Livia Ximena Di Vittorio was the child that wasn't taken. She was the one who was left after her mother packed up and left with her four brothers leaving her with her father and a whole lot of responsibilities.
She now was the heir to the Italian M...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Livia Ximena Di Vittorio
I was excellent at playing poker.
"Thank you." I grin taking all of my earnings. I had beaten all these losers, not like it was hard though, none of them could read me and didn't know how I operated.
Well, Nikolai could but I could read him right back, besides he wasn't playing choosing to observe the game instead, nursing a drink in one hand and keeping the other arm around the back of my chair, a possessive gesture that had me side-eyeing him when he first did it.
The platinum blond boy, whose name I had come to find out was Zinon, stared at me with a mixture of shock and awe. "How are you so good at this?"
I shrug, I was Italian, and I had grown up learning how to swindle men ten times my age by when I was only five or six by my grandfathers.
"Guess I'm just talented."
"And humble," Nikolai mutters but I pretend to ignore him like I always do I was hyper-aware of him right next to me, his arm across the back of my chair was sending electric shocks up my back whenever I accidentally brushed against him and I was trying not to focus on the way his body almost pressed against mine.
"Marry me." Zinon declares making me laugh. Tony, one of the others smacks him on the back of his head making him wince in pain.
"You can't say that, Niko looks like he would shoot you right here and not have second thoughts." My eyes unwillingly move to Nikolai who sits right next to me, his facial expression is blank but his eyes are trained on Zinon, who starts shrinking back the longer Niko watches him. I reach out and place a hand on his thigh, squeezing it lightly.
He wasn't the only one who could play this game.
"Knock it off," I say in Italian, not caring that the other four boys can't understand us, I had been speaking Russian most of the night but I easily switched back to my first language. Nikolai finally looks away from Zinon and glances at me for a second before taking a sip of his drink.
I surveyed Niko's group of friends, they were an odd pair for sure. Andrei looked like the typical rich boys I had gone to school with, the ones who looked as if they had no cares in the world because he had wealthy parents who would bail him out of anything. But I knew it was deeper than that, after all, I had heard about him the most from Niko, they were best friends and according to him, there was no one more loyal than Andrei. They had been friends since they were little kids just starting school.
There was Zinon who looked the furthest things from a wealthy brat like the rest of us, it wasn't surprising when he divulged the fact that he had gotten into the private school Niko attended on a sports scholarship where he had been accepted into Niko and Andrei's little group after Zinon defended Andrei from some immature bullies when Nikolai wasn't around.
Tony was the next to join their group when they were fourteen, he was an academic and studying to be some sort of rocket scientist. It was clear he was way smarter than I would ever be like he can never be told something isn't rocket science because it is rocket science for him. I aspired to be at that level of genius but alas I was left to a life of wondering if I could read and comprehend things most days. Spoiler, I can't.
