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...
Sorry if this chapter is a bit long. I wouldn't recommend it but if you want to u can skip it. This just shows them having their bonding time after a lng time.
But enjoy!
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Donatella POV:
His arms were still around me.
It was light outside now. Not the golden warmth of mid-morning, not yet. Just the pale hush of dawn curling over the stone windowsill like a ghost too gentle to haunt.
We hadn’t moved.
I think we both knew that if we did, if either of us stood, something fragile would break. Something we wouldn’t be able to name or fix or gather back into our hands. So we stayed.
Me curled in his lap like a child I barely remembered being.
Him holding me like a father he’d never gotten the chance to become.
There were no more tears. Not now. Just silence, threaded with breath and the occasional creak of the fire dying in its hearth. He was tracing patterns on my back again—circles, then figure eights, then the shape of what might’ve been a cross, or a letter, or nothing at all. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was just the motion that comforted us both.
And then—
I shifted.
Just slightly. Just enough that I could lift my head and look at him. His eyes were already waiting for mine. Still soft. Still open. Like the lock had finally been broken on something buried, and now neither of us quite knew what to do with the pieces.
“I know,” I said.
His brow furrowed. “Know what, tesoro?”
There was no use hesitating. Not anymore.
“I know who you are.”
The air changed.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. He just looked at me—really looked at me.
“I know what this family is,” I said slowly. “What you all are.”
His jaw tightened, just barely. I saw the flicker in his gaze—a calculation. Not fear. Not denial. Just a slow, quiet shift as if his mind had just caught up to something it didn’t want to acknowledge.
“You don’t know everything—”
“I do. Just wanted to get it off my chest.” I shrug.
The words came faster than I meant.
I sat up straighter in his lap. I wasn’t curled now. I wasn’t shrinking. I was still pressed to him, but something inside me had stiffened. Braced. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in the softness, in the safety of his arms and the memory of jasmine and vanilla. But that wasn’t real. Not completely.
