Sacrifice: The Mafia Don's Pregnant Wife

I was the illegitimate daughter of a powerful mafia Consigliere, forced to scrub their marble floors while my half-sister Cassidy lived like a pampered princess.

When Cassidy was ordered to marry a condemned, brutally tortured Underboss in a deadly blood-oath execution, my father dragged me to the underground black site to take her place.

They forced me into a cheap wedding dress and locked me in a pitch-black cell with a dying man, expecting us both to catch an executioner's bullet.

My stepmother even handed me a small glass vial through the iron bars-the exact same poison she had used to slowly murder my pregnant mother years ago.

"The Don is issuing the kill order tonight. Drink this. Save yourself the agony," she mocked.

My father simply stood by and watched, willingly throwing me to the wolves just to keep his precious legitimate daughter entirely safe.

I stared at the poison in my calloused palm, and then at the bleeding, terrifying mafia boss chained to the concrete wall.

They honestly thought I was just a disposable pawn, meant to die quietly in the dirt so they could continue building their glamorous underworld empire on my mother's bones.

But they forgot I inherited my mother's underground medical brilliance.

I pulled a sterilized scalpel from my hidden trauma kit, looked the deadly Underboss right in the eye, and made a blood vow that would soon burn my family's entire empire to the ground.

Chapter 1

Chloe POV

I was fighting my raw, blistered arms into the boned bodice of a wedding dress when my stepmother's fingers clamped onto my jaw. She brought her face so near I could smell the cloying scent of her perfume, whispering that since Cassidy had gone so far as to throw herself into the estate's landscape lake, staging a dramatic drowning and feigning a coma to escape this fate, I had to take her place. If I did not die alongside the condemned mafia heir in the underground black site, my father would have my mother's grave opened and her bones scattered in the ocean.

The threat hung in the stagnant air of my cramped attic room. Brenda smiled, her perfectly painted red lips stretching over teeth of a startling, porcelain white.

She adjusted the cheap lace collar around my neck, her manicured nails leaving four sharp indentations in my skin.

I stared back at her, my face a carefully blank canvas. I had learned long ago that showing fear to a predator only made them bite harder.

My father, Charles, stood in the doorway. He was a powerful Consigliere in the Syndicate, a man who wore custom Italian suits and commanded fear across the city, yet he could not bring his gaze to meet mine.

He was tossing his illegitimate daughter to the wolves to save his precious legitimate child, Cassidy, from a blood-oath marriage to a dead man walking.

They zipped the dress up. It was too tight across my chest and too long at the hem-a shroud disguised as a gown.

Two massive Syndicate enforcers took my arms and dragged me down the grand staircase of the estate. I did not struggle.

I let them shove me into the back of a heavily armored black SUV. The doors slammed shut, the sound a heavy, final thud that sealed me in with the smell of old leather and gun oil.

As the engine roared to life, I leaned my head against the tinted glass. A dark, bitter amusement curled in my chest. Charles thought he was discarding a useless pawn.

He had built his entire empire on the back of my mother's underground medical brilliance and her underworld connections. When she was no longer useful, he let Brenda poison her slowly, leaving me to scrub their floors with calloused hands.

They thought I was going to die today. They were wrong.

The SUV rumbled over uneven terrain for an hour before coming to a violent halt. The doors opened to the blinding glare of floodlights.

We were at the Syndicate black site-a heavily guarded concrete fortress hidden deep in the wastelands.

Silas, the corrupt Syndicate Fixer, stood waiting by a heavy steel door. He wore a mocking grin, his eyes tracing the poorly stitched seams of my cheap wedding dress with a theatrical slowness.

"A grim venue for a bride, I confess," Silas's voice was a low drawl. "The Don insists on upholding the old traditions, even for a traitor."

I stepped out of the vehicle, the cold wind whipping my hair across my face. I looked Silas dead in the eye, entirely unfazed by his intimidation tactics.

"Lead the way."

Silas blinked, his smirk faltering for a fraction of a second. He turned and swiped a keycard.

The heavy steel doors groaned open, revealing a dark, damp stairwell that smelled of rust, bleach, and old blood.

I descended into the earth, my heels making a sharp, lonely report against the concrete. The air grew colder with every step.

At the bottom of the stairs, a single barred cell sat in the center of a cavernous basement.

Silas unlocked the iron gate, applied a firm pressure to the small of my back that sent me stumbling inside, handed me a silver flask, and walked back up the stairs without another word. The heavy door slammed shut above, its echo swallowed by the thick concrete, locking me in a ten-square-meter box that stank of bleach and damp earth.

I righted myself, the grit of the floor scraping against the palms of my hands. In the deepest, darkest corner of the cell, a man was chained to the wall.

Leo. The Underboss they called the Lion.

Before he was framed for poisoning the Old Boss's favorite wife, Leo was a force in the underworld. It was said that his name alone caused rival Capos to sweat through their silk shirts. He commanded an army of ruthless Soldiers.

Now, he was a broken, bleeding mess, waiting for the executioner's bullet.

I reached up and pulled the cheap veil off my head, tossing it onto the filthy floor.

Leo lifted his head. The dim light caught his face, and my breath hitched.

Even battered and bruised, his features held the sharp, unforgiving lines of a fallen statue. His jaw was a hard angle, his cheekbones high, and his dark eyes burned with a still, contained rage.

He stared at me, his gaze dropping to the white dress, and then to my face. He did not recognize me. He had been expecting Cassidy.

"Are you ready to drink the blood-oath whiskey?" My voice was steady, echoing off the damp walls.

Leo let out a low, raspy growl. It sounded like metal scraping against stone.

"Do you realize you are going to share my execution, little girl?"

"I know." I held up the silver flask. From a hidden fold in my skirt, I produced a sterilized scalpel. The steel felt cold against my skin as I drew it firmly across the pad of my index finger, watching three thick drops of crimson fall and dissolve into the amber liquid. "I had no choice in the matter. Drink."

He lunged forward as far as the heavy chains would allow. His coarse knuckles clamped over my radial artery; the pressure was so immense I could hear the faint compression of cartilage between my wrist bones, my pulse hammering against his fingertips.

"You are a fake. A cheap substitute." He sneered, his breath a hot, foul gust across my face. "Charles didn't have the spine to send his real daughter."

He looked ready to snap my arm in half.

I did not flinch. I let him hold my wrist, letting him feel my steady pulse. Then, with my free hand, I drove my thumb and forefinger into the hollows of his cheeks, forcing his jaw open with a pained grunt.

Exhaustion suddenly overtook him. His grip loosened. He slumped back, and I tipped the flask's cold rim against his lips, forcing the harsh liquor mixed with my blood past his teeth.

He shoved the flask back into my chest, the impact sending me back a step.

"I have loyal Soldiers," he rasped, his head falling back against the cold stone, his eyes slipping shut. "I will give you the location of my offshore accounts. They will get you out of here before the kill order drops. You don't have to die with a dead man."

I uncapped the flask and took a long, burning swig of the whiskey. The fire coated my throat, sealing the mafia vow.

"How bad are your injuries?" I asked bluntly. "And are you strong enough to consummate this marriage?"

Leo's eyes snapped open. He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

"What insane thoughts are running through your head?"

I set the flask down and stepped closer to him. I reached forward and grabbed the collar of his ruined, blood-soaked shirt.

"I am going to treat your wounds."

He violently swatted my hands away. His eyes darkened with absolute hostility.

"Get your hands off me. Patching up a corpse is a waste of time."

"I am an underground trauma medic." I looked down at his chest, spotting deep lacerations that looked dangerously close to the bone. "And you are not a corpse yet."

I knelt on the cold floor and lifted the heavy layers of my wedding dress. Strapped to my thigh was my mother's hidden medical kit.

I unrolled the canvas fabric, revealing sterilized needles, high-grade sutures, and crushed painkillers.

Leo watched me in heavy silence. He stopped resisting as I reached out, my calloused fingers finding the edges of his deepest wound.

I worked meticulously. The basement was dead quiet, save for the sound of my ragged breathing and his occasional sharp intake of air.

I cleaned the infected cuts, my hands steady despite the horrific damage to his flesh. A fine sheen of sweat broke out across his brow from the agony, his muscles jumping under my touch, but he refused to make a single sound.

When I tied off the last suture, Leo slumped against the chains. He looked at the ceiling, a dark nihilism settling over his features.

"Stop wasting your effort. We are dead."

I packed up my supplies. I stood up and gripped the cold iron of his chains, leaning in close so he could see the absolute certainty in my eyes.

"Neither of us is going to die in this cell." My voice was a low, fierce promise. "I am going to walk out of here with you."

Leo slowly turned his head. His dark, intense eyes locked onto mine. He stared at me for a long time, silently testing the weight of my words.

I held his gaze and did not look away. Because I knew something he didn't-I had not come here to die. I had come here to burn their entire world to the ground, and I needed the Lion to do it.

Chloe POV

The damp cold of the basement sank into my bones over the next few days. I slept on the concrete floor in the furthest corner of Leo's cell, curled into a tight ball in my ruined wedding dress.

Leo's vitality was a terrifying thing to witness. With his infections cleaned and his wounds stitched, his body began to knit itself back together at an unnatural pace. The fever broke on the third night.

Those first three days passed in a strange, suspended silence. I kept to my corner; he kept to his. The only words exchanged were clinical-"Let me check the sutures," or "Drink more water, or the fever will spike again."

But silence has its own language in a cage.

I caught him watching me. Not with hostility anymore, but with something quieter-a predator's patient assessment, recalibrating its understanding of a creature that had wandered into its den and refused to act like prey. When our eyes met, he didn't look away. Neither did I.

The first night the fever peaked, I woke to the sound of him thrashing against the chains, his teeth grinding so hard I could hear the enamel creak. He was burning alive from the inside. I crawled across the cold floor, soaked my torn veil in the bucket of stagnant water the guards had left, and pressed it to his forehead.

He grabbed my wrist with frightening speed-pure reflex, his body fighting even when his mind was lost. His grip was crushing, his eyes open but unseeing, lost in whatever hell his fever had conjured.

"It's just me," I said, keeping my voice low and even, the way my mother used to speak to panicked gunshot victims on her kitchen table. "You're burning up. I'm cooling you down. That's all."

His grip didn't loosen, but his thumb shifted-just slightly-pressing into the hollow of my pulse point as if he were counting the beats. Grounding himself.

"The guards brought antibiotics," I added, the words a quiet murmur in the dark. "I slipped them into your water. You're going to hate the taste in the morning."

Something that might have been the ghost of a scoff escaped his cracked lips. His hand fell away. I pressed the cold cloth to his neck, his chest, the inside of his wrists where the chains had worn the skin raw.

He didn't thank me. But when I tried to retreat to my corner, his fingers caught the torn hem of my wedding dress-a grip so light I could have broken it with a single step. He wasn't pulling me closer. He just... didn't let go.

I stayed. I sat beside him on the cold stone, my back against the damp wall, and let him hold onto that scrap of lace like a lifeline.

The gesture was so small, so absurdly fragile, that I felt something shift in my chest. A warning bell, distant and half-heard. Don't mistake this for tenderness, I told myself. He's clinging to the only thing in this cell that isn't trying to kill him. It's biology, not affection.

But biology had never made my pulse stumble before.

Morning came slow, a faint graying of the darkness that bled through the air vents. He woke to find me still there, his fingers still tangled in my hem. He released me instantly, his jaw setting into something hard and unreadable, as if the vulnerability of the night had been a shameful secret the daylight had exposed.

"Your stitches held," I said, gesturing toward his chest. "No bleeding. Minimal swelling. You heal like a machine."

He said nothing. But that evening, when the guards shoved a tray of stale bread and thin soup through the slot, he pushed the larger portion toward my side of the cell with the back of his knuckles. A gesture so casual it could have been an accident. But it wasn't.

"You need to eat," he said. Flat. Dismissive. As if it were a tactical observation rather than concern.

"So do you."

Worse than this. I filed that away, wondering what "worse" looked like to a man who was currently chained to a wall in a death row cell.

The second night, he slept-a true, deep sleep, the kind of rest that only comes when the body finally surrenders to healing. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, noting the way the tension in his brow softened, just barely, when unconsciousness stripped away whatever demons he carried.

He was beautiful like this. The thought arrived unbidden and unwelcome. Beautiful in the way a blade was beautiful-all lethal function and terrible purpose. I forced myself to look away.

The third night, I woke to find his coat draped over me. It smelled of blood and gunpowder and something underneath that was just him-smoke and cedar and a cold, sharp fury that somehow felt like shelter.

I didn't mention it when morning came. Neither did he. But when our eyes met across the cell, something had changed-a silent understanding that we were no longer strangers sharing a grave, but two people who had chosen, in the smallest ways, to keep each other alive.

It was on the fourth night that the danger became unmistakable.

He was strong enough to stand now, testing the limits of his chains with controlled, deliberate movements. I was checking his bandages when my knuckles brushed the bare skin of his ribs, and I felt him go perfectly, dangerously still.

"Your hands are steady," he said. The words were low, almost contemplative, but there was an edge beneath them-a current I didn't know how to read.

"My mother trained me," I replied, keeping my voice clinical. "Steady hands are the difference between a patient who walks away and a patient who bleeds out on the table."

"Your mother taught you well."

It was the first personal thing he had ever said to me. An acknowledgment that I had a history, a life before this cell. I didn't know why it made my throat tighten.

"She taught me everything," I said quietly. "And then they killed her for it."

I felt his gaze sharpen, the weight of it pressing against the side of my face. I didn't elaborate, and he didn't ask. That was the dance we were learning-how to offer each other fragments without demanding the whole, how to leave space for the silences to speak.

That night, when I curled up in my corner, he spoke into the darkness.

"There's a loose brick behind the cot. Third from the left, bottom row. If the guards get aggressive, there's a shiv I made from a rusted nail. It's not much, but it's something."

I stared at the shadow where his voice had come from. "Why are you telling me this?"

A long pause.

"Because if they come for you before the execution, I'm chained to a wall. I can't stop them." His voice dropped, rougher now. "But you can."

He had armed me. A dying Underboss, chained and beaten, had spent what little strength he had scraping a nail into a weapon-and he had given its location to me instead of keeping it for himself.

Something cracked open in my chest, and I didn't know how to seal it shut again.

The days that followed blurred into an uneasy rhythm. I checked his wounds; he watched the door. I bribed the guards for better food; he memorized their shift changes with the precision of a man who had been planning escapes since before I was born. We talked in fragments-never about the outside world, never about what waited for us if we survived. Instead, we traded useless, intimate details: the songs our mothers sang, the way we took our coffee, the scars that had stories and the scars that didn't.

"I have a scar on my ribs from a broken bottle in a bar fight when I was sixteen," I told him one night, because the darkness made confessions easier. "I was trying to stop a drunk from hitting a woman. He didn't take kindly to the interference."

"Inherited your mother's instincts," he murmured. "What happened to him?"

"I stitched myself up in the bathroom and went home. He was found two weeks later with both his hands broken. I never found out who did it."

He said nothing. But there was something in his silence-a stillness that felt like a signature on an unsigned confession.

I chose not to press. Some gifts were meant to remain unopened.

On the sixth night, he let me sleep on the cot.

"I've slept on worse," he said, throwing my own words back at me with a ghost of dark humor that caught me so off guard I almost smiled.

"I'm not taking your cot."

"You're not taking it. I'm giving it to you. There's a difference."

I was too exhausted to argue. When I woke the next morning, he was sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes open and watching, a silent sentinel who had guarded my sleep through the darkest hours before dawn. He had wrapped his chains in strips of fabric torn from his ruined shirt so they wouldn't rattle and wake me.

I didn't thank him. But I pressed a cup of water into his hands and let my fingers linger against his for a beat longer than necessary. His knuckles turned white around the cup.

That was when I knew. Whatever this was-this strange, dangerous thing growing in the dark between a bastard daughter and a condemned king-it had stopped being a means of survival and started being something far more terrifying.

It had started being real.

On the seventh day, the heavy steel door at the top of the stairs groaned open, followed by the sound of heavy boots on the concrete steps. Two Syndicate guards unlocked the outer gate and dragged me up to the interrogation courtyard.

The air outside was thick with the metallic scent of blood and damp earth. Standing in the center of the courtyard, wrapped in expensive furs, were Brenda and Cassidy.

Cassidy pinched her nose, looking around the bleak concrete walls in disgust. "It smells like rotting meat down here."

Brenda ignored her daughter and stepped toward me. She reached into her designer bag, drew out a small, dark glass vial, and pressed it into my palm. "Your father secured this for you. It is a painless poison."

Brenda lowered her voice, feigning sympathy. "The Don is issuing the kill order tonight. They are going to torture Leo to death, and as his wife, they will do the same to you. Drink this. Save yourself the agony."

I looked down at the vial. It was the exact same poison she had used to kill my mother.

I sneered, my fingers curling tightly around the glass. "Since when does Charles offer mercy? The original target for this nightmare was your precious daughter."

Cassidy stepped forward and slapped me hard across the face. The crack echoed off the concrete walls. My head snapped to the side, a sharp sting blooming on my cheek.

"A bastard child like you deserves to be collateral damage!" Cassidy spit, her face twisted in ugly rage. "You think you are a martyr? Charles has already arranged my new betrothal. I am marrying Capo Carlo. The undisputed heir. I will be the Mafia Queen while you rot in the dirt."

I slowly turned my head back. I looked at Cassidy's vain, foolish face, and then at Brenda's calculating eyes. I tightened my grip on the vial, turned my back on them, and walked straight toward the basement stairs.

"I am going to survive," I said, the words carrying over my shoulder. "And I am going to watch you both burn."

I descended back into the darkness. The guards shoved me into the cell and locked the gate.

I walked up to the bars. Leo was sitting on his narrow cot, but the moment I stepped into the dim light, his eyes locked onto the angry red handprint on my pale cheek.

"Who touched you?"

His voice was a lethal, quiet command. It demanded blood.

I drew a curtain of hair over my cheek, the strands catching on the raw skin. "It was just some garbage. It doesn't matter."

Leo forced himself up. The heavy chains rattled violently as he stood at his full, intimidating height for the first time in days. He towered over me, and the very air in the cell seemed to grow dense and heavy around him. The battered prisoner was gone; the ruthless Underboss had returned.

A shadow fell over me as he closed the distance. He reached out, his large hand gripping my chin. His thumb traced the bruised skin of my cheek, and his eyes were entirely black, swirling with unsaid promises of violence.

I caught his wrist, holding his hand against my face. "What do you want to do most when we get out of here?"

His eyes went dead and cold. "I want to be the Don."

I laughed softly in the dark. "I will make sure you get the throne."

A dark smirk played on Leo's lips. He let go of my chin, stepping back into the shadows. He thought it was just the naive fantasy of a dead woman.

That night, the temperature plummeted, and I shivered violently on the concrete floor. Without asking for permission, I abandoned my cold corner and climbed onto Leo's narrow cot.

His massive body went completely rigid as I pressed my back against his chest. He did not push me away, and he radiated heat like a furnace.

I sighed, staring into the pitch-black cell. I was genuinely worried the Don's execution order might arrive before we could solidify our bond. If we did not consummate the marriage, the Syndicate would not recognize my status when he took power.

"Husband."

I whispered the word into the dark.

Leo's breathing hitched. The steady rhythm of his chest against my back staggered, his composure cracked.

"What would you do if I forced myself on you right now?" I asked boldly, turning my head to look over his shoulder.

Leo violently shoved me off the cot, and I hit the floor hard. He turned his back to me, pulling his heavy coat over his shoulders.

I sat up, a genuine smile breaking across my face. If he had the strength to shove me that hard, he had the strength for other things. I resolved to claim him soon.

He went on the defensive. For the next few hours, he stayed hyper-vigilant, refusing to sleep. I waited patiently in the dark, making up my mind to ambush him the moment he dropped his guard.

Just before dawn, his breathing finally evened out. I crawled silently across the floor and climbed over him.

Before my knees even touched the mattress, Leo woke instantly. His large hands shot out, pinning my wrists to the mattress above my head. He rolled, pressing his heavy weight over me, his eyes staring down into mine with a predatory, obsessive gleam.

His breath was ragged, his chest heaving against mine. For a long, suspended moment, neither of us moved. The cell was utterly silent except for the pounding of our hearts.

"You have no idea what you're asking for," he growled, his voice dropping to something dark and dangerous.

I met his gaze and did not flinch. "Then show me."

His mouth crashed down on mine, and the world outside the cell ceased to exist.

Chloe POV

I woke to the distant clang of metal doors somewhere above us, my body aching in ways I had never known. Leo's arm was wrapped around my waist like a steel band, his chest pressed flush against my back, his breath slow and even against my hair.

For the first time in years, I felt safe.

I turned my head slightly, studying his face in the dim light. Even in sleep, his jaw was set, his brow furrowed-as if he were still fighting, still protecting, even in his dreams.

I traced the edge of a scar along his collarbone, and his eyes snapped open instantly.

"Don't," he muttered, but there was no venom in it. His arm tightened around me instead of pushing me away.

"You're healing well," I said quietly.

He didn't respond. But his thumb traced a slow, absent circle against my hip, and I felt something shift between us-something that went far deeper than the blood-oath we had sworn.

"Why do you refuse to run?"

Leo's voice was a harsh grate against the thick silence of the cell later that morning. His massive weight pressed me down into the thin mattress once more, the pressure of his grip on my wrists a cold, metallic ache.

"Why do you insist on tying your fate to a dead man?"

I looked up into his dark, furious eyes. I did not struggle against his hold. I leaned my head up and kissed him fiercely on the mouth.

He froze, his body turning to stone.

"In my world, loyalty is absolute," I whispered against his lips. "We took the blood-oath. I will walk out of here with you."

His grip on my wrists tightened until my bones ached, but I held his gaze, even as my eyes glassed over with unshed tears.

"Trust me, Leo. Please."

Frustration boiled over in my chest, and I snapped at him, my voice echoing off the damp walls.

"I have been locked in a cage with you for days! My reputation is ruined. You need to stay alive to make this right."

Leo stared at me, a muscle feathering in his jaw. He released my wrists and pushed himself off the cot. He turned his back to me, running a hand through his dark, messy hair.

"You chose this path," he muttered, his voice heavy with a dark promise. "But I swear to God, if I die, I will ensure your safe passage out of the underworld. No one will touch you."

I sat up, rubbing my bruised wrists. He still did not believe I could save him. But he had begun to care whether I lived or died-and that was a crack in his armor I could work with.

The next morning, the heavy steel doors at the top of the stairs slammed open. Silas marched down the steps, flanked by four high-ranking Syndicate Capos. They did not carry weapons. Instead, one carried a pristine garment bag.

"An official decree has arrived from the Old Boss," Silas announced, his mocking tone completely gone. He looked nervous, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "It is a full pardon. The Don has fallen terminally ill and declared a Syndicate-wide amnesty. You are officially exonerated, Underboss."

Silas unlocked the cell and placed the garment bag onto the cot with trembling hands. He gestured frantically to the guards, who rushed forward, fumbling with their keys to unlock the heavy iron shackles binding Leo's wrists to the wall.

Leo did not say a word. He stripped off his ruined, blood-stained shirt right in front of them, unmoved by their presence. He pulled on the crisp white shirt and the custom-tailored black suit from the bag.

When he turned around, my breath caught in my throat.

The battered prisoner was gone. Standing before me was a man whose presence seemed to command the very shadows in the room. The suit hugged his broad shoulders perfectly, and the Capos who had entered with such authority now seemed to shrink, their eyes fixed on the floor.

I averted my eyes, a sudden cold dread coiling in my stomach. I remembered my mother's warnings-how she had told me never to trust the intoxicating allure of a mafia man. That they consumed everything they touched.

Leo noticed my hesitation. He stepped toward me, his large hand wrapping firmly around my lower back. He did not ask if I was ready; he simply guided me forward.

We walked up the stairs and stepped out of the black site, the blinding sunlight striking my face like a physical blow.

Waiting in the courtyard were Charles, Brenda, and Cassidy. Standing beside my corrupt family was Capo Carlo, the rival heir, his face twisted in absolute fury.

Charles stepped forward, sweating profusely as he plastered a sycophantic smile on his face.

"Congratulations, Underboss. And to my wonderful daughter, the new wife-"

Leo ignored him completely. He walked right past Charles as if he were a ghost, leaving my father stammering in his wake.

Cassidy's eyes were glued to Leo. She stared at his terrifying, handsome face, utterly mesmerized. From the naked regret in her eyes, I knew she realized in that moment exactly what she had thrown away.

Capo Carlo cleared his throat sharply, a harsh, grating sound that forced Cassidy to look away.

"Dumb luck, Leo," Carlo mocked, stepping into our path. "Enjoy the sun while you can."

Leo stopped. He looked down at Carlo with a gaze so cold it could freeze blood.

"I am sorry to disappoint you and your treacherous mother." Leo's voice was smooth, deadly calm.

Before Carlo could respond, Leo violently pulled me flush against his side. His arm wrapped around my waist like a steel band, claiming me publicly in front of the entire rival faction.

He guided me firmly into the back of his waiting armored SUV. The heavy doors slammed shut, cutting off the outside world.

I looked out the tinted windows as the SUV pulled away. I saw Charles's pale, terrified face, and Carlo kicking the dirt in rage.

We had won the first battle of the Vendetta.