All Chapters of The Monster's Nemesis: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

LILLIANAI was told that my mother often indulged herself in reading, sometimes dousing the long hours of the day as she drew her solace from it. Being the wife of a mafia wasn’t easy.Little information about her marital relation with my father, Dante Moretti, was given to me. But, from what I had gathered, my mother was an insightful woman with beauty, a perfect pedigree, and good manners that were required by the man of wealth and reputation. In one of her old books—‘The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall’ written by Anne Brontë, she had scribbled on the last page that love, in whatever form, was worth it. I didn’t need people to vouch that Dante was far from a perfect husband. But my mother’s joyful existence, progressive mindset, and independence made me curious about her happy place.How does a woman of her quality continue with her conjugal duties with a man like Dante? Maybe, she tasted love, even for a short duration, good enough to last her a lifetime.Love, in whatever form, was wo

LILLIANA Sixteen days. Three hundred and eighty-four hours and counting. Back in the day, I mistakenly picked up a soppy, romantic novel, just for the sake of killing time, and I read how the female protagonist was counting the hours of separation from her beloved man. It seemed utterly pathetic and counterproductive to me. Now, the joke was on me. The small break I got between waiting tables and doing inventory for the cafe, I was mentally counting the days and hours without even realizing the futileness. I should have been planning and scheming, finding a way to slither back into Dominic’s life to wreck the happiness his family was enjoying at

DOMINIC “Let me finish.” I put a finger on her lips, quieting her. “It was wrong of me to blame you for my family’s troubles. I have known you for what you are, and that’s all that should matter to me.” Her lips began to part slowly as I watched a myriad of emotions warring with each other, but Lilliana quickly closed her mouth. “I don’t understand this, Dominic,” she stuttered, waving her hand. “I don’t understand you. You behave sweet one day, and the next day, you are someone else.”At that moment, I wished I could tell her in simple terms how frustrated it made me—that the mysterious air around her irks my suspicious senses like an alarm. That every skeptical incident in our lives was a warning bell before the calamity strikes.However, I knew it was no excuse to act on one’s worst fears.“You don’t understand, Lilliana, because we never attempted to know each other. But I want to remedy our situation now. I am tired

DOMINIC“He is useless now,” I heard my father muttering as he stood over the dead body on the floor; the thick crimson blood slowly crawled towards his Amadeo Testoni loafers. It was the third dead man in twenty-hours, and my sister was still in the wind. And so was Lorenzo—the man I had trusted once. At one time, in a drunken conversation, I convinced Viktor that maybe Lorenzo wasn’t a wrong choice for Sammy, but even under the intoxicated haze, Viktor wanted to kill him. I only wish he would have done that. Lorenzo grew up closer to our family and, it was his dedication and loyalty that qualified him to be one of our closest men. But it wasn’t good enough for him, I guess, and with Sammy’s involvement, he started to dream big. The poisonous ambition slowly morphed into greed that ultimately destroyed his loyalty. How the fuck could we miss that? How, in the name of hell, could we overlook the hunger in his eyes and l

SAMMYPain. It was such a modest word for the world of hurt and agony inflicted on anyone. My open wounds were bleeding, my breath came in ragged gasps, and my skin prickled with freezing cold inside the dirty cell I was thrown into, but I still wouldn’t say it was painful. The torment I had been through for the past many hours surpassed the vocabulary of suffering and misery. It was gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking and incomprehensibly dreadful. I braved the assault, I fought the tears, and I held on to every hope in my veins, believing that my family would come for me any moment now. But everything was fading into nothingness.“You would do yourself a favor if you do as you are told,” I heard Lorenzo say over the chattering of my teeth. Once those lecherous men left, Lorenzo came back with food—not out of care, but merely because he needed me alive for his profit. My refusal was outright adamant. And like rapists, chauvinistic