The Queen of Fire

CH. 20

"Change is painful, but not as painful as staying stuck in a place you don't belong" - Mandy Hale

Giovanni De Luca

No one could have prepared me for this moment. I've read about it, watched it, but never had I experienced it for myself. People wrote songs about it, poems, whatever means necessary to express the emotion threatening to burst out of my chest. A moment like this was a phenomenon I could understand the hype about.

Having Sienna willingly seek me out in need of safety and reassurance did unspeakable things to me. In no way had I ever felt this powerful. This appreciated. This needed. Not even saving Cosa Nostra from my fathers insanity had felt close to this.

Sienna Bianchi. The woman I believed I loved before ever laying my eyes on her. The woman I had believed myself to be pining over from my side of the pond while she was prancing around like a princess in her concrete jungle. The woman that had captured my heart in a vice grip the second she opened up to me.

My infatuation with the golden goddess was nowhere near as drowning as having her admit to the crackling connection between us. Glancing down at the sleeping angel in my lap, the serene look on her face confused me.

For the three days we'd slept in the same bed together, she had been tossing and turning, muttering her family's names like she could find peace within herself to actually rest. As if her body couldn't or weren't allowed to grieve while she was still awake.

I hadn't been surprised by that. Compartmentalizing was a concept Sienna had excelled in from the very beginning of our unlabeled relationship. We'd seen it first hand at the mansion where we found her family slaughtered. In no way did we watch a grieving child mourning her loved ones for the violence they met. We saw her take charge and launch a full-blown vendetta like she was born to do just that.

What surprised me was the peacefulness she seemed to have found from the time I went out the door and the five hours we'd stayed apart. What had she encountered in those hours to make her perception drastically change? My gut lent towards Queenie as she'd experienced a similar awakening here.

Maybe we had been wrong about their anticipated friendship. Maybe they would do each other more good rather than shattering havoc, though havoc had to be expected with these women. Less amount of havoc anyway. Taking a moment to savor the small window of peace I had been offered, work knocked on the door, begging to be prioritized.

"Our shipment was hijacked on the way to Colombia. That's the third shipment this month. Leo has been notified about the ship and the crew. Dominic is having his men search the abandoned freighter now. This is a specific hit, Gio. We can't ignore this any longer" Luca whispered as he noticed Sienna sleeping like the dead on my lap, Dominic following close behind.

The raids had been a case I'd been working on my personal time, which was the reason I put a tracker on the product we shipped out in the first place. Not a single soul had been informed about my sudden command to tag our goods, but there was this lingering pit in my stomach that pointed to a man we knew far too well festering at the back of my mind.

"I know. Our customers have been informed about the delay. We've changed to secondary transportation routes. A tracker was put on the merchandise currently missing, and I'm waiting for confirmation from Noah that the shipment has stopped. It's currently en-route to the States. The completion concurs with the new crew rising out of New York" I informed, letting them in on the action.

At first, I had suspected a traitor from our own ranks, one unhappy with the way our family had evolved. The traditional Italian family in our line of work would have submissive wives, women in the kitchen type of dynamics. A way of sight that clashed with the four stongminded women we were currently hosting. The theory proved itself wrong when Sienna unconsciously killed one of their partners.