A love like ours ✔️

♛1.On weapons and marriage

Soraya

A weapon. According to the dictionary a weapon is a thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage, a means of gaining an advantage or defending oneself in a conflict or contest.

A weapon comes in many forms: guns, arrows, knives.... but the concealed forms are the most dangerous ones. Wit, slyness, beauty, seductivness, the ability of making oneself desirable. Those are the weapons used by the most dangerous predatours to ensnare their prey, to charm it until it's time to strike.

The mafia is a patriarchy, there's no hiding from that. In the Cosa Nostra ,the Bratva, the Cartel or any other variation of it, women are bargaining chips, pretty accesories used to forge alliaces, to bind families together, to produce heirs, to flaunt on your arm. Yes, mafia men are sexist. Alas, hoping to change them all is quixotic, a fight against the windmills.

My father, the Don of the Morelli mafia, which is in control of America's East Coast, saw this flaw in the outdated thinking ways, the wasted potential of the mafia wives and daughters. So when my mother, the love of his life, gave birth only to a girl before she was taken away from this world too soon by the enemy, papa hooned me as his deadliest asset. I was gonna inherit his throne and become the Donna.

Father said I must rise trough the ranks by myself so that I can learn the ins and outs of the business, to know every wheel of the mechanism... I've had to kick my father's best soldiers' asses more than once to prove myself worthy of becoming a soldier at 16 ,to show no mercy and hesitation in torturing our enemies for me to be advanced as a lieutenant then shortly after as a captain at 18. I won a war against a gang who caused us problems to become a general by 19. I almost lost my life in a solo mission taking down a rival mafia, at 21 so that I could finally become a first capo.

I've proved myself to our people, I've earned their loyalty by sweating and bleeding besides them. I know that they'd die for me as I'd for them. Starting from the bottom helped me realise the value of each and every one of the members of the Morelli mafia.

What I've learned during the years,is that you must show no mercy, no hesitation. You do not falter and when you're striken down you must rise taller and stronger upon the ashes of your enemies. You build your throne on their bones and wear the scars they've given you as spoils of war. There's nothing more sweeter than crushing them under your heels- that are bigger than their dicks might I add- after they've overlooked you for being a woman.

But I, Soraya Eliana Morelli, am still vulnerable in this world of ours. Even if I'm prideful I won't allow that to be the cause of our people's death. Once I take over, the rival mafias will attack me believing I'm a weak minded spoiled creature, a brat who'd taken over on a whim, who has slept her way to the top. They'll strike and strike and strike and for that I'll need strong allies to back me up. The problem is, strong allies that won't switch sides once things get hard, are difficult to come across .

It is this subject that I'm curently debating with my old man, Damiano, after dinner in his office. I'm sitting on the comfy leather chair in front of his hardwood desk, and he's reclining on the one oposite from mine, a whiskey tumbler in his hand. He never puts the desk between us, unless I've caused too much trouble and he had to scold me.

"Papa, I've already told you that the Tanakas have my back." The Tanakas are a powerful branch of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. "I've talked to Yoshiro, even if there'd be a chance he held a grudge against me, which he doesn't, he still ows me for saving his life years ago."

"It is still not enough, Ana" Only he calls me that. I cannot supress the corner of my lips from tugging up. This man has been one of my two rocks after mama died, and I'd like to think that I've been his. He never took another lover, not in public anyways, although I've never opppsed the idea of him moving on. "The young heir does not have the power yet. What if his father denies him?" he argues, taking a sip from his drink.