Bloody City: Temptations

Chapter Twenty Four

Arianna

Crossing the parking lot of Luca and Celine's villa I glanced over at Alessio who had disappeared with his brother dragging three men with them, but he hadn't had a single speck of blood on him though Lino had disappeared several minutes before, and the men who had been flirting with Gabriella never returned. Then my brothers wanted to speak with Alessio and he then wanted to leave right as a chant had begun to rise from the crowds inside.

I'd see how he acted, like he hated the chants, the dozens of voices speaking just two words but it had caused a knot to form in my throat and based on how Alessio had reacted he'd been just as displeased with it as I had been if not more.

What had caused that?

But that was Alessio a silent mystery, one I'd hoped to learn about by the time our seventeen weeks were over but at the pace he'd revealed his past I wouldn't likely ever know him fully, and if I did, it wouldn't be completed.

Watching him as he walked especially at these events I'd noticed something about him, how the suit seemed like a mask when I knew he sat in his office with a glass of several thousand dollar scotch and occasionally a cigar, Arturo Fuente being his favourite brand of them. I had seen him covered in the blood of others, but it was at events filled with the men and women who were running his empire that I realized how powerful Alessio was. Hundreds of Capo's, and likely about a sixth as many Underbosses, thousands of soldiers, and tens of thousands of associates perhaps even a hundred thousand. Each day more were endicted into the Mafia, he controlled a massive part of Europe a fifth last I knew, and it was impossible to understand what his work truly looked like.

He seemed like Capo, like he'd been born, and raised for the position, but Alessio harbored a part of himself he knew of but never engaged with. He'd been a shadow even in the world of the mafia. He'd procured the image of what people thought of him, what his own men thought of him. The ruthless Don of the Salvatorini Familia, the man who would kill without question, but could be fair and just. Always dressed in black, and carrying weapons. It was calculated, and I'd seen enough men like that to know it made them dangerous, just not to Alessio degrees.

I had gathered that Alessio was a man of few words only saying exactly what he felt or meant to say. I'd seen it with his men, and even with Matteo, the quick short answers and orders he'd given them. But with me it seemed different like he had been uncomfortable with saying more and had attempted to give me more words about what he was meaning, like he'd reserved it just for me. It was a ridiculous fallacy that my mind had entertained at every free moment of the day even if I wished it wouldn't. It couldn't be true, not because I didn't think he was capable of expression but because he had no reason to give me any special treatment compared to anyone else. Yet there he was trying to bar the world of the Mafia from me even if I grew up around the life. I wad the daughter of a Capo of East, and North East Italy.

Slipping into the Aston Martin after him he started the car and began driving away back towards Liguria. The headlights of the car even as they were on the highest setting only doing do much along the winding roads as Alessio silently drove back towards New York.

"Why did you and Matteo disappear for a while earlier, you were gone for almost half an hour?" I ask and he taps the steering wheel a few times.

"Matteo and I had to deal with the three fuckers who had been trying to come onto your sister, and they had also eye fucked you when you and I arrived," Alessio says his voice low as if the anger from it hadn't yet subsided.

"You can't kill everyone who looks at me Alessio," I protest narrowing my eyes at him and he shrugs indifferently.

"Your beauty is mine to enjoy, and I can't stop them all you're right. But if I see someone staring at you with lust, like they want to take what's mine, I will deal with them, how I please," he says and I sigh.