Angelo’s POV
The heavy doors shut behind us, sealing the room like a tomb. The air inside was thick with cigarette smoke and strong cologne. I took a seat beside my father at the long mahogany table. Across from us were the heads of the remaining families—Savio, Vitale, Russo, and Bellini—each with their own advisors lurking in the shadows, the only ones privy to conversations in a closed-door meeting. I didn’t say a word because they weren’t talking to me. “Does he have the stomach for it?” Don Russo asked, his voice thick with skepticism. “He’s always been the quiet one.” “He buried Cruz without blinking,” Bellini added. “He’s his mother’s son,” Vitale muttered, as if that were a flaw. All of them talked around me. Like I was a vase in the room. My father leaned back, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He didn’t defend me, he didn’t need to. He just let them exhaust their doubts.She ran.I’m not going to lie; I wasn’t expecting that, but who could blame her? I had taken off her clothes and gawked at her like a sex-starved beast, and that in front of my father, and now I felt terrible.It was infuriating. I should hate her; I should feel only anger towards her. She and her father were the only reason this event was happening. Her father was the reason Dante wasn’t here in this room, laughing heartily. Her father was the reason I now wore this huge family heir ring, the reason I now bore this weight on my shoulder. Angelo Armani, Don of the Armani family, and yet I didn’t hate her. I really tried, but I couldn’t.If I did, I would have done as my father asked without a second thought. I was one second away from yelling at him just because of her. And that would have gone terribly wrong. My father was Don for many years; he still commanded the respect of all his men, of all my men. They served my father through me, and nothing would
Aurora’s POVWhen Rosa came for me, I sighed in relief, thankful to be away from him, but my happiness was short-lived because not too long after, I was behind those large doors with him and his father.I fought back tears when Mr. Armani hit me across the face. It was unexpected, and his hand was strong. I blinked back the tears, not wanting to give him or either of them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. My skin burned, and I could taste my own blood on my lips. It took every last bit of restraint I had to not continue staring at him.My eyes were wide with shock when I heard the next words that Mr. Armani uttered. I stood frozen in shock, listening to them.I looked between the both of them, surely they were not talking about me as if I were an object.“What’s it going to be?” The heavy question hung between us.Mr. Armani didn’t look away. His eyes met mine, a twisted smile on his lips. My eyes bore into his. He didn’t look a
Angelo’s POV The heavy doors shut behind us, sealing the room like a tomb. The air inside was thick with cigarette smoke and strong cologne. I took a seat beside my father at the long mahogany table. Across from us were the heads of the remaining families—Savio, Vitale, Russo, and Bellini—each with their own advisors lurking in the shadows, the only ones privy to conversations in a closed-door meeting. I didn’t say a word because they weren’t talking to me. “Does he have the stomach for it?” Don Russo asked, his voice thick with skepticism. “He’s always been the quiet one.” “He buried Cruz without blinking,” Bellini added. “He’s his mother’s son,” Vitale muttered, as if that were a flaw. All of them talked around me. Like I was a vase in the room. My father leaned back, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He didn’t defend me, he didn’t need to. He just let them exhaust their doubts.
Aurora’s POVI slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow even though in my head I was screaming strings of protests as we walked into this celebration, but nothing about this night felt festive, at least not for me. It was a parade of monsters in tailored suits and fine dresses, who shook hands with the same fingers they used to pull triggers.And I was stuck in the middle of it, wearing a dress that clung to me like a glove and barely covered anything. I was so self-conscious; I saw the way he looked at me, the way they all looked at me.His hand was firm at my waist—Angelo Armani, the man who’d taken everything from me. And now he held me on his arm like a trophy, not a partner, not even a person. Just a shiny, living symbol of what he’d conquered.“Look at you, ragazzo (young man),” one of the older men said with a grin. “All grown up. When I saw you last, you could barely hold a gun steady.”Angelo smiled, flashing his pearly whites.
Angelo’s POVI had imagined this moment many times before in the past, but it’s a lot different now that I was living it than it was in my head. In my imagination, it was a much bigger event, maybe at a different destination. My brother did have a flair for these sorts of things, but now we were at the hall in the mansion. I saw Nico from across the room, with his hands around the shoulders of an older woman, whispering something in her ear. When he met my gaze, he waved at me and began to walk towards us. Lorenzo hadn’t left my side all day. The only place he hadn’t followed me to yet was the bathroom. His hawk-like eyes scanned the whole room, determined to be my bodyguard all night.I had imagined us older, maybe not so much older, but maybe we would have had families of our own, except of course Nico. In my imaginations, he was still dicking around. "Nice party, huh?" He said as soon as he reached us.Lorenzo rolled his eyes, “You seem to be the only o
Aurora’s POVI hadn’t moved since he left, still clutching onto the towel on my chest.The warmth of Angelo’s breath still clung to my skin, like it hadn’t gotten the memo he was gone. My pulse was chaotic, confused, like the rest of me. He’d been close—too close. The way his voice dipped when he called my name. I had never noticed how anyone called my name until him. He made it sound so exotic, it practically rolled off his tongue. And, love? Why did he use that endearment? The first time he said it, my breath caught in my throat.I was gawking at him, the tension in his jaw, the storm in his eyes. The way he looked at me, with lust and desire, all merged into one. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. He didn’t look at me with all of the anger I had grown accustomed to; he felt like a different person in that room, almost like the man I saw from across the restaurant. My heart was beating fast, and all the things I felt in that m