Chapter 4 4.

A U R E L I A

Despite my outburst towards my family, I was forced to attend the wedding for appearances and because I wanted to see what would go down.

Would the guests try to kill each other? Or would I hear gossip from the wives? Anything could happen at the wedding of a Mafia Don.

The sun had barely risen over my new bedroom, yet the entire household was already a bustle of activity, but at least I didn't have a massive hangover from yesterday's drinking.

Outside my new bedroom, I heard how the servants darted in and out of rooms, their arms must be filled with flowers, candles, or fine linens.

Today, my sister Ciara was getting married to Luciano Costa, the Mafia Don.

I had lingered by the windows of the guestroom of the grand estate where the wedding ceremony will be held, watching the servants finishing up the final decorations in the large backyard.

My eyes scanning the bustling scene outside the backyard, but my heart felt like it was made of steel, heavy and unbreakable, mended painfully into my chest.

A gentle knock on the door drew my attention.

It was Maria, the head maid of the grand estate which was owned by Luciano Costa, and would become my new home since Luciano had gifted my family the lavish grand-estate.

In other words, it's like a wedding dowry in the mafia world, because each time a man in high position marries a woman, he has to give the family something in return.

Luciano gifted my family the grand estate, which meant that he could protect and provide for my family.

"Miss Aurelia, it's time to get dressed. Your sister's wedding is only two hours away." The woman told me.

I nodded, forcing a smile. "Thank you, Maria. I'll be ready soon."

I turned away from the window, focusing on the task at hand, which was to get dressed.

The dress I was to wear was a shade of maroon, the color of blood.

It was beautiful, yet all I could think about was how I wished I didn't have to wear it today, didn't have to stand by and watch the man I had a crush on marry someone else.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself or else I would fall apart.

As one week ago, I had confirmed from my older brother, Chase, that this was an arranged marriage, and very few people knew the truth about how Luciano and Ciara got together.

They didn't know that it wasn't love that brought them together, but duty and honor, since they had slept together.

But what hurt the most was that Ciara had known about my crush on Luciano. She knew about my feelings for him.

She had found out because she was snooping around my room, and found a book, not a diary but a simple text book from school, and inside the book I had written Luciano's name and bunch of other things about him, things I like about him.

Ciara had laughed in my face, telling me that a man like Luciano would never look my way because I was not enough, I was not her.

I snapped out of my thoughts from the past, and I finished dressing up, putting on my dark red high heels.

I walked towards the mirror inside the guestroom which would serve as my new bedroom, and it was way better than the tiny attic I got to sleep in.

I stepped inside the walk-n closet, and stood before the mirror, taking a moment to appreciate the makeover.

My ginger hair, vibrant and fiery, cascaded below my shoulders in loose waves.

My cheeks were lightly dusted with a rosy blush, adding a gentle flush that gave me the natural glow of excitement because I couldn't feel any joy or excitement.

My lips were painted with a dark red lipstick, the color complementing my ginger hair and the maroon dress, adding a final touch of elegance to my look.

Damn, I looked sexy in the color red.

I stood there for a few moments, admiring myself, until I finally decided to make my way downstairs, and outside to the backyard where the final preparations were being made.

The guests were already arriving, their chatter and laughter filling the air as there were underbosses with their wives which had come from different states, along with the captains and a very few soldiers.

The mafia, led by Luciano Costa, had grown into a vast organization over the years, with many members joining and spreading its influence over North America.

In the beginning, it was only an Italian mafia organization, until it grew to be an American-Italian organization.

Not only were the mafia from his organization attending the wedding, but also the mafia's allies, like the Yakuza, the Bratva and the Irish mob.

It showed the grave importance of the wedding because if this was one of the captain's wedding then it would be small, but this was Luciano Costa's wedding as there were over eight hundred people.

I took a sharp breath in, and I plastered a smile on my face, greeting the guests politely, all the while feeling like I was moving through a dream.

The ceremony was to be held in the backyard. The sunlight shined on the backyard, indicting that it was going to be a beautiful summer day.

I glanced at the very end of the backyard, as the altar had been prepared as well as the long row of seats, and the white carpet which reached the altar, and my older would walk down it to become a married woman.

She was going to become a Costa woman, have a high title and become a woman which other women look up to in the mafia.

There was one hour left until the wedding ceremony, but oddly enough, my father or my brother was not among the crowd greeting the guests, which they should have done instead of me.

I was the one who was supposed to be with my mother and sister, while the men were supposed to greet the guests.

I headed back inside the grand-estate back to the second floor towards my older brother's bedroom, but he wasn't there. If he wasn't there, then it meant he was in my father's office.

I sighed as I walked all over towards the other side of the floor where my parent's master bedroom located along with my father's office.

I didn't want to see my father, but I also didn't want to greet the Pahkan of the Bratva or the head of the Irish mob.

The moment I was in front of my father's office, I could hear things breaking and my father's harsh Italian words like he was angry.

But it was Ciara's wedding day and she was going to marry Luciano Costa?

Why would father be angry when the next heir of the Costa crime organization would have his blood in their veins?

I opened the door as I stepped inside my father's office, but the angry man behind the ruined desk hadn't noticed me.

The only one who did was my older brother, Chase, who wore a grim expression as he stood in the corner of the room like he didn't want to be part of our father's rage.

I glanced back at our father, who stood behind his expansive, old desk. The laptop on the desk was destroyed, as well as a few documents which were ripped apart.

"You whore! You lied to me this entire time!" He shouted at the woman who was leaning against the dark wall, with a hand on her chest.

My mother was standing by the help of the wall, since she seemed shaken and terrified.

"Marino..." She whispered my father's first name, gripping tightly into her chest. "It's not what you think."

"You are a traitor! You lied to me for years!" He pointed at her, his eyes were wide and furious, as I had never seen my father this angry in my life.

What the fuck had happened?

"W-What do you mean? I-I didn't lie t-to you." My mother asked him.

"You lied to me about Ciara's and Aurelia's paternity." My father's face turned red from the anger as he pulled out the three documents from the drawer.

He took out one of the documents and began to read out loud. "The paternity test shows that Ciara Nash isn't my biological daughter... Instead, Aurelia Nash is my biological daughter."

"When Aurelia was born, you told me that she was not my daughter, that her father was the man who used to be your bodyguard, the one you had an affair with!" His voice was full of betrayal yet of rage.

"You told me that Ciara was my daughter, and I believed you! You even showed me the paternity test, but they were fake!" He shook his head, then threw the paternity documents at her.

"Chase and Aurelia are my biological children, not Ciara!" He slammed an angry fist into his wooden desk.

My mother fell on the floor on her knees, sobs escaping her lips because father had caught onto her deadly lie.

I too almost fell on the floor, as my heart was pounding hard against my chest.

"Now Ciara will marry Luciano in fifty minutes. She's not my daughter by blood, she's an illegitimate child who's going to marry the Don!"

"She's still your daughter, you raised her and loved her, nobody else did." My mother whispered.

"I loved Ciara because she was my daughter, she was my child! She was not the child from your affair!" He explains, "Each time I looked at Aurelia, all I could see was your betrayal. All I could see was your product from your cheating with the bodyguard who was supposed to protect you!"

"The reason I stayed with you for all these years was for the sake of the two oldest children, Chase and Ciara. I thought that it would be fine if we could isolate and ignore Aurelia because she's the youngest." My father glances down at the wooden desk, his fists clenched.

"If I had t-told you the t-truth, you would have killed us, you would have killed me, and treated Ciara like you treat A-Aurelia. It is better if y-you treat Aurelia badly, but n-not Ciara. She's my only daughter." My mother says through her sobs.

"Yes, I would have killed you, then taken Chase and Aurelia with me!" My father loses it as he rushes towards my mother, ready to beat her, but my older brother tries to hold my father back.

I placed a hand on my forehead as I felt my vision blurry, my heart began to pound louder, but most of all, it began to ache.

All the abuse, all the neglect, all the trauma I had suffered while growing up was because my father thought I wasn't his child.

He had thought that I was a product of my mother's affair.

Each time, my father kept telling me to kill myself, and I was close to doing it, cutting my wrists or almost drowning in a lake when I couldn't even swim.

Each time, I had hurt myself hoping that my father would show an ounce of care towards me, but he did not, he wanted me dead.

Each time, I came home after school and wasn't allowed to eat dinner with them, or they didn't allow me to eat food which came from their fridge, and I had to starve until my older brother sneaked inside to give me food.

Or when I turned sixteen, and my mother wanted me to marry an old man who was known to kill his young brides.

She got my father to agree to the forced marriage, but my older brother stopped them, he had threatened to kill himself if they forced me to marry a man who could be my grandfather.

This had been my mother's way to get rid of me for good as father would have never found out the truth. If I had gotten married to the elderly man, he would have killed me by now.

"I should have never married you! I should have never trusted you!" My father's loud voice echoed from the distance, as my head began to ache too.

I leaned my shoulder against the wall as I could barely make out the dark marble floor due to the tears which flooded my eyes.

"How could you do this to me!" He yelled.

But what about me?

How could they do this towards me? How could my own mother do this to me?

I pressed my hands on my ears, trying to cover the sound of my father's harsh voice towards my mother, or my brother's pleading voice for them to stop.

I wish, I hadn't been affected by this, but how could I not? When I finally understood why I was hated ever since the day I was born.

"You have ruined everything!"

"W-What else w-was I supposed to do? It is n-not like any of us cared if A-Aurelia was alive."

Even with my hands clamped over my ears, I can still hear them.

The shouting, the cries, the bitter words- they penetrate through my hands, through my body, through everything. Each word feels like a knife slicing through my heart.

I press my hands even harder against my ears, my fingers digging into my scalp. I feel the blood on my nails from my scalp.

Suddenly, I hear the door open to my father's office, but I can't see anything anymore.

The world starts to blur, the edges of my vision darkening. The room spins, and I feel myself slipping away, my body feels heavy.

I take one last, shuddering breath, and then, finally, everything goes black.