I didn't exactly choose to be stolen at four years old.
But the French underworld isn't big on consent.
One minute I was Donatella Acardi, Mafia royalty. The next? Just another stolen kid bleeding in someone else's basement.
That's where I met Ami...
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Leonardo POV:
Leonardo sat at the head of the massive oak desk in his office, his knuckles pressed against his mouth as if sheer pressure could hold back the growing migraine behind his eyes. The chandelier above flickered slightly, casting shadows over the room like judgmental spirits. He didn't even want to glance at the clock because time had become meaningless—this argument had been going on for two and a half hours. And not a single productive thing had been said.
Armando, was pacing the room like a caged tiger. He was dressed to the nines as usual—dark suit, gold cufflinks, sunglasses indoors like some kind of villainous Italian James Bond—but the frustration made him look more like a dad who just found out his teenage daughter had a tattoo.
"I’m telling you right now, we tell them," Armando snapped, gesturing so hard that one of his rings went flying off his finger and hit Enzo in the temple.
Enzo winced, rubbing his head. “Ow! What the hell—Papa, control your jewelry!”
Armando waved it off like a fly. “They deserve to know! We are men of honor. We do not lie to family! They are family. They’re blood.”
“Technically only one of them is blood,” Dante muttered from where he leaned against the bookshelf, chewing on a toothpick like it was a nicotine patch. “The other one’s just… like an emotional support teenager.”
Nicolo let out a scandalized gasp. “You can’t call Amir an emotional support teenager!”
“He’s always next to her! Always! Like a lil’ shadow with curly hair and the most intense eye contact I’ve ever seen. If they move, he moves.”
“You’re jealous,” Enzo said with a smirk.
"And they already don't answer my texts," Armando muttered, looking mildly wounded in the corner chair. "Mi corazón hasn't called me papa once. Not once! Even though I love her with my entire heart and soul!"
Leonardo exhaled through his nose. “Okay. Enough. Let’s just try to stay on track.”
Gino signed rapidly from the couch, eyebrows furrowed.
Nicolo translated. “He said ‘This is a circus.’ Also, he wants snacks.”
“No one is getting snacks until we figure out whether or not to tell them we’re in the freaking mafia,” Leonardo said, his tone somewhere between exhausted and “I will personally stab all of you with this letter opener.”
“Why is this even a question?” Armando boomed again, slapping a palm on the desk. “They’re not babies! They deserve to know where they come from! They have a right!”
“And what happens when they run?” Enzo asked, sitting back in his chair and kicking his feet up on Leonardo’s desk like the menace he was. “What happens when they hear the word ‘mafia’ and suddenly it’s ‘Wow, thanks for finding me but I’m gonna go backpack across Europe with Amir and become baristas in Portugal’?”
