Submitting To The Devil - The Devil's Snare - Book 2

Chapter Forty Two

Niko

We exit very slowly and cautiously, holding our weapons out to protect us and ensuring we move with precision to best protect our lives as we both take opposite sides in an attempt to cover the front of us.

Luckily, no one's around, or at least it seems that way as we remain quiet and assessing.

"Okay, talk to me, Sven," I sigh as I let my guard down enough to move out of the doorway so Sven could close it behind us. The chill of the night air hits my naked skin, causing me to shiver.

"I shouldn't," he tells me before pulling out a smoke for himself. He lights it and then offers me the box, holding it open as I take one for myself. Passing me the lighter, I smirk before I take it and light up the smoke, inhaling the nicotine with fervour. It quite literally feels like I've been starved of nicotine of late.

"We can do this the easy way—."

"I've worked for Dimitri since before his father passed over his title. I was just a lowly orphan with no family after the previous Don took my family's life. But for some reason, I was kept behind and given a pardon. A few years later, I realised I was kept to keep Dimitri company. He was a lonely kid with no siblings of his own, and I was available under unusual circumstances. We built a great bond over the years, and by the time it came to Dimitri's trials, he had me saving a few girls who were under his rotation until it became too evident that the only girls going missing were on his jobs. Skipping a few years, he had all but stopped his efforts because his father raised concerns about certain girls going missing. But we remained good friends, and as he ceased to need a brother, I was sent back to my home country to live a life of pardon. Dimitri came to find me almost as soon as he took over from his father a few years later. Since then, operation Salvatore has been reinstated. As you can imagine, his father wasn't too pleased to realise this had been going on under his nose for so long, and he tried to take back the title, claiming Dimitri was compromised. In short, my death was ordered as Dimitri's punishment."

"So you killed him first?"

"Don Moretta's untimely death did follow soon after, yes, but I could have never killed the man who spared my life and gave me my brother, and my brother would never ask that of me."

"So Dimitri did it instead?" I ask, more interested in this conversation than I thought I would have been.

"I presume so. He took the blame, but who knows? No one was there except a few, and all but one of them is dead now," Sven shrugs and then shifts to move away and sit just under the tree to the left of the door. I choose to cover the door up with the vines before following suit as I watch him light another smoke.

"So the operations Dimitri has us working on, it's long-standing then?"

"Yes. Of all the girls he takes, twenty percent are spared. Luca is so naive to think he's the only one to feel such ways, but I think all men in the mafia have a conscience. Perhaps some can mask theirs more easily than others, but Dimitri has always hated the role he was born into and wasn't always so ruthless."

"Then why does he hide it? If one stands up and changes the projection of opinions, the skies the limit."

"Ah, no, Niko. Even Dimitri understands that directly upsetting the order is the wrong choice. It won't be until Luca's child that the projection will be off-kilter and then their child that things begin to change. Men in this life do not appreciate change, so chipping away one generation at a time is the best way to offset the internal beliefs."

"Wrong," I interrupt. "Mitchel and Drake have the same opinion as Luca. Change is coming; it's already being spoken about, Sven."

"The elders have stipulations in place that force the hands of those coming into rule. Only once in so many generations, when three new Dons take their titles within a few years of one another, can the laws be put forward for change, but the people still have a say, Niko. And not all older generations are dead yet."

"Majority should rule, no?" I frown.

"If only that's how it worked. Elders still have a say, and Dimitri won't go against those he worked alongside. I hate to tell you, but the men he worked closely with hold a place in his heart. Dimitri is nothing if not loyal to those who served him and alongside him."

"So where do I fit into this and Bianca?"

"Dimitri might seem like a, ah, what do you English call it? A vicious man, but he's honestly just living up to the man his father wished him to be. Like me, you are Dimitri's good deed. A way into the pearly gates if they are indeed real. He's kept you close because he feels the need to protect you. Same for the girl, Dimitri takes the blame for her father's death, and now he has given her to you and you to her as a way to make amends."

"It's a forced marriage," I spit in disbelief.

"A convenient forced marriage that has brought you happiness you would never have allowed yourself, you mean? I'm sure the girl was the same, and that's why he paired you two together when there have been plenty of girls in that twenty percent."

"So I'm a charity case?"

"Don't look at it that way; she's a bombshell, and you're obviously smitten. Take the happiness; you sure as hell earned it, kid."

"And Alexandra?" After staring into the darkened abyss that dares to plead with me to succumb to my fears of losing Bianca, I ask him.

"That, I'm not sure. She's never been a point of interest to Dimitri. Her sale has thrown me through a loop, as I'm sure it has him, but perhaps things are happening that he needs a different route orchestrated."

"So you're saying you have no clue about tonight. That this is all from the left field as it is for me?"

"I'm just there to help you help Dimitri. This is the job I've chosen for myself. I can leave whenever I want to; Dimitri has already given me his pardon."

"That's nice for some," I huff.

I wish I had the freedom to leave whenever I pleased. I wish I could get Bianca and me far away from the mafia so that we could live the life I wish I could give her.

"Bianca said something earlier. That Benji Densel was here with Alexandra. She said she didn't know how or why, but I presume she thinks they're having an affair, given what she said on the boat."

"It could be possible, but Alexandra is your age; Benji hasn't even reached adulthood yet," Sven shrugs, but I can tell he's thinking about my explanation.

"Bianca's only just eighteen," I mumble to show him age differences occur in relationships.

Just saying that out loud has me second-guessing, forcing her into being happy within this marriage.

"You're right. Age is just a number; love doesn't see age," Sven tells me with a smile. Perhaps he's trying to make me feel better; honestly, it makes me sink into this hole even further. Where Sven has the blessing to leave, I have the blessing to remain right here or die a thousand deaths before I finally get buried in a shallow grave, most likely by Luca as punishment for being my fucking friend.

"So, an affair? Debois won't be happy."

"He's probably turning in his grave. And it explains why he isn't here trying to save her," I agree. "We need to reach out into underground. I need to know if he's searching for her."

"I'll satellite Dimitri. I'm sure he's found out a lot in the time since he left us," Sven stands up.

"I guess we need to question Alexandra. We won't know anything until she starts to speak," I say decisively.

"Any means?" Sven stubs out his third smoke, reaching inside his pocket to retrieve the phone he's always carried.

"Any means," I agree.

"I'll be right in," he nods to the door unlocking it for me.

"Don't take too long; knock three times before you enter so I know it's you."

"Very well," he nods, and so I go inside.