Bloody City: Temptations

Chapter Twenty Three

The ceremony was quick but not fast, I'd asked Lino to stay informed on the capture of Molise though I hadn't checked my cell despite my concern for how far this could have gone. I could manage concern but I'd never been fearful. Killers and professional members of the life, men and women who had grown up with our rules were in my ranks. Others who had proven themselves were associates. Everyone would distinguish themselves in their own way but many were still yes men which made them efficient but pride often blinded them.

I couldn't even say my ego wasn't also the one thing that could be exploited.

I'd learned to manage it learned that having emotions and others that were weak around you could be capitalized. I knew that better then anyone since it had been how I'd become Capo and then expanded across the Continent. It was how the five Families had been brought down because bugging a house or building could be done when no one was there which was why the judicial system in the Italy belonged to me. Not everyone was on payroll but enough were and even if the whole of the country knew I was the Godfather of Italy, and Europe it didn't bother me, who the fuck was going to try and bring down the Mafia when it had been through us that parts of the country relied on us. Had electricity, food, protection, maintenance, had their wines, brought in from foreign countries could have an associate talk to a made guy who talked to the Capo who made a plan to sort something else out with another group, no connection, and no fucking rats.

Aria had stayed by my side the entire night even as the first dance happened and Luca and Celine spun around still smiling at one another. I'd seen Luca kill and maim, I'd seem him tie people up and bleed them for answers. I'd taught him it. Taught my youngest brother how to be a fucking killer, to embrace his most vicious desires. But for one day he was on cloud nine dancing with a woman who had slipped through his guard had been one of his best Capo's and was the reason Milan knew Luca as both a sadist and as its guardian. He'd cleaned it up for me, had made sure that the Russians didn't even think about trying to enter the region.

Even Celine's brother Dante, who was my sister Victoria's bodyguard and had been since he'd gone to Naples last year, looked fond of how happy his sister looked with Luca, Victoria just seemed proud of our brother for how he had treated Celine since day one. Victoria hated that men had run the world of the Mafia. Had wished to be something more then a pretty face and she'd proven it, she was stubborn, and had she not been a woman I'd imagine that my father would have been just as hard on her as he was on me and my brothers.

Dante had been one of the best soldiers in the Familia, and it had been that which made me allow him to be Victoria's bodyguard he was the same age as Luca at twenty-four, while my youngest sister was two years older then Aria.

When the first dance was nearing a close, I leaned down to whisper in Aria's ear. "Dance with me Arianna," I demand, and her reaction was immediate, I could see the shiver from my voice that covered her skin in a second, and had brought a look of complete ease to her. Before she covered it with the look that would be expected of her, by all accounts we were lit supposed to be overly comfortable or even close with each other, we were simply supposed to be complacent with one another's company.

As if Aria wouldn't warm my bed and share the same fucking pillow with me tonight.

I could think back to a time when father was around, he'd have called me weak for ever thinking Aria could be more then just another woman, he'd thought of them as disposable, had fucked his way through Sanremo where he was born, I had a house on the ocean there away from the one he'd been raised in. He'd have thought of Aria as some bitch I'd get bored of. Even the thought of it had made my jaw clamp as I stared at Aria and she squeezed my hand softly as I guided her through dancing.