delano, you cannot keep acting this way."

"I can and I will."

"This is a deal between two empires, and as long as you are a member of my family-"

"I'm not part of the deal." I stated plainly, cutting him off. It was a fact, I wasn't there when the deal was made and h*ll, I'd even done my business without checking. Don't blame me, but ports were made for shipping. It was just a coincidence that the exact port happened to be Saint's own and he wanted to kill me for it. Not that it would ever happen though and not that he could easily do that either. There was a deal, I simply crossed the line. He could have easily come to my father and close the deal but he decided to try and kill me in public. Twisted, but not so good. Not at all.

"You think marriage can solve this?" My father's brow ticked upward as he placed his strong arms on the desk, flexing them tightly.

"I think marriage solves half of the problem," I couldn't help but shrug slightly at my own words.

"Half....the problem? Ariel would never give up. She was termed the black witch for a reason. I hate to say it but she's smart, smarter than her smart-ass father and she would try relentlessly to kill you. This is something I know for a fact." He said.

If he was trying to scare me, it didn't work. I was rather fascinated by the turnout of things. Ariel D'Angelo, Winter or not. I didn't really care if she was lying or not. I'd checked all her papers and hadn't seen a Winter as a fvcking middle name in any of them. I'd also taken a peep at her highschool results and she was smart as hell. The perfect pawn to play her father's little game here and there. But one thing about Saint D'Angelo was...he would never let a woman rule his empire. Even if that woman was his only child. Ariel knew that and she'd been trying crazily to win her father's validation. I assumed I had been the last straw but she failed and I got a prize instead, so...it was reasonable she tried to kill me. Expected, even.

"I don't care about what you wanted by bringing up the marriage talk, Delano, but I know Ariel would never back down and that means you shouldn't either. In just a year, you have to kill her. I won't watch her kill you instead."