Bellissima rovina ~ Beautiful ruin

5

Raffaele

I planned to get shot.

A stupid idea for most men… but then again, I’m not most men.

“Anaesthetic?” the nurse asked.

I shook my head.

“No.”

The nurse didn’t push me. Besides , I don’t pay her the amount I do to be questioned.

I always needed to feel every ounce of the pain.

Emilia hovered beside the bed, chewing her fingernails like they might save her life.

“Why does a cashier at a furniture store know how to take out a bullet wound?” she asked, her eyes darting everywhere.

The store was an obvious front , at least to people like me.

I had places like this scattered all over Italy, each one quietly feeding my real business.

I said nothing. The nurse pressed the forceps into my shoulder, the metal digging into torn flesh as she began to extract the bullet.

I didn’t flinch. Not even a twitch.

Instead, my eyes were on Emilia.

She looked a bit rough with messy hair and smudged makeup—the aftermath of the explosions I set in motion with my own hands.

The way she shifted, unaware of my gaze, made my teeth itch to bite, my hands itch to claim.

She’s the kind of woman people pay for.

And she was going to be mine… I just haven't taken her yet.

She opened her mouth like she had a million questions but closed it again, as if she decided against them.

Smart girl.

“I-I’m getting out of here. I have a lecture I can’t miss and—” she rambled, already heading for the door.

A loud engine with even louder music roared outside and I rolled my eyes.

Nobody in my life was that loud except—

“Careful, sugar. Wouldn’t want you walking straight into trouble,” he grinned, steadying her as she almost bumped into him at the exit.

Theo. My right-hand man. Unfiltered chaos in human form that I've been stuck with for the past 7 years.

“Sorry, sorry,” Emilia muttered, rushing past him.

I couldn’t help it. My eyes followed her from her barely covered ass as she hurried to her car, up the sway of her hips, along the curve of her back.

Through the window, I watched her slide into the driver’s seat, the short dress riding higher as she shifted.

My cock rose, hardening against me, my mind painting her without the fabric, every inch of her exposed.

But I couldn’t be rash. I’d take my sweet time to make her suffer the same way I’d fuck her.

Slow. Deep. With no escape.

“You’re fucking late, Theo,” I said as soon as her car pulled away.

The nurse pierced a needle into my skin and I hissed as she stitched the wound back together.

“I was getting these for your ungrateful ass,” he scoffed, waving an envelope in front of me.

Theo may be impulsive, unpredictable, and chaos in human form but he sure as hell knew how to get the job done.

“Leave.” I said to the nurse the moment she finished bandaging my arm.

“Yes, sir.”

She scurried off with her head down, almost tripping over her own feet in her rush.

Theo let out a low whistle behind her.

“She’s very pretty… like a bellissima rovina.”

“You fucked the last three nurses,” I muttered, my patience thinning. “You know how hard it is getting health workers in our line of business.”

Theo was a good right-hand man.

But he also fucked everything in a skirt, and it was becoming a problem.

It was very annoying having to pay off the nurses who were heartbroken and quit because he “didn’t call back,” all to make sure whatever they witnessed in my mafia stayed buried where it belonged.

“Unlike you, I don’t have a thousand rules when it comes to fucking,” he scoffed.

I ignored him.

I pulled the envelope open, slid the papers out, and the profile at the top confirmed everything I’d been suspecting.

Emilia Visconti.

Date of Birth: May 23rd, 2004.

Age: 21.

Mother: Luciana Romano.

Father: Alessandro Visconti.

Education: Art major. Transfer student from Winston College, America → Bocconi University.

It was her.

The daughter of the man who planned the crash that killed my father and my brother.

“I don’t understand why you had to plan a whole explosion and even get shot just to meet her,” Theo said, digging a cigar out of his pocket.

He offered me one. I nodded.

“What was I supposed to do? Approach her slowly and ask her out to dinner?”

I chuckled at the absurdity.

He looked at me like I’d just recited the dumbest sentence known to man.

“Uh, yeah?!” he gasped.

I only shook my head. He didn’t know half of the plans already forming in my mind.

I needed to see her up close. I needed to know who she was beneath the surface.

“People drop their masks when they think you might die in front of them,” I said instead, lighting the cigar and breathing out a slow cloud of smoke.

“There were ten easier ways to meet her, and you chose the one where you bleed?” Theo chuckled, shaking his head.

“Yes.”

And it gave me exactly what I needed.

Emilia Visconti was a mafia princess and she didn’t even know it.

The leverage… was priceless.

“She doesn’t know who her father really is. She was way too shaken for someone with a crime lord as a parent.”

I slid my shirt back on and hopped off the counter.

“What do you plan on doing with her?” Theo asked, holding my jacket out so I could slip into it.

A lot.

I was going to make her feel the same pain my family did in their last moments.

Her father changed the course of my entire life.

And what better way to bring a king to his knees than by taking the princess he kept hidden from the world?

“Till then,” I said instead.

“Call Ronan.” I added as we walked out of the furniture store.

Theo didn’t argue. He never did when my tone dropped like that.

“sociopath.” he muttered as he shoved the phone against my ear.

“Boss?” Ronan’s voice came through.

My personal bodyguard. His father was my father's bodyguard and died with mine in that crash.

This was for him too.

“Bring a few boys and burn down the plaza where the furniture store is,” I said.

I didn’t need to leave a trace for her to follow.

My entry into her life was meant to be a surprise.

“Okay, boss.”

I hung up.

Ronan never questioned me. That’s why I kept him close.

“You just bought this place,” Theo whined beside me.

“Money is disposable,” I muttered as I slid into the back seat of his car. “Mine has no limit.”

And it didn’t. Money was the easiest part of this game.

Control was the real currency.

Theo shut the door behind me, still whining under his breath about the building I’d just ordered burned to ash.

I didn't pay attention to him.

My mind was already somewhere else.

Already on her.

Emilia Visconti.

The hidden princess.

The leverage I’d been searching for.

The key to ending the man who destroyed my life.

She had no idea the explosion was just the beginning.

No idea she’d already stepped into my world.

And I wasn’t done with her.

Not even close.