𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 ( 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐎𝐧𝐞)

𝐒𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 - 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐜𝐲

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞'𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬.
~𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧~

𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐚

Some say legacy is a gift. I say it depends on what exactly is handed down to you.

Mine is of a different kind. I am to be the successor to a crime family—a don—the head of more than my family. I wasn't born in it, not exactly. I was born in a different environment—a violent one. This is my duty because the universe decided it should be mine, the same way it conspired to have me fathered not by my stepfather, the man married to my mother at the time, but by the man I fell in love with the first time I met him. My biological father.

While I might not have been born for this role, I was groomed for it. I had the most vicious training, which was part of my agreement with the patriarchs, especially my father. In exchange to joining racing, something I loved, I would dedicate part of my time to learning how to lead or head these ten families under ours. Something I never told Lia.

I met two out of three each month since I left home at fourteen. Uncle Raph was the most intense, perhaps because he was the current boss. That he would want me to be as lethal, committed, or feared as he was or more was not a secret.

"Are you afraid, Luc?" He asked when we stopped at pulse. We had been silent the whole journey from home

"No," I answered, turning to face him.

"Worried, then?"

"Nope!" I confirmed, and he gave me a slight grin.

"It's understandable if you are worried," uncle Rom voiced, squeezing my shoulder.

"I'm not."

I wasn't. I was prepared; I have been ready since I was chosen as the heir apparent. It was my destiny; I took it as such.

We got out of the car almost simultaneously as my father and Lia did; strangely, he had not driven as fast as he was used to.

Though it wasn't the norm, I noticed my dad and uncle Rom stepping aside to let uncle Raph go in first, and then they followed closely behind—another gesture of how a don is respected.

It was beginning to dawn on me; it felt like an initiation, perhaps it was. Once we entered the office, uncle Rom closed the door leaning at the back of it; only the five of us were in that room; the bodyguards remained outside.

"How many guns do you have, Luc?" Uncle Raph asked, sounding foreign, his voice brutal and uncompromising, while his dark eyes made me want to squirm under his stare.

I did not. I held his gaze like he expected me to.

"Three," I said, internally congratulating myself on how steady my voice sounded.

"Those are enough. Lia?"

"Two," Lia responded beside me, trying to give her father the same stare he was giving her.

She failed. He grinned.

"Would you like another one?"

With a straight face, she said, "no. I'm out of space?"

Uncle Rom chuckled, something he rarely did though the other two swear he softened a little after Lia was born since she was the first to be born in the family. I've always wanted to know how he was when he was younger, how they all were.

"Okay. Bullets?"

"Enough to slay an army."

I felt a slight smile streach across my lips. Maybe whoever said every king needed a queen was right; I needed Lia today and for the rest of our lives.