Keeping My Bride by Angela Snyder
Chapter 12
Luca
WHEN I WAKE up the next morning, I watch the security camera footage of Verona rooting around in the trash like a fucking raccoon. My lip curls in disgust as she rips open trash bag after trash bag until she finds her old clothes.
Hitting a button, the camera zooms in on her face, and I can see the absolute relief flooding her features when she finds what she’s looking for. An old dress? It just looks like a regular garment; nothing special about it. But obviously it holds some kind of significance to her. Maybe it’s vintage Gucci or something.
Benito knocks before entering a code into the newly installed keypad to my office. I pause the footage and look up at him when he enters.
“Enjoy your time dumpster diving last night?” I ask him with a smirk.
“It was her mother’s dress,” he tells me.
My brows furrow as I glance back at the laptop and see Verona’s elated face frozen on the screen. “I see,” I mutter. I’m not one for sentimental things, but I do have an old music box of my mother’s that I keep locked away. The song it plays reminds me of her. Perhaps this dress is just like the music box. Something to keep her mother’s memory alive whenever she needs it the most.
I give Benito a dismissive wave. I don’t want to talk about the past or Verona or the fucking dress she dug through the trash for. “Any news about the deal?” I ask. That’s really what I’m interested in.
“Constantine isn’t budging,” he answers.
That angers me. Constantine Carbone has been a thorn in my side long enough. His mob is a rival in notoriety and size to my own family, and he’s been rising through the ranks just as fast as me. We’ve always competed against one another, even if we have completely different interests at heart.
For me, I value the drug market, arms dealing, laundering money.
For Constantine, he deals mostly in the flesh trade. Human trafficking. And more specifically, the trafficking of minors. His acquisitions are earning him a lot of money, making him more powerful by the minute and also more dangerous.
I’ve been trying to put a stop to his new acquired taste in unlawful activities, but he won’t even accept my offers to give him territories in exchange for him stopping the trafficking of children.
I don’t have a soul…or a heart. In fact, I like to think the darkness swirling inside of me spills out from time to time whenever needed. But there’s something about what he’s doing that gets under my skin, and I can’t let it keep happening.
“Offer him the west territory as well,” I tell Benito.
Benito stares at me for a while. “That’s our biggest territory. We will lose a lot of business and money if we do that.”
I narrow my eyes at my most trusted and only friend in the world. “I don’t give a fuck.”
“Your father would never allow it.”
“Last I heard my old man is stepping down and putting me in charge. He won’t have a say soon enough.”
“Very well,” Benito says before leaving my office.
I push away from the desk, fuming. First, my wife defies me at every turn, and now Benito is beginning to question my motives as well. What the fuck is going on in my world?
My legs carry me across the room to the safe that is housed behind a very expensive painting on the wall. I punch in the long code and open the door. Inside is everything I value in this world. Money and my mother’s music box.
I reach out and grab the small box, turning the delicate switch on the back before setting it down. The familiar, soothing music begins to fill the room, and I can instantly feel myself calming.
Yes, I can understand why Verona wanted that dress so badly. And a very small part of what can only be described as a guilty conscience gnaws at me that I ordered her belongings to be thrown away without asking her permission first.
After the song is finished, I lock up the safe once more with any new, foreign feelings I have developed towards my wife. It’s dangerous to care about someone in my world, and I can’t afford to care about anyone or anything, let alone a Moretti.
