Arranged love

Luca: Answer your damn phone.

I go to turn it off but pause. I can’t do that, in case Mia or Nite needs me. Luca knows what I’m here to do, and he’s not trying to stop me. He just doesn’t like that I’m blaming him for her situation. The truth is, we’re both responsible for it. I’m just the only one who has decided to do something about it.

Tristan slows his car, pulling off onto a road where he brings it around a brick building before stopping. It’s dead silent out here. Not even any buzzing streetlights.

Getting out of the car, I see Titan pull in behind us. They get out and pop the hatch, grabbing what they’ll need.

“Ready?” I ask, tucking my 9mm into the back of my jeans while grabbing the Glock my brother hands me.

“Ready.” They nod.

“Let’s go,” I say as Tristan slams his trunk, and we start to make our walk, knowing I’m about to do something that I never thought I’d do.

Isn’t this how wars start, though? A man falls in love with someone he shouldn’t.

Show me a man in love, and I’ll show you his greatest weakness.

My father’s words echo in my head, and I smile. He couldn’t have been any more wrong. My cell starts to ring, and we all come to a stop. I pull it out, thinking it’s Luca again but see it’s Nite.

“What the fuck?” Grave asks, wondering why Nite is calling. The man chooses to be mute. We’ll call him, but we never expect him to speak.

I hit answer and put him on speakerphone. “Nite-?”

He doesn’t even let me finish before he rushes out. “Mia’s gone.”

MIA

I GET OUT of the cab and stand on the sidewalk of the busy Manhattan street. The thing about being a Don is that no one would ever fuck with you. And the police are paid off.

I enter the pizzeria with my head held high and shoulders back. This business has been handed down from my great-grandfather to my grandfather to my father. Luca or Nite will be the one who gets it next since I’m pretty sure they’ll be the only two living Bianchis left.

The first twelve years of my life were spent in Las Vegas, but my parents did bring me to New York a couple of times. And I spent those rare days here, sitting in the corner booth with my nanny, where she taught me just enough to know that this wasn’t the life I wanted to live.

The place is dead this late-after ten at night. I walk past the round red tables and to the back. Pushing the door open, I enter the office. Five men stand around a desk where my father sits.

“Mia?” he barks out when he sees me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He looks behind me, and I wonder if he’s expecting Dillan or Luca to be with me.

“I came to see you,” I answer as his men glare at me. Two of them even have their hands on their guns tucked in their holsters. The other three don’t see me as a threat. That’s their mistake.

“Mia!” My mother jumps up from a worn-out leather couch, running to me. She wraps her arms around me, picking my feet up off the floor. “Oh my god.” Setting me down, she pulls away and places both hands on my face. Her silvery-blue eyes that look just like mine fill with tears while they glance over the cuts and bruises as if she cares what I’ve been through. “Oh my God. My baby.” She’s crying now and sniffling.

I feel nothing for her. She might not have had a say in what kind of life I was raised to live, but she didn’t do anything to protect me either. I begged her to let me stay in Vegas when my father and Luca told me it was best to go to Italy. Then I begged her to stay with me there, and she left me alone to come home and be with my father. If I’m ever lucky enough to have a child, I’ll never leave him or her for my husband. But I’d also never marry a man who would make me choose.

“Sir?” one of his men questions. Clearly confused about how to handle my arrival.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

“Leave us.” He waves his hand in the air, and the men all exit the room, leaving me alone with my parents.

“What is it that you want, Mia?” he asks, sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “How did you manage to get out of Italy?”

That right there tells me he’s had no clue what I’ve been through. He didn’t order Matteo to kidnap me and sell me to a King. But to find out just exactly how much he does know, I ask, “Did you really expect me to get you Kingdom?”

He smirks. His black eyes drop to my Nikes and run up my bare legs, over my shorts, and then my chest. The way his smile grows makes goose bumps rise over my skin. Then they meet mine again. “There was a time when I was going to use you to get what I deserved.” My eyes narrow on his. “But a King could never fall for a nobody. No matter how good the pussy is.” When he stands, I take a step back toward the door to put some space between us.

I hate that my stomach sinks at his words. That he could make me second-guess Dillan’s intentions with me. I’ve always been told I’m a nobody, so it’s hard to believe otherwise. Even when a King tries to convince you that you’re someone.

“Did you know Matteo sold me?” I ask and hate that my voice trembles.

He throws his head back, laughing, and I look over at my mother to see her reaction. She’s got her head down, and arms crossed over her chest. I can see by the way her shoulders shake that she’s silently crying.

She knew! I had a feeling she did, but I didn’t want to believe it. “Why?” I scream, and tears sting my eyes. I hate that I care. And I hate it even more that he finds my lack of life entertaining.

“You were always meant to be nothing, Mia.” He takes a step closer to me. “You can spread your legs for a million men.” Another step. “But you’d still just be nothing.”

He reaches me, and I feel the tears running down my face while I glare up at him.

“You should thank me.” He tilts his head to the side.

“For selling me to the highest bidder?” I bark out.

“For making you worth something.” Leaning into my face, he adds, “If not for the Bianchi name, you would have been given away for free.”

I spit in his face, and he places his hand over my mouth, painfully gripping my cheeks and shoving me backward. My head hits the wall so hard that my vision blurs, and I fall to my knees as pain shoots down the back of my neck. In the distance, I hear my mother cry out while my head starts to pound like a drum.

I’m trying to catch my breath and blink away the dots and tears when I hear him laugh. “You should have let me kill her when I wanted to. She served us no purpose.”

Lifting my head, I glare at his back as he starts to walk away from me.

“Thankfully, it’s never too late to fix a problem,” he adds.

I get to my feet, reach into the back pocket of my shorts, and slide my fingers into the metal holes of the bunny ears keychain I found packed in my bag. Thank you, Jasmine. This is my only chance. I knew coming here would end someone’s life, and there was a possibility of it being mine.

Running, I let out a scream as I jump onto his back. He spins around, throwing my back into the wall, and the tight grip my legs have around his waist loosens just a bit at the contact.