Burning Ties

Chapter One

Eighteen years ago
Viktor Romanov POV

"Do you, Adrianna Armanelli take Viktor Romanov to be your lawfully wedded husband?" The priest asks, and Adrianna, my beautiful bride smiles radiantly, licking her red lips.

"I do." She says, her voice soft.

"And do you, Viktor Romanov take Adrianna Armanelli to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do." I reply, not waiting for the priest to say anything else before I pull my wife in for a kiss. Though it isn't even in a factor in the reasons we got married, the Don of the Russian Mafia and the Donna of the Italian mafia have finally gotten married. What chaos our relationship will bring to the underworld.

Wife. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The little boys sitting in the front row of the ceremony only gag while I kiss my wife. You'd think our sons would be used to our shows of affection by now. Oh well.

Adrianna puts her hand on my chest, a signal for me to pull away and once I do I find myself looking at her face for any signs of discomfort only to see her blushing a bright shade of red.

"Vik! There's kids around!" She scolds, her voice still soft. I find myself barely controlling a smile. She's so fucking cute.

"Those children are our kids, and they're used to it." I reply, gazing pointedly at the boys who were still fake gagging.

They're all fucking drama queens. I swear, I have no clue where any of them get it from.

"But still! That doesn't mean we can just make out in front of them!" She shoots back at me, sending me a small, adorable glare.

I take Adrianna's hand in mine before tugging her toward our kids who have finally stopped fake gagging at our display of affection. Like God, couldn't they just get over it? It's our wedding for God's sake!

Adrianna and I had both been married before and both our marriages had failed, our partners having met each other and ran off into the fucking sunset together.

The both of us had kids with our former partners, in total we have seven boys. My biological sons are Andrei, the eldest who is ten years old, his twin Aleksander, Luka who is eight and Mikhail who is seven years old. There isn't much of an age difference between them all, but whatever.

Adrianna has three sons, Leandro who is Thirteen, eleven year old Rocco and nine year old Carmine.

Even though our sons are not biologically related, they're our sons in every way that matters, they're brothers and it'll always be that way, because fuck being blood relatives, family isn't always blood and our not so little family proves that.

One and a half years later

"Vik!" Adrianna calls, making me stir in my sleep. See, this right here is a fucking problem. I'm torn between two things I love, my sleep and my wife.

Two seconds later, I realise that I can always sleep later and that if I don't go to my wife then she'll be pissed which means our boys will whoop my ass.

"I'm coming, my love." I respond, swinging my legs off the bed and rushing into the bathroom.

"Morning, mi amore." (my love) Adrianna greets, kissing me on the cheek.

"Good morning, lyubov." (love) I reply, shooting her a questioning look. "Did you need something sweetheart?" Adrianna's eyes widen in realisation and for a split second nervousness covers her features.

"Look, Vik. As much as I would love to make this a huge freaking surprise n all, I don't think I'll be able to keep it a secret for so long..." She trails off, looking a little sheepish and scratching the back of her head.