All Chapters of Into the darkness: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Arianna POVThere are moments in life that don’t feel real you feel like you’ve slipped into a terrible dream and you rack your brain to wake up. You say to yourself no this isn’t real it doesn’t feel real wake up come on come on. Then it sinks in you’re awake and it’s real and you go cold. This has only happened to me twice when my mother ran with me in the middle of the night and the day she died. She’d had a heart attack in the parking lot at the grocery store. She’d never shown any signs of heart disease but the tests didn’t lie. She’d dropped and no one could have brought her back. When I got the call I felt the world blur and assumed I was in a vivid nightmare only to realize there wasn’t any other reality to escape too. She was all I had known for so long and now I was alone. Sort of. My father, an estranged ghost in the corners of my life, had swooped in out of nowhere. He took over and paid for everything the funeral, her arrangements, and the house even. I was taken aba

Arianna POV:My life felt as boring as my father would describe it after that night and I fought the reasons why, it was only because my mother was gone not anything else. I knew he was charming in that sarcastic ass way, and I knew he was handsome, and I knew countless hearts had fallen victim to that combination before. I wasn’t about to join the ranks, even if his intentions were as pure as the snow I had just lost my mother, and I didn’t trust my heart right now. I was lonely, the loneliest I’d ever been and I didn’t want to give in to the desire for company. My mother had once told me that if you cannot be by yourself you can never fully be with anyone. So I stayed on my own and tried to fill my grey icy home up with light again, I put on music, and I danced with no one watching, I missed my mom horribly, in my own space I let it out when it hit, and eventually the sting of her loss wasn’t a constant companion. Gulia called me after too long and gave me the itinerary for the we

Arianna POV: “Do you have a moment to discuss the numbers,” He asked me. If this was him in his day-to-day life it was no wonder he gave off the persona of a ladies' man, he looked striking in his black suit and gray striped shirt. I was taken at the sight of him but brought myself out quickly. “Yes,” I gestured to the seat across the table. I’d read over the paperwork on the proposed deal, there was one final block that neither had a business on and they had been squabbling over it for years so instead of continuing fighting they joined forces. It screamed that they were trying to destroy each other from the inside out, I didn’t plan on being the fuse for either of them. He quickly picked up the chair, giving me a challenging smirk and setting it down beside me. “This will be easier,” he offered before sitting and gesturing for me to continue. “It looks like we have more than enough to participate, our projections for this quarter alone outperform our last year's earnings,” I

Arianna POV:I drove to my father's house, a cold calmness powering me there. I wasn’t going to let the charade continue any longer, but I needed to be safe. I didn’t know how my father would react if he would lash out. The surety Gio spoke with about my father being dangerous, flashed into my mind as I turned my car off. I found my palms slick with fear, a feeling of retreat attempting to grip me. I shook it off remembering my fury at the ongoing deceit. I wouldn’t do it any longer, I had to open the door. I forced myself into the house, I didn’t focus on my unsteady footsteps, or my shuddering breath as I moved down the hall to his office. He was sitting at his desk going over paperwork. I was about to enter the office when a thought entered my head. I don’t know why but I turned around and went to the kitchen taking photos of everything in the file. Something in me warned me against handing over the information to him. I put the file back out in my car underneath my floor mat.

Gio POV:It was already complicated enough doing business with the devil as we had to. For appearance's sake, we were in business together purely to make sure neither of us went to the cops to take the other out. It was too sticky of a situation and now, she was involved. The only genuinely kind, and moral person in the whole pack of them and she appeared when I least expected it. She saw the world with open eyes and still chose to look on the bright side of things, she had a wicked sense of humor and she was breathtaking. It was bad enough that she was a good person, but I was also attracted to her beyond belief. I was holding myself back from making a pass at her and failing every time we got close. She could see through the bullshit covers we had and called me on it with a ferocity that only pulled me in further. I had to take her father down, he was filling the streets with drugs, pressuring small business owners to make shotty cuts to benefit him. Using honest people as fronts