TJ
On the night before Don Lucas and I were supposed to sign our marriage license, his friends threw us a party.
During a game of truth or dare, a rule was set: for the rest of the night, everyone had to speak only Italian.
Chloe, my supposed best friend, was the first to play along.
"Tomorrow you're signing the papers with her, Lucas,” she said in Italian. "Make an excuse and come to my place tonight. I bought that purple lace set you like."
Lucas swirled the amber bourbon in his glass and said in Italian, "I wore you out last night. Four condoms weren't enough for you?"
Around the table, the guys who understood Italian burst into roaring laughter.
Then Lucas reached out and stroked my hair in soft English. "Feeling tired, sweetheart? "
I looked into Lucas’s warm eyes. "What did Chloe just say to you?"
"She was just saying how lucky I am to have you, baby. She's planning a surprise for us."
Chloe chimed in Italian again. "Be careful, Lucas. What if your helpless little doll figures it out?"
Lucas chuckled."Not a chance. She’s obsessed with me. You know better than anyone how naive she is."
"Besides, she’s just a girl who crawled out of the slums. She doesn't understand a single word of Italian."
In that single second, my entire world shattered into cold, jagged dust.
I wasn't just fluent in Italian. It was the very language I spoke when I learned how to reload a Beretta.
I wasn't some helpless girl from the slums. I was the only daughter and sole heiress of the Moretti family, the undisputed rulers of the largest Italian Mafia syndicate in the country.
And the reason his little underworld empire had skyrocketed over the last three years? It wasn't his brilliance.
It was my family’s underground empire quietly clearing his path and pulling the strings from the shadows.
Since I was the one who elevated him to the heavens, I could drag him down into hell just as easily.