I wear his name like a scar.
Alessandro Rossi stole everything from me; my freedom, my future, the lie I told my father to keep him alive. He thinks I'm a tool to be used, a bride to be displayed, a Fraga to be broken. He thinks the ring on my finge...
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A/N : Comments vanished because I edited the chapter. Wattpad really said "you fixed a typo? say goodbye to your engagement." Classic 🫠
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Monsters are made, not born.
That's what Giorgio Torricelli called me while he bled out on his knees, and I almost laughed because ten years he'd known me and he was only just now figuring it out.
Giorgio was on his knees in an alley with one hand pressed against the gushing wound in his thigh where my knife had found the femoral artery.
The other two traitors were already dead, their bodies slumped against the dumpster like discarded mannequins. Andrea stood watch at the mouth of the alley, indifferent to the begging or the blood. He'd seen it all before.
"You're a monster," Giorgio wheezed, his face grey with blood loss. "I knew it. Ten years. Ten years I've known you, and I always knew you were a monster."
I crouched down in front of him, my knife still dripping. The blade caught the light from the single working bulb above the back door of some bookstore. Criminal Literature. Cute name for a shop that sold stories about murder while actual murder happened in its backyard.
"You knew I was a monster," I repeated, tilting my head to study him like a scientist examining a specimen. "And you still sold my shipments to the Fraga family. You still sat across from me at my table, ate my food, drank my wine, and gave my enemies the weapons I paid you to deliver."
Giorgio spat blood onto my shoe. Brave old man. Stupid, but brave.
"You think you're untouchable," he rasped. "You think because you're a Rossi, because your father is the Capo dei Capi, that you can do whatever the fuck you want. But I've seen you for what you are since the first day. You were twenty-two years old and you killed a man over a parking spot. A fucking parking spot. I knew then. I knew you belonged in a mental institution."
I remembered that parking spot. The man had been rude, but he'd also been a rival family's soldier, so it wasn't entirely about the parking spot. But Giorgio didn't need to know that.
"Where are the rest of my shipments?"
"I don't know." His eyes darted to the side. The lie was written all over his face in the way his pulse fluttered at his throat.
I grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, pressing the tip of my knife against his eyelid. I could feel his trembling through the hilt. "I asked you a fucking question."
"Jesus Christ, I don't know. I swear to God. They're in a warehouse. The Fraga family's warehouse in the Meatpacking District. I don't know the address. I don't know the goddamn address."
I released him and he crumpled forward, his hands scraping against the wet asphalt. He was sobbing now. Pathetic. All of them were pathetic in the end.
"You're a fucking snake, Giorgio," I said, wiping my knife clean on his jacket. The fabric was clearly expensive silk, the Fragas must have been paying him well. It didn't matter now. It would be incinerated with the rest of his possessions. "I'll give you that. Ten years of information. Ten years of learning my business and planning your betrayal."
