The Mafia and His Obsession, Part 2 by Lylah James

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

 

You’d think after Alessio had watched Abram suffer and writhe in agony, he would now be satisfied. But Death was far from satisfied.

He was itching for more. His thirst for vengeance could not be subdued. It reminded me of a time when Alessio Ivanshov had annihilated a whole family. It had been fun to watch as Alberto took his last breath.

The Abandonatos were not the only Italians that were part of the underground business, the world of the Mafia. Alberto had only been a small branch. There were more families, two more bosses. But Alessio made his message clear when he had butchered Alberto.

Stay the fuck away from my family.

Nobody came forward to avenge the Abandonato. I chose to think it was because Alberto had been an asshole and had alienated himself from his own people. His thirst for power had driven the others away, creating a wedge and making him the enemy between his own blood.

I liked to believe we did the others a favor by ending that bastard.

One asshole dead. A few more to go.

From the corner of my eye, I watched Alessio walk up the stairs. His face was impassive and so cold. His jaw was steeled, and I noticed the muscles tick. There was a smudge of blood there. He must have missed it after wiping some of Abram’s blood away which had splattered on him.

Alessio’s silence sometimes was alarming. Like the rest of us, his thoughts were too dark to speak out loud. He was always planning in silence, so right now, I knew there was something on his mind.

That reminded me of the look he gave me when we were at Red Night. When I didn’t let the girl touch me, Alessio had raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t seemed overly surprised. His look…he was almost mocking me in a way.

Like he was sharing a secret, an inside joke with himself.

He had given me the same look when he attended the party where I had danced with Valerie. His face had been impassive, hard and steeled. But his eyes, fuck…they held the darkest secrets.

Alessio Ivanshov was not a man to be trusted. As much as he liked to look into your eyes as your life faded away, he was also the type of man who wouldn’t shy away from striking you in the back if he had the opportunity. For the first time, I started wondering if I could really trust him.

Or maybe…I was just another pawn?

I spared him another glance as we made our way to the office. Nikolay had long left us, and we were now alone. I refused to believe that Alessio would play games with me. We both had been through too much together, as brothers, for me to be just another puppet to him.

Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t realized that we were already in his office. Not until Alessio finally spoke. “Are you going to sit?”

I blinked, looking at Alessio as he sat behind his huge desk. He threw his legs on it, crossed his ankles, and settled back. He rubbed the back of his neck, as if he were trying to massage the tensed muscles. Alessio jerked at his tie agitatedly while nodding at the chair beside me.

I took a set and reached for the bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch he always had on his coffee table. I filled myself a glass, and when I offered it to Alessio, he only shook his head. Shrugging, I chugged down half the glass.

“I don’t drink when I’m living in Valentin’s estate. Only on very rare occasions,” I offered when Alessio kept staring at me. “Always have to be on high alert. Can’t trust that fucker one bit.”

I raised my glass to him. “Let me drink and stop giving me that judgmental look. I’m not going to get drunk from just a couple of drinks.”

I could handle my liquor and he damn well knew that.

Alessio gestured toward the full bottle, chuckling warmly. “It’s yours.”

“Wasn’t asking for your permission,” I mumbled under my breath. “You got a cigarette?”

He reached for the drawer into the side of his desk and pulled out a small box, throwing it at me. I caught it easily and took one out, placing it between my lips, and then took my lighter out. I lit the end and watched as the little flame flickered before I took a pull.

“Carlos is a closer associate of Valentin than we first thought,” I started when the silence grew heavier between us.

Alessio hummed and then nodded his head. “I figured.”

“It won’t be easy to destroy a whole Empire. We can’t afford to anger Carlos. Not when he’s the biggest dealer of the black market.”

“From my knowledge, Valentin is throwing another party soon. Carlos will be attending this one. I want to see if I can…maybe have Carlos think that Valentin isn’t as loyal to him as he thinks.”

Alessio’s eyebrows furled together. “How would you do that?”

“He knows that I killed Diego.”

His eyes widened and he sat forward, his legs falling back to the floor. I nodded in confirmation. “I was attacked a few weeks ago, and it was his men. I figured he knows that I’m the one who killed Diego. But then, I also killed Igor. Valentin doesn’t seem to have caught on to that. The confusing part is, if Carlos knows I killed Diego and he possibly knows I also killed Igor, why has he not told Valentin yet?”

“Wait. Back up. What does Valentin think of Igor’s death?”

I shrugged. “First, I tried to plant suspicion in Valentin’s ears to make him think it was Carlos who ordered the death of Igor. And vice versa. That was the plan. To pit them against each other. From what I gathered, they met once. And they decided that Igor and Diego got in a fight and killed each other. Carlos and Valentin both successfully convinced each other that they had no hands in the deaths of their men.”

I watched as Alessio played with the cigar in his hand. He wasn’t smoking it, but it appeared that he was trying to keep his hands busy. His face was scrunched up in frustration, and his lips were thinned in a straight line. He wasn’t happy with this new information.

“Their loyalty runs so deep that they refused to accept one betrayed the other,” Alessio muttered thoughtfully. “But the question is…if Carlos knows the truth, why didn’t he tell Valentin? That you are the one behind it all?”

Bingo.

“That is exactly what I fucking want to know too.” Placing the glass down with a harsh clunk, I took the bottle in my hand and drank straight from it. “It’s pissing me off.”

Alessio and I stared at each other. Games were being played. And it appeared we were not the only master players.

We conversed in silent words, both understanding what this could mean. A new threat. A new game. A whole new fucking ploy.

The war is just beginning.

“I don’t care what you have to do, you need to convince Carlos that Valentin is somehow betraying him. Once there is a crack in their partnership, it will be easier to strike Solonik,” Alessio said, crushing the cigar in the palm of his hand. “I want him dead, Viktor.”

I placed my now useless cigarette end in the ashtray before my eyes went back to Alessio.

On that we both agreed. Valentin was going to bleed, and he was going to beg for mercy.

But the word mercy was not found in our vocabulary.

Moving my head from left to right, I felt the corded, tensed muscle pinch and then loosen.

There was something else I needed to tell Alessio, but maybe now was not the right time. If he knew about the human trafficking rings, the truth of what I found…

Chaos. It would be simply chaos.

Maybe tomorrow. When everyone was present. After all, I needed the mafia daddies there too.

“If we’re done here, then I’m going to crash,” I announced.

Alessio nodded, and I started to get off my seat. His next words caused me to freeze, though. My heart hammered and all the warmth left my body. My blood ran cold, and I squeezed my fists, watching my knuckles go white under the pressure.

The King knew exactly when to strike.

“What about Valerie?”

My heart plummeted to the pit of my stomach, and my mouth went dry. Alessio’s face was unreadable, his posture nonchalant. The way he leaned back into his chair, crossing his left ankle over his right knee, his arms resting leisurely on the arm rests, one would think he was discussing the news or something less important.

“Who?” I pushed out through my suddenly parched lips.

“Valerie.” Her name on his lips sounded bitter. I hated it.

I used to be in control, yet now I had no discipline of my emotions. I was an emotional fool who had fallen down the rabbit hole.

“Yes? What about her?” I tried to sound uninterested, and I wondered if Alessio could see through my façade. I tried to mask my emotions, tried to make my expression impassive.

“She is a beautiful woman. Caught my eye, you know,” he said. My fists clenched at my side, and I breathed in. I tried to ignore to the cramps in my stomach, tried to ignore the feeling of hollowness.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

“Pass me the drink, will you?” Alessio motioned for the bottle. My jaw clenched, and my teeth gritted together as I poured him a drink and handed it over.

He took a sip and then tsked. “What’s the look on your face, Viktor?”

Alessio Ivanshov was mocking me.

“You are married,” I sneered, forcing my fists to unclench.

Alessio nodded. “I am. I am also very much in love with my wife. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a beauty.”

Jealousy was a dangerous thing. And in this moment, right here, it was deadly. You see, men like Alessio, they fed on your insecurities, fear, and bad feelings. They use them against you. They wait until you have no shield. And when the right moment arrives, they strike so sharply you will be left bleeding and empty.

The King was a mastermind. I never thought, not even for a moment, that I would ever fall into that trap.

I was possessive of Valerie. And I felt territorial in a way I’d never felt before.

I knew he was playing me, testing my limits and pushing me. The fucking asshole. But that didn’t stop the way I felt.

When I didn’t reply, Alessio tsked again. His eyes hardened, turning a shade darker. He looked vicious. Dangerous. He was lethal.

“She’s a distraction,” he stated, his cold eyes watching me. His gaze was focused on the ticks in my tightened jaw. He watched me with closely, unfazed.

He knew. He fucking knew.

Bile swirled in my stomach, threatening to force its way up my throat.

Would this change things?

The devil on my shoulder made his appearance, laughing and mocking me, like always. He had the perfect fucking timing. Of course, it would change things. Your feelings for Valerie makes you a liability.

That was true. Alessio needed someone focused. No distractions. No weakness. Someone with only one aim in mind.

But now the lines had been blurred. I didn’t have only one goal. My destination and my target have now changed. My loyalty has been divided. That meant—I was no longer an asset for Alessio.

I was…weak.

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” I said carefully.

Alessio chuckled, shaking his head in what appeared to be amusement. “Don’t play dumb, Viktor. It doesn’t suit you.”

Blood pounded in my ears, and my body started to feel numb.

“You’re fucking Solonik’s wife, aren’t you?”

His question was the deadly blow. I imagined Alessio was saying checkmate in his head right now.

He raised an eyebrow, his lips quirking to the side as if he knew…he won.

Alessio waited. Silence hung between us. When I didn’t answer, he threw his head back and laughed. The room suddenly felt suffocating to me.

For the first time, I couldn’t understand Alessio.

“You sure have a thing for other men’s wives,” he said through his chuckles. “I guess like the saying goes, forbidden fruits taste better.”

Fuck you.

He made it sound like it was just that…sex. Like I used her. An emotionless affair.

I silently huffed back a laugh. Maybe that was true before, but Valerie had clawed her way through my skin. It wasn’t just sex anymore. I could have that anywhere. Pay a whore, have her spread her legs for me, and I could have been a happy man.

But Valerie wasn’t someone who just satisfied my needs.

She was so much of everything that I couldn’t possibly put to words.

Valerie was all of the sky. My myshka was silent poetry. She was all the lyrics, music, and words. I didn’t believe in anything supernatural, but fuck, when she danced, she made me think of magic.

Her heart was full of dreams and wishes, and I wanted to be the man to make them all come true.

Valerie was not just an affair to be forgotten; she was so much more.

“It’s not what you think,” I finally muttered.

“You are not fucking her?”

“Stop,” I snarled through gritted teeth.

At my tone, Alessio sat straighter and his eyes narrowed on me. The mirth in his expression was gone. The laughter had disappeared.

“I saw the way you looked at her. And I also saw the way she returned that look. At the party, she had all your attention. Fuck, if someone had driven a knife into your back, you probably wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late,” Alessio said, his voice hard.

I opened my mouth to reply, to fight my case, but he waved away my chance. “Do you realize how dangerous that is when you’re living in the enemy’s home?”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I know,” I hissed.

“I sent you there on a mission, with one goal in mind, Viktor. I can’t afford to have you distracted.”

I stood up straighter and unclenched my fists, releasing the tension in my arms. “I know what I’m doing. I have never failed you before, and I won’t this time either,” I tried to assure him.

“She is your weakness now.”

My heart slowed and the blood rushed back through my body. The numbness faded away, but the warmth wasn’t any better. I felt…suffocated.

Alessio’s eyes skimmed over my face, watching my expression. He saw it. He saw everything.

You are a fucking failure, the devil whispered into my ears.

“I need you to put your dick away and stop spreading her legs,” he growled.

Surging forward, I didn’t think. All rational thoughts had now escaped me. I grabbed Alessio by the collar, my lips pulling back into a snarl. He didn’t even budge. He didn’t blink. He stared at me, blankly.

“She is not a fucking whore,” I snapped into his face. “Stop talking like you know everything. You. Don’t.”

“I didn’t say she was a whore. I was stating that you were.”

Bastard. For the first time, I had a newfound hatred for my brother.

“You have no control of your emotions. That will get you killed. Solonik will strike you, right into the spot where you are weak. Remember that.”

“I know what to do. I don’t need your fucking lectures,” I hissed, releasing his collar and pushing him back. “As if you were any better.”

Alessio glowered at my words, and he fixed his collar again. “I love Ayla. There is a difference. Are you saying you love her?”

“I—”

Fuck.

The Devil laughed, laughing off my shoulders because he couldn’t hold himself up from his laughter.

Alessio seemed to be waiting for an answer.

I didn’t have one.

I couldn’t…

My lungs squeezed, and I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. There was an ache in my chest, and I hated it. Hated feeling like this.

Without control. Too many emotions. Unwanted feelings. It was all indescribable.

When I didn’t answer, my tongue feeling too heavy to form any word, Alessio sighed and stood up. He gave me a dark look, but I saw something else. Understanding. Maybe sympathy.

“I’m not saying this to be an asshole. I say this because I care. You’re going to hurt yourself, and you’re also going to hurt her. You can’t save her. You need to focus on Valentin. He is your target. To do this job, you can’t have any weakness. Let her go.”

“She is mine.”

The words slipped past my tongue before I could even stop myself. My eyes widened, realizing that I had confessed this out loud, to Alessio.

He looked…shocked. Then there was a look of satisfaction, like he’d won something. There was a hint of smugness. But it was so brief that I convinced myself I was mistaken. It couldn’t be right.

Alessio blinked, his eyebrows furling, and then the look was gone once again, replaced with a blank expression. But I saw anger swirling into the depth of his eyes.

All these years I have lived my life protecting Alessio, serving this family. He was my King, and I was a loyal warrior. He commanded and I heeded all his demands.

I thought that maybe…just maybe, when the time would come, when I would need his understanding, his help, he would give it to me. He’d trust me and he would support me, like I had done all these years. I had blindly given him my loyalty.

Was it too much to ask for him to return the favor? At least once…

I thought this moment would be it. The moment he’d clasp me on the back and tell me he was on my side. I had never asked for something for myself. But I thought maybe this time he would understand. After all, we were brothers? Right?

But Alessio Ivanshov…

I forgot he was ruthless and his heart only worked when it came to his wife and kids.

Everyone else?

We were dirt under his feet.

“Choose, Viktor.”

“What?” I asked, taking a step back. My heart hammered, and it felt like it would break right through my chest.

“Your family or her.”

The ache in my chest intensified. The world to me was no longer black and white. I was now lying in the grey, forced to make a choice.

“You are asking me to make a choice? To pick a side? My loyalty is to you but she is—”

“Then this choice shouldn’t be hard. Us or her. You can’t have both,” he said.

“She is innocent. Don’t drag her into this game,” I whispered.

“You dragged her into this when you started something you shouldn’t have,” Alessio shot back.

My hands shook, and I had to clench them again, my nails digging into my palms. The tinge of pain kept me focused.

“I can’t support a relationship that will hurt my family and put us in danger. Solonik is our enemy. His mere existence is a threat to us, to this family. One little distraction could get you killed and ruin us all. Our lives lay in your hands, Viktor. Remember that when you make a choice.”

I stayed silent, my throat burning. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. Anger swirled inside me, a tsunami of emotions.

Alessio sighed at my silence. He walked around the desk, looking at his watch on his wrist. “It’s late. Ayla will probably come looking for me if she wakes up and doesn’t see me in bed. And I think you need some time. Go to sleep. We will talk in the morning.”

What was there left to say?

He clasped me on the back. His hand stayed there, and he squeezed my shoulder. “You have never failed me, Viktor. And I know you won’t now.”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t even if I tried.

Alessio walked away without another word, leaving me in the silence of the chaos he left behind. I was confused…angry…so many emotions. It was fucking up my head.

My life only had one purpose, and it was to protect them—my family. Whether I fought, maimed, or killed the enemy, it made no difference to me. If I had to take a bullet for my family, I would have embraced death with a goddamn smile on my face.

I had put my life on the line and made a deal with the devil. For them. To protect them.

I had never questioned my own loyalty, not even once…

Not until now…

Not until her.

My sweet myshka.

My perfect, well-planned life was now in chaos, and a choice needed to be made.

You have never failed me, Viktor. And I know you won’t now.

I closed my eyes, hating the way those words sounded in my ears.

Viktor, you are every hope that I’ve ever had. My demons are silent in your presence, and you make my angels dance in harmony.

Weak. I was so fucking weak.

Valerie, I have made many promises to you. And I intend to keep and fulfill all of them. One by one.

I made my promises to Valerie, and I was a man of words. I would never break my vows.

But…

Solonik is our enemy. His mere existence is a threat to us, to this family. One little distraction could get you killed and ruin us all. Our lives lay in your hands, Viktor. Remember that when you make a choice.

My brother…whether he was a fucking heartless asshole, he was still my family. For a King, the crown was heavy to wear. The burden heavier than that of a soldier. Even though his words were hurtful, I knew his motives were in the right place. He wanted to protect me, to protect us all. We had been through too much together for us to break apart now, when we were so close to our goal.

A choice…

I sank down to the chair when my feet couldn’t hold me any longer. My head fell into my hands.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.