Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Gio, my sister-in-law's brother and the head of the West Coast Cosa Nostra, was family and off-limits.
Maybe that was why I was so drawn to him. Violence and death clung to him like he was born in the pits of hell, and he thrived on it.
Despite everything, I started a relationship with the devil himself, and I fell in love.
I had to keep it a secret, knowing my brothers would kill Gio if they found out.
But when I discovered I was pregnant, hiding it was impossible.
To make matters worse, Gio and my brothers found themselves entangled with a dangerous new syndicate.
It was a situation that threatened to ignite chaos and conflict, involving everyone I cared about.
Including my new forbidden lover and the baby we were bringing into this hell on earth.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
TATIANA
Ididn’t need to look down at the double pink lines to know what my fate was. I knew it was sealed the moment I realized I missed my period.
But I waited two weeks to go to the store and get a test, terrified of seeing a positive sign staring back at me.
And so I’d gone this morning, finally forcing myself because not having that confirmation was killing me.
I had to be careful. My brothers had men watching me, protecting me in their own twisted and domineering way.
But I took their overbearing attitude because it was for my safety.
Their enemies would use me to get to them.
It had been the story of my life since before our father died… murdered by a hit ordered by those very same brothers themselves.
I’d always been a pawn, a chess piece for everyone else to play. My life had never really been mine. Not really.
Not until I met him, and I’d gone against the rules and done whatever the hell I wanted to.
I stared at the test sitting on my vanity.
With shaky fingers, I picked it up and stared at the results. The two lines that showed were bright pink.
There was no shock.
There was no nervousness.
I felt… nothing.
And that terrified me more than anything else.
Even more than the baby growing inside me, whose father was not only family by marriage but also the head of the West Coast Italian Mafia.
Gio.
1
GIO
My father had been a bastard. He started beating me when I was five and hadn’t let up.
I hated him from the moment I knew there was a word for what I felt toward that asshole.
He never saw me as a son. He looked at me as an asset. An heir. A weapon.
And that’s what I was for him.
His gun and sword. His violence.
Marco Bianchi was weak in all ways. He was a tyrant and a motherfucker, and when it came to protecting his family, he failed at every turn.
He gave the abuse instead of protecting those closest to him from it.
But my father was no longer alive. His young mistress had killed him in a fit of passion and jealousy in front of me and my sisters.
After his death, I’d stepped into his shoes and taken on the role as head of the family and protector of those dearest to me.
My sisters Amara and Claudia.
My mother had never been a mother. She was a broken woman, a vessel molded to be whatever her husband wanted. She’d been a good little Italian mob wife. She watched her husband beat her children. She stood by and did nothing.
And because of that, I now saw her as nothing. She’d always be the woman who gave me life. I’d always make sure she was taken care of—as was my duty—but I had no love for her.
The scars my father and his men had given me and once covered my whole body were no longer visible. I covered them in dark ink—sweeping lines, artistic impressions, and patterns that illustrated the story of the vicious monster I housed within me.
I did what I did because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know anything different.
All I saw and felt was the need for destruction.
All I wanted in those moments—the moments in which I was known as D’yavol—Devil—was to end the threat that was about to step into the ring with me.
To deliver the pain that my sisters and I were subjected to our entire lives.
To feel good when blood splattered my face and a body lay at my feet.
I sat in the back room of the dilapidated warehouse and waited. My eyes closed. My heart rate steady.
Butcher and Son had been a slaughterhouse back in the day. It held the city together economically. But after the business’s collapse, the city of Desolation, New York, had fallen apart, broken even more than it already had been.
The property and land had been purchased ages ago by an anonymous buyer.
I didn’t need to know who actually owned it. I knew it was someone just as bad as the men in my part of the underworld, but I wasn’t sure if the title holder was actually a part of it. Maybe a former crime boss. Maybe a legitimate businessman who dabbled in money laundering or sex trafficking.
The person who owned this old slaughterhouse was most definitely not a good person, since they allowed torture, beatings, and killings. So most likely, they were deeply involved in the international crime syndicate I was a part of.
On the outside, Butcher and Son looked like a ruined building hanging on to its last thread of life.
But to the men like me—the violent criminals—it was a hub for illegal activities, underground fighting, and a place many took their last breath.
And the cops didn’t fucking care. They turned a blind eye because it filled their fucking pockets with blood money.