Mafia Betrayal

Epilogue

Luca

1 Year Later

If someone looked at me two years ago and told me what my life would be like on this day, I would have laughed in their face. And then I probably would have bashed their skull in for messing with me.

I was on my way to pick Charlotte up and take her to see the house that I had been designing for the last several months. It was originally supposed to be a wedding present, but things seemed to be in overdrive since we got back from Italy and the house took a back burner.

When we got home from Italy, I stepped away from the business for a little while. I couldn't fathom the idea of anything more happening to my family and needed some time to figure out how I wanted to proceed. It didn't take me too long to find out that the mafia was who I was. It was in my blood; it had created me, and even though there were downsides, I could never cut it out of my life.

I agonized for weeks about telling Charlotte I couldn't leave, but one night, she came to me while I was sitting on the patio having a glass of scotch and told me she thought I needed to stay. She said that she knew how much I loved the mafia and the type of life it provided, and she understood. After all, that was the man she fell in love with. She told me she wanted me to go back to work the next day, with her full support, and that she would stand by me. I never expected to hear those words from her, and once I did, I realized it was all I ever wanted to hear. I made her a compromise and was working less, home for dinner and to tuck the kids in every night, and made sure that Charlotte and I were getting plenty of time to ourselves. Angelo and I worked hard to legitimize every aspect of our businesses that we could. I didn't want to take any unnecessary risks, and I knew it would protect my family to put some safeguards in place. With Silvano out of ours lives, things were almost boring around here.

Charlotte was even coming around to the lifestyle. I knew she enjoyed having so many friends and family around all the time, and she fully embraced it, cooking weekly family dinners and entertaining people all the time. Elena and Noah even came up every few weeks, and Elena had plans to move closer once Noah graduated at the end of the year.

Jenni decided to stay permanent, which probably had more to do with her and Seth getting engaged. I was glad that they would be staying around because Carlo stayed back in Italy to help Gabe on the international side of things. It was a huge loss for us, but with Antonio gone, someone needed to run the small faction of men we still had in Italy. Carlo's mother was getting older, and he had jumped at the chance. It was a hard adjustment, but he called at least one a week and skipped with Layla.

Five months ago, Leo was born. I loved Layla so much that I was terrified I wouldn't be able to make enough room in my heart for him, but that all faded the second I saw him on that ultrasound screen. Charlotte's doctor told us it was a boy and my mind immediately filled with all the things I wanted to do with him and teach him. Charlotte had given me everything I ever could have asked for, and everything I never had any clue I actually wanted.

Layla had the best few months of her life. Not only was Leo born, Gabe and Lily had a little girl named Siena. Layla was in absolute heaven and wanted to be around the babies as much as possible. She was quite the little mother hen and Charlotte and I had to remind her occasionally that she wasn't actually his mother and that she couldn't do everything with him. Angelo and Marco took to spoiling Layla like it was their job, compensating for the attention she was now sharing with her brother. Even I had to admit that it was pretty precious to see how a tiny little girl could bring so many tough men to their knees.

I whipped my motorcycle through the gate and into the driveway, parking it just in front of the porch. This was a new purchase. Charlotte didn't even know about it yet, and I was hoping my other surprise would help soften its blow. Marco convinced me I needed one, and it took all of two minutes to check them out for me to make my purchase.