"She was far from an angel."
Ilaria D'Angeli has never had a normal life. Kidnapped by her father mere months after her birth, she has no idea that she's secretly the lost princess of the Italian mafia. After a series of unfortunate events, she beca...
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THE HEART IS A STRANGE CREATURE. You would think it'd be easy, to just follow along like all the other parts in these cages we call bodies. Kidneys, for example. You don't have to ask them to filter toxins out of your blood because they're reliable, dependable, simple. But that's exactly the problem with hearts, is that there's nothing easy to understand about them. They're wired directly on fear, the most complex and fallible emotion of them all. Our hearts hide our darkest desires so deeply that most of us will spend the rest of our lives trying to fill the void that the lack of them leaves.
I promise I haven't always been this cynical. At a point in time I even had hope for myself, that my life would get better. I thought I'd be free from this endless cycle of self destruction, but that was long before I learned how the world worked. It'd always fuck me over somehow and make it feel like I had to beg my heart just for it to keep beating.
The sight of another seven bottles being thrown into the air immediately pulled me out of my thoughts. My finger pressed the trigger of my trusty Kimber Rapide seven times in a row, shooting a bullet right through each one as always. The bottles exploded into a waterfall of glass shards, and I took in the familiar sight once again, smirking internally.
"Ria, you literally haven't missed a shot since you were eight years old. Don't you think you should get, maybe, more than fifteen minutes of sleep every night?" Deja asked sarcastically. I rolled my eyes at my best friend's comment, fixing my gaze back to her. She had beautiful dark brown skin and big matching eyes as well as curls to die for, and currently she had a knowing expression directed right toward little old me.
"And that's the exact reason why I don't miss. Practice makes perfect, and I can't be off my game," I shrugged. I was right, after all. In this life, it's simply a necessary skill to have.
"Maybe consider practicing when it's light out?" she suggested pointedly. I couldn't believe her, judging my sleeping habits like that. The audacity.
"Well you're up, too," I defended. She rolled her eyes and scoffed.
"Bitch, I woke up half an hour ago! It's almost six in the morning and you've been here the entire night."
Shit. It was morning already? Like clockwork, my morning alarm went off right after she said that. I gave her a sheepish look, immediately grabbing my phone and turning it off. And there goes another sleepless night.
I had been having a lot of those recently, where I'd go to the shooting range at the warehouse and lose myself in my own head for hours on end, as long as it meant I could avoid the terrors I'd face in my nightmares. Besides, being able to practice whenever I wanted was one of the things I liked most about the Koslov estate. To me there's always been something liberating in causing destruction, and it's a luxury I'm deprived of whenever I'm in the hell that I'm supposed to call "home". The mafia does have its benefits, getting to do basically whatever illegal shit you want coming in second place. First has to be the escape from my old life. After primarily living here at the estate for the past nine years, sometimes I even forget it existed.
