Chapter 0018
Chapter 0018
I changed the course of my trajectory, diverting from the spare bedroom to the back of the house. I slipped through the back door and across the sprawling yard towards the building at the edge of the property.
I’d take my anger out at the gun range.
The familiar scents of the expansive arena immediately calmed my breath, my heart rate. It was empty, hollow, so when I lifted the gun and took aim, the crack of the bullet ricochet through
the vastness.
The projectile slammed the target, dead–center.
Of course it did. You don’t become the don of a Mafia family without knowing how to use a gun. Effectively. Lethally.
Not that I liked killing. I’d never liked it. In fact, I’d once hoped to live in a way that wasn’t so… bloody. It was why I’d originally left, back when my father and brother were still alive. When I knew I’d never be more a hand, a tool, to be used by the head.
Everything had changed when I’d gotten that phone call.
The gun cracked again. Again. Again.
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Crack, crack, crack.
Your father has been killed… You have to come
home.
Such simple words, and yet they’d completely rewritten the story of my life. I’d tried to escape, but in the end, I couldn’t turn my back on the people that had made me. The people I still loved,
Leaving Layla had been the worst thing I’d ever done. My one true regret. An ending I so desperately wished I could rewrite.
But my mother and sister had lived. The family had flourished. Had there ever been any other choice?
Crack, crack, crack.
The rhythm of the shots set a new rhythm to my heart. Calming my pulse, calming my breath. Calming my thoughts. Bringing me back to some semblance of calm.
And in the wake of that calm, a new thought took root. In the absence of chaos, logic reigned.
Why had Marco come here? He didn’t love Layla, that much was clear. And she didn’t love him, she’d admitted as much. And yet, they’d played through the pretense like actors who’d sold their souls to the stage.
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Why?
Layla, I knew, was emotional. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed. So many feelings and thoughts driving her to irrational action. Hers I could explain.
But his?
Crack, crack, crack.
No, Marco was different. His motives were unclear to me, and I didn’t like that. When you lived my life -gun at your side, one eye always open–you learned to follow gut instincts that warned you when something wasn’t right.
Marco was hiding something.
And if the woman he was evidently so interested in, the mother of his child, was part of his secrets, I planned to find out what they were. If he was to be part of Layla’s life, to set foot on my property, I would know his motives.
I needed to know his game so I could play it. Better.
I took aim-
A soft hand touched my shoulder, staying my finger before I squeezed the trigger. “Aldo.”
I lowered the gun as my name hissed from Aurora’s lips and across my ear. Why was she here? Why was
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she always here when I least wanted her to be?
“What is it, Aurora?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral, calm. She had never been anything but good to me–honest and loyal, even if her motives didn’t align with my own.
“You killed Moretti’s advisor. For her.”
I didn’t bother to express agreement or denial. I had killed the man she spoke of. And I’d done it for her, because that man believed she was important to me. Believed he should hunt her down in her own
home.
He was the reason he was here, so I’d removed him.
I didn’t like killing.
But I wasn’t afraid to do what needed to be done.
“Why are you here, Aurora?” I asked again. I brushed her fingers from my shoulder and turned to confront her, to face that breathtaking visage of Italian beauty.
“You really think Moretti will let that go?” she murmured.
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Chapter 0019
