Mafia Wife (Mafia Series Book #2)

Part 9

A/N: IMPORTANT!!

I'll be going on vacation next week with limited internet access, so there won't be an update next week! I will see you all September 16th :)

***

Fucking lunatics.

Niccolo exhaled the smoke that had piled up in his lungs, watching as it mingled with the surrounding air. He never smoked. Alright - sometimes. Mostly in the past. It had been his favorite way to piss off his father as an early teen.

Eventually, he stopped altogether. Nasty habit.

Tonight though, he dug out an old pack from the bottom of his drawers. He had waited until Gabriella had fallen asleep - which hadn't been an easy feat... and then he snuck out. He left three men standing guard.

Because what she shared was... terrifying.

He wanted to think that she had stretched her imagination too far, that she made up scenarios under the sheer pressure of the current situation. The only problem with all that? Her ramblings made sense.

Niccolo could never figure out why he took Gabriella.

He'd never really been on his radar before. They crossed paths, but for him to take Gabby? She hadn't - still wasn't - his anything. Why do it? But if he shifted his perspective and went in with the mentality that it had everything to do with her... and nothing to do with him?

It made sense.

It also explained the other puzzle he hadn't been able to figure out; why they were so welcoming of Gabriella. They didn't need to doubt her, to pretend she wasn't family. If they had their way, she wouldn't be taking anything from them.

No, because giving her away to the Devil... would give them everything.

It left the why though.

The Mancini family was powerful and ancestral. Why the need to ally with the Devil? There was no way they feared him. He refused to believe that the Devil's powers reached into their territories. So why?

To break free of Isabella? To undo the last shackles she left behind?

Gabriella meant nothing to them. It was an easy offering.

Could the Devil be that obsessed?

After all these years, he still wanted the bride that was possibly promised to him. He had to admit, Isabella running away from a forced marriage, following her heart... it sounded like the stories he had heard.

However, the Devil had only come into so much power in recent years... maybe the last decade. Which begged the question, why would they have agreed to marry off Isabella to a nobody? Was Gabriella wrong, or were there too many pieces missing from the puzzle?

This was why he was smoking.

This was a fucking shitshow.

Niccolo leaned back into the chair, stretching out his legs to rest his feet on the metal fence of the little balcony. He'd gone deep into the house, as far as he could from anyone else. He knew he would not get any privacy but this balcony gave him a good enough illusion.

He had to get those assholes out of his house - as soon as possible.

Niccolo was about to take another puff when he heard dainty footsteps closing in. There was only one person in this house who walked like that. Someone who thought she was sneakier than she was.