Bloody City: Temptations

Chapter Three

Alessio

She was practically shaking before me, nervousness flashed over every perfect feature of Arianna, she was also clearly scared for what I'd do about Emmanuel throwing tradition out when it had convenienced him to so he could defend his sister. I had also caught the shocked look on her face regarding being bound to me through a marital agreement which was what her parents had wanted though the looks she gave to Vivian implied she was really the one behind it puppeteering her oldest daughters life.

Too bad I wanted to say yes just to unify Italy under me.

Controlling all of Italy wouldn't bring much benefit to me especially since I'd allowed a zone in Italy where those who didn't wish to be allied to a Familia could be. It had caused me problems because other smaller individual cities were in that area creating several smaller Familias who hadn't sworn to any of the three families.

I had also wanted Arianna to know I intended no harm to her. I hadn't ever trusted Vivian or Lorenzo but that was because Lorenzo was spineless when it came to the level of cruelty required to rule. Men like him had been put on pedestals as young boys and hadn't had go fight for anything. Vivian was almost too ambitious for her own good and it would benefit her to cap her own aspirations.

"Arianna" I say and her eyes that had been averted to the ground met mine making my control almost unfurl itself. The innocence alone in them was enough to make me feel a desire to this young woman that wasn't befitting my morality. I had to keep the feral instinct to round this desk and claim her buried.

She wasn't deserving of the monster I was and yet her family fully intended to hand her over to me. Arianna deserved the kind of softness a man lower in position then Capo could provide her. I wasn't a soft man, nor a gentle one. I put bullets in people for doing the very things that a dark part of me wished to do to Aria. She wouldn't be willing not in the way that tradition required of her and yet the picture of any other man holding her perfect frame was more tortuous then having thousand of tiny cuts across my body and bathing in vinegar. I'd have preferred the vinegar bath to the mere thought of another man possessing her.

"Alessio," she replied and the sound of my name on her tongue went through my body to an area I wasn't even interested in entertaining the use of. I let out a shaky sigh as a result and she seemed worried by it and the look in her eyes told me she thought I'd counter what I'd said moments before which wasn't the case and I needed to think of a way to express it.

"Did your parents put you up to marrying me for peace instead of asking to redeclare the treaty my Father created," I ask choosing to ask the more civil and diplomatic question.

"They didn't even tell me they planned to marry me off to you," she said pensively and her words cut through me.

"Your brother had every right to have the reaction he did but to strengthen what I said, I don't have any problem with you physically Arianna I'm just eight years older then you, I'm a killer, I am not a kind man," I say preferring to say the truth.

There were no imperfections about Arianna physically, she was extraordinarily beautiful but I had my duty as the Head of the Familia to have a wife, but that meant many things for Aria like having to bear children and care for them while also being at risk and an easy target for my enemies which had been the reason I hadn't married for so long. My father would have married me off if I hadn't become Don of the Salvatorini Familia, or took the position. Yet for some reason now I viewed it as being less of a risk then compared to now. Marriage now meant more then the simple gesture of saying vows and living under the same roof.

"You're showing me kindness now, and you spared my brother," Aria says glancing down again which had a worse effect then her staring at me. I'd seen it earlier she'd been staring at me since she entered my office but when she had been left alone with me she became reserved and coy, submissive even.