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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Donatella POV:
I was not thinking about it.
Nope.
Not even a little.
“Good girl.” Pfft. People say things. Words mean nothing. It’s just something people say, right? Like “nice weather” or “drive safe” or “you don’t look like a goblin when you wake up.” Polite. Throwaway. Forgettable.
And I was definitely forgetting it.
Like, actively deleting it from memory.
Except... my brain was a little bitch and refused to cooperate.
Because now I was hyperaware of every damn thing Amir did. The way he sat. The way his hair looked when it was still damp from the shower. The way he bit his lip when he was focused and it made my brain hiccup. I even caught myself staring at his hands like some Victorian ghost wife.
Absolutely not.
I stood up, shook my head like I was trying to rattle marbles loose, and muttered to myself, “He probably didn’t even mean it like that. He just said it. Heat of the moment. Not flirty. Not bossy. Not… anything. I'm making it a thing when it wasn’t a thing. And now I’m talking to myself, great.”
Nope. Time to redirect all mental power into something safer. Something normal.
Like dinner.
Yeah. Dinner. Safe. Family dinner with the completely normal business family who absolutely did not decapitate people for sport.
I smoothed my clothes, cracked my neck like I was going into battle, and headed down to the dining room like the emotionally repressed, dangerously curious menace I was.
Time to stir the pot—metaphorically.
And also literally, because I could smell Dante’s cooking from halfway across the castle.
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Dinner was in full swing—plates piled high with food, laughter bouncing off the walls of the massive dining hall, and the familiar hum of chatter that had become background noise in this castle that somehow felt like home and a prison all at once. I sat at the long, polished table, surrounded by Armando, Enzo, Gino, Dante, Luca, Nicolo, and, of course, Amir. The usual mix of personalities was alive and kicking: Leonardo stayed quiet, probably lost in his own world; Dante hovered, making sure no one went hungry; Luca was his usual bubbly self; Gino sat silently but gave a slight nod whenever someone caught his eye; Enzo glared at me like he wanted to burn holes through my soul—but I didn’t care. Honestly, I didn’t even care enough to glare back.
