Black Widow | 18+

2 | Hidden Truth

Leandro 

I was rational 

I didn't take any shit 

If one of my closest men or even 'partners' ever spoke to me in the same way Artemisia Pericelo spoke to me an hour ago, I would be quick to knock them out and torture them to a very painful death. 

But I didn't even flinch. 

I'd come so close to her hundreds of times since the day I last saw her. The Black Widow was our most trusted assassin; I'd referred her to my closest men, and she'd always done the job.

I'd given her information that she had to know was coming from me, from the same men who let her go, so it made me wonder why working for us now was such a big problem?

The thing is, my life was totally turned upside down when she disappeared. I knew how vulnerable she was, and every time I looked into her piercing green and blue eyes I saw this look of pure confusion. I knew what it was all about. 

She wanted to know why her father hurt her in the ways he did, but the men surrounding him were so happy to have her around, gifting things to her and ensuring that she would have some security in life. 

They didn't do it out of sympathy, I knew that better than anyone. 

It was because Artemisia Pericelo was the most beautiful child the Cosa Nostra had ever seen, I thought it too. But the difference was that my friends and I weren't grooming her as a result. 

Those men had died shortly after my father had died with the exception of Matteo Giordano, my men and I saw to it. Matteo was the only man of my father's inner-circle with true decency and respect. People loved to say that my father was the creator of our success, but really the strategy always came from Matteo. 

He was also the only one who put up any sort of fight to get Arté back. 

- 

"Who the fuck was that? And why are you on a first name fucking basis with her?" Clementina shouted as she walked through the house after me. 

My men spilled in behind her, they all knew, but I would be the one to have to tell her. 

We'd all grown up with her before her disappearance, and for all that she was much younger than us, we kept an eye on her. However, we were forced into a position of silence by my father and her own when the fateful day came. 

"Clementina, just leave it." I said sternly, walking into the kitchen to see Matteo sat smoking a cigar and reading a document. The man lived with my men and I, seeing as he was just as vital to our operation even now at his age of seventy five. 

"You would love that, wouldn't you? Get me to shut up when you are so clearly obsessed with her!" She shouted, Matteo raised an eye as if to ask me about a lovers quarrel, but this was far worse. 

Obsessed was not the word. Shocked and bewildered were more fitting. 

"She called you Leo, and you said her name with so much... meaning!" Clemmie argued "Artemisia," she mocked 

I clenched my jaw and watched as Matteo slowly put down his document, a look of rare shock on his face. Domenico and Luiz sat down next to Matteo, the shoulders of my two closest men slumped in defeat. It had been a hard dinner for everyone. 

"Artemisia," Matteo murmured, looking over at Clementina who seemed enraged. 

I loved my fiancé, or it was the closest thing I had ever felt to love with someone in a Romantic relationship, and for that I was grateful. However, she was raised away from the world I had grown up in, unlike the wives of my best friends. Clementina had been held in a glass box stuffed with silk and cashmere until it cracked and she was getting engaged to me.