Ruthless Prince : A Dark Mafia Arranged Marriage Romance (Dark Syndicate Book 1)

by Faith Summers

  “Massimo… ahhh…” she moans.

  “I’m going to make you feel good,” I promise and start to fuck her.

  My mouth falls open and her eyes go wide, pleasure filling every inch of her face.

  Infernal heat cascades over me, making me drive into her harder, faster, furious. Fuck.

  My balls tighten painfully in response to the squeeze of her walls around my length. I try to hold on and control my movements so I can last longer, but she feels too good. Everything about her feels too good.

  Mercilessly, I pound into her until I reach my limit and my climax comes at the same time as hers. The table shakes, scratching against the floor as I blow into her and she screams. It’s the most glorious sound I’ve ever heard, yet I want to hear it again before the sun comes up.

  I pull out of her, pick her up, and carry her upstairs, where we fall into that cycle we got lost in nights ago. I’m mindful of sharing this one perfect night with my beauty.

  We don’t sleep; we just indulge on each other. As the sun rises, I watch her as that feeling overwhelms me again. I see her. I see who she is, and I don’t feel scared anymore by what I feel for her.

  The sun bathes her in its bright light as her whiskey-colored eyes stare back at me.

  Suddenly I get it. I get love. I understand the risk and what my father meant when he said he carried my mother in his heart.

  That’s where Emelia is for me. She found her way there all by herself, found the key and unlocked the door to a cold heart that’s been closed ever since that day I found my mother in the river.

  “I see you,” Emelia says, touching my face.

  “Because… I love you,” I answer. It feels so easy to say.

  Shock suffuses her pretty face and her eyes go wide. She looks at me in disbelief at first. Soft strands of silk fall onto the pillow as she straightens and eases herself up onto her elbows to stare at me, lips parted.

  “I love you too,” she replies, and I swear to God they’re the best four words I’ve ever heard.

  I take her hand, the one wearing the two rings I gave her, and kiss her ring finger.

  As I do I realize that if I love her the way I do, I have to change things. If I make it through this threat her father and Vlad pose, I need to make changes. I want to.

  The minute we got back home, reality caught up with us. A call from Pa summoning me to an emergency Syndicate meeting heralded that things were about to change big time.

  Riccardo would be in attendance. He made contact on receipt of the numerous messages left for him and agreed to come in for us to speak to him. I don’t understand how these people work. If I’d gotten that call, I would have tracked his ass and killed him. Maybe they did track him, but they still want him to come in.

  I left Emelia almost as soon as we stepped into the house. I’m here now, at the high-rise building where the Syndicate meetings are held in.

  The whole group is here. Everyone except Riccardo. He’s late.

  Riccardo is now close to an hour late.

  Pa and I have just gone into the lobby to get coffee and to talk between ourselves.

  “I don’t think he’s coming, Pa. This is suspicious as fuck,” I point out.

  “I know. And I agree, but this is their way. Talking out shit first while God knows what the fuck’s happening. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. The enforcers and soldiers are on high alert in case he tries anything.”

  “Pa, this is shit. We’ve been here for an hour. He’s not coming. We know what he’s like. This isn’t his style. He wouldn’t be late,” I say with insistence.

  “I’m gonna talk to Phillipe,” Pa says and leaves me.

  I grab a cappuccino from the coffee machine and sip on it. I need something to keep my mind occupied. I hate being in a risky situation where I have to trust people who aren’t part of my team. This right here is exactly that. I don’t know these people, and I’m not really one of them yet. Everything has been spoon-fed to me. I understand there are reasons for that. They have an old-school process they’ve been following since the dawn of time, but fuck, emergencies are emergencies. I don’t think they’ve faced a situation in which one of their members has gone rogue.

  A little ticking noise makes me look over my shoulder. It’s like a clock or some sort of timer that just switched on. It’s coming from the meeting room. When it gets louder, someone asks what the sound is, then panic flies through me when I realize what it truly is.

  A bomb!

  As soon as the thought enters my mind, an explosion rocks me and I find myself flying backwards. My body slams hard into the wall. So hard I feel broken. Something stabs through my stomach. I open my mouth to call for Pa, but darkness blurs my vision.

  I must have blacked out for a few seconds. When I come to, I look around and see the devastation before me. One whole wall is gone, and fire is burning around me. The meeting room is… it’s gone. It’s fucking gone.

  Pa… no!

  Terror makes me try to lift… my body. The pain that courses through me as I try to move is excruciating. I look down and see one of the spikes from the wall impaling my side. Pain shoots through my body. There’re shards of glass imbedded in my arms and legs. Smoke and dust are everywhere.

  A bomb. A bomb went off. Where’s Pa? I didn’t see which way he went to find Phillipe.

  I try to get up and barely manage it. I need to see where Pa went. I pray it wasn’t the meeting room. I try to remember if Phillipe was inside. The men had dispersed to take a break from waiting. I was talking to Pa and Levka, one of the Bratva leaders, before we came out here. I can’t remember if Phillipe was inside the meeting room, and I don’t know what direction Pa turned when he left me.

  I take a few steps forward, but footsteps crunching against glass cause me to turn my attention to the corridor on my left.

  A shadowed figure emerges from the dust with a smile on his face.

  The devil looks at me with pale blue eyes, exactly the way he did on the day of my mother’s funeral. Riccardo hasn’t changed one damn bit. Maybe there is just one thing: he looks more powerful than ever before.

  “Well, look at this. My, my, my, how the tables have turned the shift of power back to me,” he gloats.

  I open my mouth to speak, but blood trickles down the side of my chin.

  “Motherfucker, you did this. Where is my father?” My voice shakes, and so does my body. I try to lunge for him, but I can’t. I can barely move, so I stumble.

  He raises his gun and cocks the hammer. “You piece of shit. You thought you had me. Threatening me with the syndicate. Where the fuck are they now? When you’re gone, I’ll be the last man standing, and I’ll take back everything you took from me, including my daughter.”

  “You aren’t getting my girl. You aren’t selling my girl, you motherfucking dog. You’ll have to tie me up to beat me. You’re a poor excuse for a father.” Listen to me talk. I wouldn’t even be able to draw my gun quickly enough to point it at him before he ends me.

  My vison is already starting to flicker as if I’m about to black out.

  I can’t. I have to kill him. Find Pa and get Emelia.

  “All talk, no action. I’m bored now.” He fires the bullet, but something slams into me, knocking me to the ground again. At the same time, another bullet echoes almost simultaneously.

  Riccardo shouts, and I manage to shuffle to see that it was Pa who slammed into me and he’s been hit. Riccardo got him straight in his stomach. Blood is seeping through his white shirt.

  “Get out of here,” Pa says.

  “No,” I rasp, holding him. “No, Pa. Come, let’s go.”

  “No one is leaving!” Riccardo roars, holding his arm.

  Fuck. The fucking bullet seemed to have hit the top of his shoulder. It’s bleeding and he’s holding it, but he doesn’t seem fazed.

  Pa’s hand shakes as he tries to feel for his gun. He dropped it. I can see it, but I hold him because I can feel him slipping away from me. His body fe
els limp, like he’s trying to hold on but is failing.

  “Fools,” Riccardo laughs. “The two of you. Giacomo, you look as shocked as Sariah did that night when I laid down the law.”

  Pa and I both snap our gazes to him at the mention of my mother’s name.

  What is he talking about?

  “What? What are you saying to me?” Pa asks.

  “The week before she died, I made one last attempt to get her back. I told her if she slept with me, I’d make sure you got back in with the syndicate. Your family would be taken care of. No more poverty. She did. She slept with me to save you, but I wanted more. I met her on the cliff and informed her of the new terms of our arrangement.” He smiles wide. My head grows light. I almost know what he’s going to say next. I know even before he says it. “I wanted her to come with me and be mine. But she chose poverty over me. She still chose you, Giacomo. I couldn’t believe it, so I threw her off the cliff.”

  There…

  That’s it.

  That’s what I’ve known deep down. I sensed it. Every time I saw this man after my mother’s death, I sensed that he had something to do with her death.

  He did.

  Pa shouts, crying out. I can’t hear what he’s saying, though. I can barely see through the fucking tears that have welled up in my eyes.

  In my mind I see her. Her eyes. That wide terrified expression on her face. I was right. She was crying out from beyond the grave. Calling to me, screaming out to me for justice.

  Riccardo killed my mother.

  “You bastard,” Pa says. He feels cold in my arms.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Looks like he already has,” a voice says across from us.

  When Andreas steps into view, shock slams into my chest.

  “Andreas,” I gasp in utter disbelief.

  Pa shakes his head. “No, Riccardo. You didn’t turn my son against me.”

  “No, Pa. He didn’t turn your son against you. You did that all on your own.” He looks from me to Pa. Riccardo smiles wide. “I worked hard. I worked so damn hard to get the business. Day and night. And who got the credit? Massimo. I push it aside and continue to work tirelessly day and night, and who gets to be boss? Massimo. Not me.”

  “So, you betray us because I chose Massimo. I am your father!” Pa grits, sounding like he’s talking with his last breath.

  “No,” Riccardo says, straightening up. “You aren’t. You aren’t his father. I am.”

  I don’t know how many shocks I can take in this one spell of shit. I don’t know what door I walked through that landed me in this dimension. This can’t be real. None of it. None of this shit is real.

  It can’t be.

  “It’s not true.”

  “But it is,” Andreas answers. “And now I’ll get everything.”

  “How could you—” Pa doesn’t get to finish. Riccardo fires a bullet straight into his head, and as my father’s blood splatters all over me, a piece of me dies.

  Inside, I’m screaming and shouting. The sound doesn’t escape though. I tremble and quiver from deep within, unable to believe that I’m holding my father dead in my arms.

  Pa…

  “I have an idea for this one,” Riccardo says. “He said I’d have to tie him up to beat him. Let’s do that.”

  Andreas lunges at me. I try to block his moves, but I’m already too weak. He gets on top of both Pa and me then hits my temple hard twice with the back of his gun.

  Helpless, powerless, useless. I go down.

  Emelia is my last thought. They’re going to take her. I promised I’d protect her. I can’t.

  Darkness surrounds me.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Emelia

  I’m starting to worry.

  Massimo has been gone for hours, and I’m on edge again. Like a ghost, I roam the house from one room to the next trying to calm myself and find something to do to distract myself.

  Painting usually does that for me, but I can’t even think of what I might paint to take my mind away. That never happens. I’ve never been in a situation before that painting couldn’t fix.

  This is a first.

  Maybe it’s because I’m about to lose another parent. One who is already dead to me in my heart. As I read that contract, all the love I had for my father died. It faded into the ether. I couldn’t believe how truly despicable he was.

  I just wish Massimo were here.

  The place is heavily guarded. Guards were stationed at the front door when we got back this morning.

  I’m supposed to be safe here, but to me there’s nowhere safer than with him.

  It’s strange how that happened. Oh, so strange.

  Deciding to go see how Pricilla is doing, I make my way downstairs. Earlier, she invited me to bake cookies with her, but I wasn’t feeling up to it. I’ll gladly do it now to take my mind off what’s happening.

  I enter the kitchen and stop in my tracks by the door when my gaze lands on Vlad sitting at the breakfast table, eating cookies.

  Oh my God… what is he doing here? Inside the house?

  His appearance gets to me the same as it did the night I first met him at the charity ball.

  Little did I know then what was in store for me.

  He looks up at me and smiles.

  “These are really good. Want one? I’d love to feed it to you,” he says, holding out a cookie for me to take.

  Panic makes me back away to run, but I stumble into a wall. I turn to see Andreas, and relief washes over me.

  “Andreas, Vlad is inside the kitchen,” I say, grabbing his shirt. My hands are shaking so much I can’t stop them.

  “Now, now, Emelia, don’t you worry. You see, he got inside the kitchen because I let him in. We arrived in the same car, stopped for a bite to eat,” he explains with a smile. My jaw drops.

  I release my hold on his shirt and backpedal. He walks toward me as I back right into the kitchen, right into danger.

  I don’t know what he’s saying. He’s Massimo’s brother. He must know that Vlad is a dangerous man.

  As I take in the sinister expression on his face, it dawns on me. Of course… he does know Vlad is dangerous man. This is something else.

  “What’s going on here?” I look from Vlad to Andreas and shake my head.

  “I’m going to tell you a very interesting story about secrets, and I’m gonna give you the major spoiler.”

  “Is the spoiler that you betrayed your family?” I throw back. I can’t believe this. Not at all.

  “No, it’s not that. That’s not news since I’ve always been the odd one out. There’s a reason for that. The reason is, they’re my half-brothers, and the spoiler is… you and I have a lot in common. Like how we have the same father.”

  I gasp and bring my hand up to my heart.

  “What!” I don’t understand.

  “Ready for the story?”

  “I am,” Vlad says with a smile. “Nothing like a juicy piece of news to get the blood going.”

  “I like this guy,” Andreas states. Vlad tips his head.

  “Thanks. It’s great to be appreciated.” His eyes lock with mine, and a shiver runs down my spine. I only look away when Andreas clears his throat.

  “Ready for the story, Princesca?” he asks with emphasis on the last word. “That’s what Massimo calls you, isn’t it?”

  I stare back at the man claiming to be my brother. Yes, indeed, I’m ready to hear the story. I’m fucking ready to hear it. Another secret revealed.

  “Tell me,” I answer.

  “It started with the death of my grandfather. That’s what started this whole thing. The man I thought was my father doesn’t favor tradition in the least. Or I’d be boss and king of the empire, not Massimo,” he says with a chuckle. I remember my thoughts about him that night at the dinner. He didn’t look happy when Massimo received his ring and everyone raised their glass to accept him as the new leader. “When I wa
s told Massimo was chosen, it knocked me. In my life, when shit happens, I’ve always sought the company of my mother’s belongings. That day, I went searching through her stuff and found a journal I don’t think she wanted anyone to find. It carried her secrets. There I learned that she was with your father before Giacomo D’Agostino. She found out she was pregnant with me after she got together with him and never told him I wasn’t his. She couldn’t bring herself to ruin the relationship she’d always wanted.”

  I start to shake. I don’t want to believe it. I want to tell myself it’s a lie, but I know it’s not. It feels like the truth.

  “I went to your father, and we got tested. The tests confirmed he’s my father. Then we planned. I lived a hard life I shouldn’t have because she decided to stay with my father. You had everything, while I had to go through shit my other brothers didn’t have to go through because I was the eldest. I took care of everything. The last blow was Pa giving Massimo the empire. And to spit in my face further, Massimo chose Tristan to be part of the syndicate, not me.”

  “So, you want to wipe them out? How could you be so cruel?” I seethe.

  He grabs my face and squeezes hard. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. You haven’t lived my life. You don’t know me, and you don’t want to. I have no desire to know you either. I accepted some hard truths when I found out my mother didn’t kill herself, but it was your father, my father, who pushed her off a cliff, all because she chose Giacomo D’Agostino.”

  My mouth falls open, and I stare at him wide-eyed.

  My God… I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My father is indeed evil, but how can Andreas just accept it?

  “How can you be okay with that?”

  “I never said I was. I said I accept it. I loved my mother to no end. I hate her choices, but my love for her will always be there.” His jaw tightens. “I wanted to kill your father when I realized it was him who killed her. I wanted to end him. But it would achieve nothing for me. She is dead and gone, and I’m still here. There are things I want. Things I’m owed. Things only he can give me. You do what you have to do, Sis, to get what you want. You suck up shit feelings of remorse and anger, push them aside, and don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. That is what I’m doing.”