NERO'S LITTLE WITCH

CHAPTER ONE

[Palermo, Sicily - Hella's Apartment]

Hella's father had one talent that never failed him–leaving his two daughters standing in whatever mess he'd made but nothing prepared Hella for this greater mess.

Hella was eating leftover pasta and her phone had lit up on the kitchen counter. Unknown number. She almost ignored it but somehow she reached for it and flip the screen over.

The picture loaded slowly on her bad wifi connection, pixel by pixel from the top, and by the time the full image settled, Hella's fork was already on the floor.

Amara.

Her little sister was sitting on a concrete floor somewhere, knees pulled to her chest, still wearing the yellow hoodie with the broken zipper she'd been meaning to fix for two months. She wasn't visibly hurt. But her eyes were doing that thing they did when she was terrified and trying not to show it.

A message came under the picture.

★ Your father owes the Vitale family 4.2 million euros. Bring him or bring the money. You have 48 hours. Don't involve the police. You know what family this is.

Hella read it twice, set the phone face down on the counter, then picked it back up and read it again.

She knew what family it was. Everyone in Palermo knew what family it was.

She sat there for six minutes exactly, staring at the wall above the stove.

Then she got up, washed her face, found her jacket on the back of the door, and left the apartment.

[House Of Vitale, Palermo]

Hella arrived at the gate at half past midnight with her hands in her jacket pockets and her inhaler in the right one where she could reach it fast.

She told the guards her name and why she was here. They made a call and then led her to a room.

The room had three people in it.

Fred Vitale was the only one she recognized and another man that was sitting in the far corner of the room. He looked at Hella when she entered and she looked back at him for exactly one second before something told her he wasn't the one she needed to pay attention to.

There was another man standing at the desk with his back half-turned, finishing something on a document in front of him. He capped his pen and turned around fully.

"Sit," he said but Hella refused.

Nero looked at her for a moment longer, then pulled the chair out from the desk himself and sat down.

"Your father," he said. "Where is he."

"I don't know where he is," Hella replied "he left eight months ago. No contact since and I'm here because I want my sister."

"You came with no money and no father," Fred remarked pleasantly from the wall.

Hella kept her expression even. "I barely know the man. But whatever it is, whatever he owes, I'm telling you I will clear it. I'll work, I'll pay, I'll do whatever arrangement you want. I just want Amara back."

Fred laughed like she'd said something funny.

Luciano in the corner said nothing. He was looking at Hella now with those quiet unreadable eyes, and she noticed without meaning to that he hadn't reacted once to anything that had been said in this room.

"Last time," Nero said. "Where is your father."

"I told you the truth," Hella said. "If I knew where he was, I would tell you. He left me with nothing the same as he left you with a missing debt. I have no reason to protect him."

Nero looked at her then he said, "Bring the girl," without raising his voice, and a door to the left opened.

Amara came through it looking small and frightened and deeply relieved all at once, and the sound she made when she saw Hella wasn't quite a word. Hella took one step toward her automatically.

"Tell me where he is and she walks out with you right now."

"I don't know," Hella said again looking at Neroa and Fred lost all patience. He removed his gun from wherever he was keeping it and aimed at one person in particular and clicked.

The bullet hit Amara's chest and Hella felt her heart evaporating.

"Amara! Amaraaaaa!!!!" Hella screamed insanely running across the room and catching Amara in her arms before dropping to her knees.

"Amara, baby look at me, look at me... please" Hella cried touching her pulse. There was no breath and her body was already limp, the bullet hole deep and dark.

Fred lowered his gun looking satisfied with the chaos that just broke lose.

"Beautiful chaos," he moaned disdainfully.

Nero signalled at some of the mob guards by his left, and they began rushing to the center and they carried Amara's lifeless body away.

On their way out, Hella's eyes met Nero's, her tears so bitter in her mouth as their eyes hooked.

She wants to take his soul to hell, she wants to bloody his body.

She wants to.....

Her thoughts were cut when she was forced to stand and then was scurried away to where she don't know.

Hella screamed as they pulled her through a door and down a corridor and shoved her into a small windowless room.

She hit the door once with both fists before slid down against the door.

Then pulled her knees to her chest.

She was still there when the lock turned again.

CHAPTER TWO

Fred face came into view as he crouched down to her level on the floor with his pleasant face arranged into something that was trying to be sympathy and not quite making it, and he told her Amara was dead.

Hella looked at him and said nothing.

"I'm sorry," he added, and the word came out of his mouth sounding like a pebble dropped into water. "She lost too much blood."

"Your father's debt doesn't disappear because of what happened tonight," Fred continued, standing back up and dusting off his trousers. "If anything it compounds. You came here and caused a disruption."

"Get out," Hella said.

"We still need...."

"Get out of this room," she snapped again, and her voice was so flat and so empty that Fred actually stopped talking and stared at her properly before leaving.

Hella sat there for another hour, maybe two. The light overhead was a single bare bulb that gave everything a yellowish cast that she hated. She used her inhaler twice more, which meant she was burning through it faster than she should.

The next day....

It was mosquito bites that woke her up. Hella yawned covering her mouth. She had slept and it was obviously another day. The door flung open and an old woman walked in.

"Get up poor thing" she said in a husky voice, dragging Hella to her feet. She was then ushered to where she took her bath and brushed her teeth but she had to wear the same cloth she was putting on earlier. They served her food but she didn't even have a bite. She refused to eat the food of people who had killed her sister. The thought of that made tears slipped uncontrollably from her eyes. "Amara" she whispered sniffing. She was just wiping her tears when some sets of guards made to drag her but she freed herself or they let her.

"I can walk" Hella snapped glaring daggers at them before following them like a puppy.

Inside, Nero sat like a king and he looked at her for a moment, then reached into his jacket and produced his phone, turned the screen toward her without a word.

Live footage of a small house and two men standing outside the gate with their hands in their jackets.

that's her grandmother's house. No not her grandma too.

Not her.

Hella quickly knelt, shaking.

"No. Don't do it!" She said loudly "No, please, she has nothing to do with...."

"Your father's debt," Nero said calmly, pocketing the phone. "You said you'd clear it. You said you'd do anything."

"Please, she's an old woman and..." Hella whispered again bead of tears forming at her eyes circle.

"I have a special mission to go for at 8, why not make the remaining minutes before 8 enjoyable, I might think of sparing him." Nero cut her off, and her breaths caught.

"W...what do you mean?" She stuttered without meaning to.

Roughly, his thumb targeted her rough lips. He pressed it so hard a little blood exploded, then he leaned forward, and her chest locked.

His gaze.

That gaze made it feel like a thousands phantom ants are crawling over her skin.

"Let's see if your mouth is good at pleasuring, just the way it's good at telling lies," he started, relaxing.

"You crawled to me, that's a bonus. Now undo my belt, pull out whatever you find there and take it to your lying mouth." He ordered.

"What!" She gagged.

"Yeah. Your grandma lives only if you cooperate." Nero said quietly with a smirk.

Hella looked at him with all the hatred she had, which was considerable, and he received it without expression. He's already smoking.

Each drag he took sent smokes into her lungs, making her asthma twitch in protest, but she held it down as her hands went to his crotch.

The guards in the room all turned around immediately on the scene that's about to happen.

The trouser is dark chinos, so the zip and belt was so easy to undo. One short minute, his cock was out.

Hella's tears dropped on it as her head went down, her mouth opened.

She took the long pink-capped cock in her mouth.

Her warmness wrapped around it like a sheath, and Nero adjusted, but he made no sound.

He didn't touch her, he just smoked with careless grace like she was doing nothing as she sucked him slowly.

Her head was barely moving, and she hasn't even taken everything inside, but he's already logged in her throat.

Her hands gripped his thighs, so hard that her nails dug into his chinos fabric as she deep-throated, taking everything inside.

Nero looked down at her head, smirking after releasing another cloud of smokes to the air.

"You'll have to try harder." He commented.

Hella held the base, grunting as she went all in again, using her tongue to lick the shaft, the tip on the cap and the sides on the balls, using her saliva as the improvised lubricant.

"You get a D grade for that move, much better." Nero's sick voice dropped again as his head went up.

Hella felt her cheeks bulging as he started growing in her mouth, preparing to burst.

"Faster," He ordered and she followed with the pliancy of a beaten animal, looking for scrap. Her eyes reddened and cold tears leaked out.

Nero finally bursted in her mouth, releasing everything.

He pulled himself out, and Hella was about to spit away the cûm when another order came...

"Swallow it."

Her palms balled, her knuckles paled, revealing the shaky set of bones under her flesh aas she did it.

Nero bolted up and stood to his feet eventually.

She looked back up at him and held his gaze because she refused to be the one who looked away first.

He was the one who looked away.

He moved toward the door and stopped with his hand on it, his back to her.

She could still taste the cûm on her tongue, and no matter how many times she spat, the taste lingered.

"You'll be staying in room at the end of the hall," he said and left.

Down the corridor on her way to the room they'd assigned her, she passed an open doorway and caught a figure inside, standing near the window in the dark.

Luciano.

He didn't say anything but she felt his eyes follow her down the corridor.

She found the room and went inside.

[Port - 9:43pm]

Nero stood somewhere outside his suit is off, but his black shirt and waistcoat is on, and habitually, his sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and his right hand is inside his pocket where he's playing with his lighter.

The three men at the entrance looked at each other.

"You really came" a voice was heard.

"You asked me to," Nero replied, and started walking.

The man's name was Tino. He'd been the one intercepting Vitale shipments at this port for eight months, rerouting cargo, filing false damage reports, making things disappear into paperwork. He'd also been the one, three days ago, who'd sent a message to the Vitale estate and Nero had come himself because that message required a personal response.

The other two men moved when Nero reached the entrance, one to each side, and Nero looked at the one on the left and then the one on the right with the same expression he looked at everything, flat and then he did something with his elbow to the one on the right that rearranged the man's nose across his face and sent him into the corrugated wall of the warehouse and the one on the left pulled a knife which Nero took from him so smoothly and so fast using his l'Ombra technique and he buried the knife in the man's thigh, and that was both of them dealt with in under seven seconds.

Tino had stepped back into the warehouse so Nero followed him in.

He was about stepping in when his phone rang.

"Hella is threatening to jump down the balcony" Greg's voice, his personal guard was heard across the line.

"I'll be there in few minutes. You know what to do" Nero replied and ended the call.

Tino had backed up against a stack of crates in the middle of the space and was holding a gun in both hands that were shaking badly enough to be visible from the entrance, and Nero walked toward him.

"Stop, or I'll shoot you, I swear on my mother I'll shoot you right now...."

"Then shoot," Nero replied, and kept walking but Tino didn't shoot.

"Thirty-one shipments. Eighteen of them rerouted, nine reported damaged, four disappeared entirely and then you send me that message." Nero uttered.

Tino's gun was still up, still shaking. "I...i...was told to send it."

"I know you were told," Nero said. "Who sent you."

"Who sent you," Nero said again but Tino's mouth closed.

Then he did something that Nero had expected but before he could close his jaw, Nero crossed the distance between them and got his hand under the man's jaw and pushed up, forcing his mouth open, and he looked at Tino with those flat dark eyes before whispering, "Nobody dies in this building tonight except by my hand and only when I decide. So you can keep that tongue where it is and use it."

Tino's eyes were wet. His whole body was shaking now, the gun somewhere on the floor behind them, and he was making sounds that weren't words yet.

"I can't," he managed, when Nero loosened the grip enough to let him speak. "If I tell you he'll..."

"He'll what," Nero said and Tino finally spilled the name. Nero wasn't surprised though as he let go of Tino's jaw.

"You said you were told to send that message," he said.

"Yes," Tino replied.

"Was it worth it." Nero asked crouching down to his level and said gently, "I'm going to ask you that again in a moment and I want you to think about your answer."

He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a cigarette and his lighter, lit it, took one drag, and offered it to Tino, who took it with a shaking hand and smoked it.

Then Nero stood.

"Was it worth it," he asked again and before Tino could open his mouth, Nero gunned him down twice and stepped over his lifeless body and on his way out, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

"Get me a horse whip," he said. "The heaviest one. Soak it in acid."

He ended the call and got in the car.

In the estate, Hella was asleep and had no idea what was coming for her.