LOGINHey, everyone! 💕 I hope you’re ready because from here on out, updates for this book are gonna be regular. Yup, no more waiting around. We’re officially kicking this party off and it’s only going to get crazier from here. Also… who do you think is at the door? 👀 Rino? Antonio? Salvatore? Drop your guesses below! Buckle up, and enjoy! XOXO 💋
Alessia ─ ∘❉∘ ─A lot had happened yesterday. We got Silvio and Enrico back, and the Costellos got their families back. Blood had been spilled on both sides, but they lost more than we did.And I...I got my daughter back.Now I sat on the edge of the mattress, barely breathing, watching her. My eyes kept tracing her face over and over again, like if I blinked too long she might disappear. She lay there unconscious, her lashes resting on her cheeks, her breathing soft. Every rise of her chest felt like a miracle I didn’t deserve but would die to protect.She was here. In Chicago. In my home. Under my roof.With me.Away from all those people who stole her from me. Away from the cruel hands that raised her. Away from the ghost of the man who ripped her out of my arms in the middle of the night nineteen years ago and made me believe I’d never see her again.My palms wouldn’t stop shaking. I had them pressed to my knees. My heart was pounding so hard I felt it in my throat. Every time I
Alessia ─ ∘❉∘ ─It had been three months since her marriage. And a month of Vincenzo living in their territory, slipping through their streets, their cameras, their guards, like he’d been born there. And watching Allegra from a distance, keeping her safe without her even knowing. She worked at a little bookstore, which made it easier for him to stay close without raising alarms.And from what he told me…Scott hadn’t been cruel to her, not in the ways I feared.But that didn’t matter.A marriage to the underboss of the Cosa Nostra is never going to work. My daughter could never truly belong in that world, not when our families had been spilling each other’s blood for decades. There was no future there. No peace. No version of life where my daughter grew old in that house and still get to see me.If I wanted her back, really back, safe and free and mine, I had to break that marriage clean in half.And today… today I was finally going to see her.There was a children’s book launch at
Alessia ─ ∘❉∘ ─ They married her off. They actually married my daughter off. They forced her into a life she never chose, shoved her straight into the arms of a man who lives and breathes blood and sin, the Underboss of the Cosa Nostra. Scott Mancini. Even saying his name made something in me twist. After everything I survived, after everything that was taken from me, I swore my daughter would never live the life I did. I swore no man, no family, no boss, no oath would ever decide her future. I swore she would choose her own heart, her own path. But life has a sick way of spitting on promises. She didn’t escape the chains, they just changed the hands holding them. She went from being forced into marriage with a fifty-year-old bastard... straight into the hands of the underboss of the Cosa Nostra. And the things I’ve heard from my boys. Stories of Mancini cracking skulls without blinking. Stories of him running the streets like they’re his personal hunting ground. Stories of
Rino ─𖤝─ Age 41 | Blackthorn Cold Storage Facility | Outskirts of Chicago. I sat at the metal table, sleeves rolled up, the overhead light buzzing like it was seconds from dying. Paperwork was spread out in front of me, ledgers, transfers, digital printouts. Five years’ worth of our numbers. Five years of something not fucking adding up. Fabio sat across from me, tapping his pen like a nervous tick he thought I didn’t notice. My brother-in-law, my underboss… and Valeria’s only sibling. A man I’d taken under my wing even when I should’ve fed him to wolves after he ruined our friendship. His breath formed a faint fog in the air. Mine didn’t... rage has its own temperature. I dragged a thick finger down a column of numbers. “Walk me through this,” I said, and Fabio leaned in instinctively, like a dog conditioned by too many years under me. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said quickly, “You’re looking at— uh— the third quarter shipments, right? There were delays that year. A couple
Alessia ─ ∘❉∘ ─ For a long moment I just stared at it, my fingers hovering, trembling. I finally slid a thumb under the flap. It opened with this soft, clean rip like he’d sealed it gently, like he didn’t want to startle me. Inside was a folded paper. I pulled it out slowly, afraid it would crumble, or that I would. My hands shook uncontrollably as I unfolded it. I read the first line, and my vision blurred. My throat closed. I had to clamp a hand over my mouth because a sound clawed up from somewhere deep, somewhere broken. I blinked until the words steadied enough to read again. The ink felt alive, like I could hear his voice in every line. “Aunt Alessia, I don’t even know how to start this. I’ve been gone from home a year, but it feels like ten. And even when I wasn’t near you, I still felt you because every day I spent with Allegra, I saw pieces of you in her. Your calm. Your softness. That strength you carry without even trying.” My chest clenched hard. I p
Alessia ─ ∘❉∘ ─ Age 39 | Capone Estate | Chicago, Illinois. Saint Agatha’s always smelled the same, like melted wax and old stone, like incense soaked into wooden pews, like memory. My knees buckled before I even meant for them to. My hands were shaking so badly I had to grip the altar just to steady myself. “Please…” I whispered, though my voice barely made a sound. “Please keep him safe.” Silvio’s face wouldn’t leave my mind, his laugh, his dimples. The ache in my chest twisted deeper. My fingers brushed over the cold metal lighter as I reached for it. One candle. Then another. Then another. One for my mother. One for my father. One for Allegra, my sweet little girl whose light had been taken from me too soon. And one for Silvio… my stubborn, bright, wounded boy. The tiny flames flickered like fragile breaths, each one a prayer I couldn’t put into words without breaking. I knelt in front of them, the marble hard beneath me, but I barely felt it. Tears blurr







