A love like ours ✔️

♚31.The Blood Eagle

Rafael

When I bought our estate in the Queens a month and a half ago, I also aquired the gated comunities surounding it. I thought it would be good to move some of our people and their families closer to us, to make them mingle and get used to each other before the merge happens. Besides, this way is easier to control the land in our proximity. There's a warehouse reserved for keeping our prisoners and a building dedicated to the tech team at the edge of the comunity neighbouring us to the East.

"I didn't expect you to be back so soon." Adira says. Her blue eyes snap from her paperwork to me, taking in my dirty combat suit as I walk into the sitting area of the warehouse. She' twirling a switchblade between the fingers of her right hand. Clearly my wife has rubbed on her. "Jesus, I told you to at least let him wash up before giving him the news, D."

"Only because you wouldn't have been the one whose face meets his fist when he found out I've kept this from him." My brother scoffs, running his hands trough his caramel brown hair. "And that's the sugar coated version"

"Fair enough." Putting her knife away, she raises from the couch.

Apparently Soraya has called both Demian and Rokoti before coming to my rescue. She told them about the situation and made them promise that if anything happend to her he'll have my back. It makes me furious to know that she was convinced she's engaging in a suicide mission. Her request is why, for the past month, they'd been a constant pain in my ass. But I've come to learn why she values their friendship so much. Addie and Apolo had been restless in the task of finding her.

"Would the two of you stop speaking about me as if I weren't in the room?" I snap, heading towards the basement. "And for fuck's sake, there's no need for a change of clothes when I'll soon be covered in fresh blood anyways."

My team and I purged the remanants of the Chen Triad from the North-East of the country just now, by destroying their outpost located in Newburgh. I got here immediately after, hence my ruffled up appearance. But like I said, I don't care about it. Not when Addie has managed to track down the mole who fed the Chinese information.

"Last time I checked you didn't torture women." the blonde shoots back.

She's right, but what makes me stop in front of the first holding cell's door and look at her is the fact that a female was the traitor. All the girls who work for Soraya are like Adira- human trafficking rescues that couldn't or wouldn't return to their old lives. She rehabilitates them then offers them jobs, some legal, others in the Mafia. The Morellis and Russos might be criminals, but we don't sell people. Like she once told me, it's monsters like us that keep the ones that are worse in check.

"Her women are loyal."

"We wouldn't betray her. But this one bitch is not one of us and we have to be cautious about how we get to her and make her talk."

"You're telling me she's not in the cells?" I snap.

"Calm down. We can't just pluck Valeria Morelli from the streets and expect no repercussions, can we?"

"Valeria? How would she even-" As the realisation sets in I grind teeth together in frustration. I never trusted her so I can't say I didn't expect her to do something like this. "Who's the fool that fell into her trap? At least tell me he's here."

"Federico Bocelli, the Capo responsible for the Morelli intel. And yes, he is."

Conveniently, the man in his late 30s is the one who antagonised Ray the most ever since she started to make her way up trough the ranks. However, she never had to put him in his place like she did with Gallo, because most of her other Capos support her position.