ANMELDENI had lost my memory for three years. I'd been through hell and high water with Adrian Vance for the past three years. He told me we'd grown up together on the same block, two kids who'd fallen for each other young. He told me that once he had a real foothold in the Family, he'd marry me in front of all of Palermo and make the whole city come to watch. I believed him. With a steady trigger hand and a mean streak, I cleared every man who stood in his way. I dragged him up from a nobody bastard son into the inner circle of the Family, one body at a time. Then the day finally came, and what he said was, "I've already asked the Don for his daughter Camilla. It's settled. I'm marrying her." "Camilla's a mafia princess. The Don's pride and joy. Not some no-name orphan girl with nothing and no one behind her. She's the one who can actually lift me up." "Be good, Vera. As long as Camilla never finds out, we can go on the way we always have." "Be good. You mean play your mistress in the dark, is that it?" What Adrian didn't know was that my memory had already come back. My real name was Hale, heir to the Hale family, the one enemy the Marlowe outfit he'd sworn himself to feared most. Childhood sweethearts, princesses, Don. In the end they were all just one more debt I'd settle on my way to paying the Family back in full.
Mehr anzeigenI carried out Adrian's last wish and buried him under the peach tree in the little courtyard.Spring was at its height, the tree heavy with blossom, petals drifting down and settling in no time over the small mound of earth.We'd promised each other once that we'd come back to see it bloom. In the end it had come true, just not the way either of us meant.I laid the knife in the coffin with him, and buried the whole of the past along with it.Adrian. I'd loved him, and hated him, and at the very end all that was left was letting go.Camilla and the rest of her mother's people were handed over to Sean Boyd. He was no gentle soul. Anyone who threatened his standing, he'd sooner kill by mistake than let slip.Word was Camilla's whole crowd had charges pinned on them, every one, and were cleared away one after another.The Marlowe line had thrown its weight around for years, treating lives as nothing, and the people under them had long been at the end of their rope. Boyd's move actually ea
The hall emptied out, and only Adrian was left standing where he was.He looked at me, the corner of his mouth lifting. "When did your memory come back? And here I never knew, you were the Hale Boss all along.""No wonder you were covered in wounds when I found you. No wonder a woman like you fought the way you did. I just never let my mind go there.""If I'd known, the two of us never should have met at all."He dropped his head and laughed softly, half rueful, half lost.I raised the gun and looked at him without expression. "You're right. The two of us meeting was a mistake from the start. So now I'm here to end it myself.""The day you ruined my hands, cut my tendons, I told you. One day I'd kill you with my own hands and settle what you did to me.""That it's come to this, you brought on yourself.""Brought it on myself?" He looked up, and a laugh broke out of him. "Vera. You're telling me I brought this on myself?""Fine, I lied to you. But the last three years between us weren't
(Vera's POV)Even Adrian hadn't expected the Hales to come this fast. There'd been no time to react at all. Everything he'd clawed out of that outfit, every inch of standing he'd bled for, gone in one stroke.He ground his teeth until they ached, sick with it, and could do nothing.He looked at Camilla where she'd fallen, and hesitated. The strongpoint was already breached, and dragging this woman along now was pure dead weight.But the Don's side was a question mark, and there was no telling whether the Donna had something held in reserve. Camilla was her daughter. Keeping her might still be worth something later.He weighed it a few ways and decided to take her. He hauled the dazed Camilla up by the arm and ran.He pulled her toward the back door, but before they cleared the front hall a round came straight at them and buried itself in the stone wall a hair from his head.Then a few black gun barrels were at their throats, and the people who'd just bolted out the front were marched b
The two months ran out fast, and the day of Adrian and Camilla's wedding arrived.The Family's territory had been anything but quiet of late. Word was the masked Boss who'd once beaten Marlowe back on every front had risen from the dead, and the moment that figure surfaced, the Hale people moved, taking back several lost stretches of turf before anyone could blink.It threw the Marlowe outfit into open argument. Nearly every word out of their mouths was about that Hale Boss.The Don was old, and these last couple of years he'd cared for nothing but his own pleasures, leaving the outfit's business to rot. Real power had long since fallen to Camilla's mother's people, and the whole thing was hollowed out inside, the rank and file full of complaints.Adrian read the situation clearly. That was the whole reason he'd schemed his way to Camilla, the only way to carve himself a real piece of it.The day the princess married, flower streamed the length of the street, fireworks filled the sky,






Welcome to GoodNovel world of fiction. If you like this novel, or you are an idealist hoping to explore a perfect world, and also want to become an original novel author online to increase income, you can join our family to read or create various types of books, such as romance novel, epic reading, werewolf novel, fantasy novel, history novel and so on. If you are a reader, high quality novels can be selected here. If you are an author, you can obtain more inspiration from others to create more brilliant works, what's more, your works on our platform will catch more attention and win more admiration from readers.