-"All we've known is sacrifice. Sacrifice is why we live"-
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Luca reluctantly let go of the diamond ring, seeing that they were landing. He looked over at Katrina whose leg was bouncing up and down as she used her thumb and pointer finger to grip her wrist in circle motions. Caressing her wrist with those two fingers like she was imagining it as a blade.
Though she didn't make it obvious, Luca could tell what she was doing. He had done it many times before.
He reached over and grabbed her hand, stopping her movements. She looked over at his sincere face, giving him a small smile through her welled up eyes. She couldn't even see his face clearly.
He was second-guessing coming to Sweden. He wanted to go home if this is how much anxiety it caused for his best friend by coming here.
Home...
He didn't know where that was anymore.
All he knew that it was gone and would never be back.
He didn't have a home anymore.
Katrina took a deep breath, breaking him away from his thoughts.
Once they were safely on the ground, they all exited. Katrina's hand started shaking as soon as she stepped off the plane and onto the solid pavement and breathed in the air.
She fisted her hands and dismissed her emotions.
There was no room for distractions now...
A matte black range rover pulled up...with a solid gold capital K on the hood.
The driver stepped out of the vehicle, wearing sunglasses, a suit, and an earpiece. He opened the backseat door wide, making way for a tall figure.
A middle-aged man stepped out of it, wearing an expensive suit and emitting power and wealth. He looked to stand at 6'4 with noticeably graying hair but still had the build of an MMA fighter.
He had dark brown eyes and deep crow's feet -showing that he either smiled or glared a lot. Luca thought the latter. This man didn't seem to be the kind of man to smile frequently. At all.
He walked up to Katrina with a small smile that could barely be seen. They both embraced each other in a tight hug.
Katrina pulled away from the embrace, preparing to introduce the man.
"This is Adrian," she spoke. No last name was said. No affiliation. Just Adrian.
Adrian shook hands with all of them with a firm grip, showing he wasn't one to be messed with that contradicted his grandfather-like scowl. When Luca held eye contact with the man, something flashed in Adrian's eyes.
Recognition?
No something more. Adrian's lips pulled back in the slightest bit, revealing a ghost of a smile that Luca had barely caught if he wasn't glowering right at the man. His brows raised slightly and he gripped Luca's hand hard when he shook it. After Adrian pulled his hand away, he nodded to himself.
Almost in...approval?
Luca bet he looked like shit at this moment. Sunken eyes and dark circles with bags, showing he hadn't had a good sleep in well over two weeks. Pale skin that had overtaken his Italian skin. He looked like death and not the good and lovely kind.
But with that appearance, why had Adrian smiled at him?
"A pleasure to meet you all. I am very sorry to hear about the right hand's death but it seems she is far from gone with the goose chase she left you," Adrian told them, looking at Luca for a second too long.
"I hope you all find what you're looking for. Or who you're looking for," he added before nodding to one of his men. Without so much as another word, he got back in the range rover, silently telling them goodbye.
They all thought that was a little ominous.
"Don't worry about him...he's a little...strange at times," Katrina mumbled as she led them to a bigger range rover that they would be riding in.
They drove for a good thirty minutes until they reached a gated clearing. Katrina kept her gaze on her phone the whole drive, not looking at the passing buildings that would bring up nothing but bad memories. It was clear that this forest was secluded since it was miles from any human settlement.
"We'll have to go on foot for the rest of the way. I hope the owner of this land is here today," she sighed as she got out of the car. She was still in disbelief that this land had been bought.
They all made sure they had a weapon of some sort before climbing over the wooden fencing that blocked the clearing where a forest once was.
Katrina's lips started quivering the moment she got over the fence.
The tall evergreen and oak trees that once stood were now burned to the ground with nothing but short grass in its place.
The hundreds of wildlife including squirrels, deer, and birds were now nowhere in sight. The lush forest was now a blank field. Dead grass and overgrown weeds. Tasteless pastures and uneven playing fields. The memories Katrina and Aria made in the forest that once stood...were now burned to the ground. Literally.
Just as the tears were finally about to come out, Antonio spoke.
"What's that?" he said as he pointed to something in the distance. They all looked towards what Antonio was looking at and were in disbelief.
In the distance, tall pine and spruce trees spanned for a mile. Like they were shielding something.
Like they were hiding something.
"We're going to find out," Luca grumbled as he started walking towards it. But Katrina was already ahead of him.
They all trekked towards the trees that looked small from a distance, but the closer they got the bigger they became and more prominent.
They walked through the trees with hands on their guns. It was strange that only the trees were replanted here and not everywhere else. The strangest part was that it was in the formation of a large circle, and the more they walked the more questions they had.
Once they made it out of the thick treeline that seemed of a labyrinth of its own, they all released a breath of relief. When they finally looked to see what the trees were hiding, they all stopped breathing.
There behind the trees, shielded a mansion.
It was grand and posh. It had a vintage but homey modern victorian esque. It looked well-maintained and fairly new. It was obvious that it was worth a fortune for the size of it.
They were all speechless. Mouth's ajar and eyes wide.
Out of everything...this was what they least expected.
But before they could do anything else, three cocks of guns were heard behind them.
Katrina was the first to turn around and suck in a harsh breath.
There stood 3 men behind heavy guns. They all looked to be in their twenties and were well matured with bodies and faces of greek gods behind expensive firearms.
They stood to be at least 6'5 with taut and defined features. Jawlines sharp and eyes piercing. 2 of the men had dark hair while one had dirty blonde highlights with luscious curls. One thing they all had in common was their honey-pot eyes.
They were marigold-Carmel with champagne specks. From a distance, they looked almost yellow.
The more Katrina looked, the more tears welled up as memories registered.
There they stood.
Elias Aaron King.
Milo Edgar King.
Felix Liam King.
Aria's triplet younger brothers.
The triplets hadn't a clue as to who the intruders were. All they knew was that they were on private property which just so happened to be their home.
Everyone else also had raised their guns, not knowing who the men were since they looked nothing alike except for their honey eyes and sharp cheekbones and jaws.
"State your names and business," Elias demanded. His voice was raspy and rough but deep. These boys were not how Katrina remembered...
They had grown up.
"My name is Katrina Ivanov...but you might know me as Erin Cline," she spoke, keeping her emotions intact but the control withering away. At last, her search for the triplets was now over.
But it seemed like they didn't need to be found.
Everyone was skeptical as to who these three men were but knew if Katrina knew them then it must be fine to put away their weapons. The three brothers lowered their guns, but not all the way since they were highly distrustful.
Who wouldn't be suspicious if they went through what these three young men went through?
It was just an instinct to protect themselves and no one could blame them.
"Why are you here?" Milo spoke with his voice low and buttery. Katrina's face fell, the emotion falling out. This was not the welcome she was expecting.
Clearly, these men had to put away their emotions from their rough childhood and couldn't afford to lose now. Katrina was puzzled about how three innocent, small, scared, and quiet boys could form into harsh and tough men.
"That's hard to explain," she whispered.
"We've got nothing but time," Felix said. His voice was thick and monotonous.
The King's members scanned these three men and noticed that none of them had any sign of 'Momento Mori' tattooed on think or embedded in their skin in any way. The Italians noticed as well as they led them into the large mansion.
They introduced themselves quickly, differentiating who was who.
While the triplets walked ahead of them Katrina whispered something under her breath that only Starr, Ida, Thea, Blade, Oscar, Matteo, Antonio, and Luca could hear.
"Aria's triplet brothers," she whispered in a low, almost inaudible tone. Their faces visibly paled, taken aback. They had thought they had been dead all this time since no ten-year-old boys survive by themselves.
But it looked as if they hadn't been completely by themselves from the looks of the mansion they were in.
Luca stared at the back of the triplet's heads.
Aria's triplet brothers.
The gears in his head seemed to turn and rearrange.
One of the brother's -Milo- turned his head slightly at what his other brother had said to him and gave him a ghost of a smile.
Luca's body tensed.
That smile-
Milo had dimples.
Her dimples.
Looking away and blinking away the tears, Luca inhaled sharply and avoided eye-contact with the brothers. Those eyes -no matter how enigmatic and glorious they were- brought up the memories of that night in Norway.
When she had asked him what his favorite color was. He had perfectly described those marigold eyes. That was the night he had seen her smile for the first time. He thought back to that night often, wondering what was the reason for her smile.
Now he knew.
The triplets led them to a comfortable and lavish sitting area. After a few moments of silence, one of the brothers spoke.
"You're here because she's dead isn't she?" Milo muttered. All their heads shot up as the three brothers observed them.
Looking at them like vultures, picking out weaknesses, or looking for even an ounce of a reason for them to kill them and not trust them.
"The right hand...she's dead isn't she?" Elias repeated when none of them spoke. Katrina slowly nodded her head, curious if they knew Midnight.
Luca's eyes narrowed. Why not say her name? Why did they seem so numb and emotionless when they spoke of her death?
"Yes," Blade responded, his eyes clouding with an unclear emotion. The triplets nodded in unison.
The three men looked to a silent Luca. The triplets easily recognized him as the Don from his tattoos and Italian and greek genetics. The same went for Katrina when she introduced herself as an Ivanov. It was easy to tell that she was the new Pakhan.
"We never saw her but she communicated with us through calls and so did the King," Felix mumbled. Their eyes went wide when the theory they had was shot down.
Luca looked away once more. They didn't know. The triplets didn't know that the right hand was their own-
"What else do you know about the King?" Blade asked
"He reached out to us when...Aria... passed. We were only ten and had strict directions not to ask or do anything about the Mafia until it was time. Midnight only contacted us when we turned sixteen," Felix told them.
Luca's head began to wrap around what they had just said. They really didn't know. They had no idea. All those years ago, when Aria had committed "suicide", they really believed that she was dead. They had no idea that their own sister-
"Where have you been all this time. I looked for you guys for almost three years!" Katrina stressed as she eyed the triplets, silently scolding them. The triplets looked at each other, silently communicating.
"We'll start from the beginning," Milo spoke.
"The house we were raised in burned down the day our sister died. We believe it was the traffickers to who our birth giver and sperm donor sold her. Everything was lost in the fire. All pictures or anything Aria owned was burned, but most of our things remained untouched. It's like all trace of her ever existing was targeted and burned," Elias started.
His voice laced with sorrow when he spoke about his beloved sister.
He avoided the word 'parents' and he had a right to. They were hardly parents... they didn't deserve the title. If anyone deserved the parent title then it was Aria. She was the one who raised them until she died.
Luca looked up at them when they said "The day our sister died".
Midnight hadn't told anyone her identity? Did she lie to her own brothers?
Adrian.
Adrian would know. Adrian had to know.
Thinking deeper and recalling everything he learned about Aria's -Midnight's- past, he began to zone out.
His Diavola was abused. People bullied her. She was sold into the black market.
She had killed herself and taken that pill before she had done it. She had faked her death and became Midnight.
She had been hurt, harassed, tormented, and tortured all her life. No one had helped her. No one had seen her plea. No one did anything. Anger, red hot, and burning bled into his veins. She had been hurt all her life.
She had fought and bled for her happy ending.
But-
No, she couldn't have-
The pill.
Could Midnight -Aria- had taken the pill when Alexei stabbed her? Could his Diavola still be alive?
No. No, she couldn't be. He had held her dead body and saw her dead eyes. But...he saw that in Leia's -Katrina's- too...
No. She couldn't be alive. She couldn't.
"That night when we were in a hotel that the police put us in, a person came into the room. He wore a hood and all black and we couldn't even make out if he was a he," Felix recalled.
"All we saw was a throat slit that was freshly stitched with 'Momento Mori' tattooed over it, on his neck. The person didn't say anything and just pointed to the window and then left," Milo remembered.
They all froze, realizing that ten years old's saw the King. They were probably the first people to ever see him.
"When we looked out of it we saw a black range rover with a man standing outside of it, looking directly at us. But it wasn't the same man we saw before. He told us his name was Adrian," Elias told.
They all listened intently, soaking in what they were saying with intrigued expressions. Adrian must've been loyal to the King for over eleven years.
Luca instantly knew that he was going to interrogate Adrian next.
"Adrian led us here. Gave us all we needed and said that the man we saw in the room was called the King and a friend of our sister," Felix explained.
They all had similar thoughts, especially Katrina.
"The King gave us all we could ever need and told Adrian to train us. We did homeschooling from a private school since the King was very persistent about our safety. We never talked to him and only spoke through Adrian. That night at the hotel was the last time we saw the King," Milo revealed.
More questions grazed everyone but Luca's minds.
Why would the King care about them?
Why would he tell Adrian to train them?
What relationship did he have with Aria that led the King to be so intent about the triplet's safety and wellbeing?
"When we were fifteen, Adrian told us who he really was. When our sister was born, our sperm donor and birth giver didn't care enough to properly take care of her let alone name her. So our grandmother did. She was our birth giver's mother but she disowned her when she found out what worthless trash she was. She went to court for full guardianship cause she knew that those pathetic excuses of humans couldn't take care of her," Elias shared with hatred glinting in his eyes when he spoke about them.
"Our grandmother wasn't an ordinary woman. She was the leader of the Scandinavian mob and that means she had the money and assets to raise us and our sister with love and happiness with all we could ever need. But she lost the court case because of her reputation of being in the Mafia life. The court said that she wasn't allowed near us or our sister but she still came the day we were born and named us. Luckily she was the one who signed our birth certificates along with Aria's and gave us her last name, " Felix spoke.
They were grateful that they didn't have that sperm donor's last name.
All their mouths fell ajar when they revealed that their grandmother was the leader of the legendary Scandinavian mob.
The Scandinavian mob was basically the blueprint of the King's Mafia. Everyone knew about the mob's reputation. But the mob fell apart after their grandmother died and it completely went extinct. Nothing was heard about the Scandinavian mob ever again.
The Scandinavian mob was the first-ever mafia to have a female leader...and it was the most powerful one ever created.
Everyone knew her name.
The Scandinavian mob's queen, Kaia Anneli King.
"She died not long after we were born. In her will, she left everything she had to Aria. Her mafia, her money, and everything else belonged to her. The sperm donor and birth giver hated that so they sold her to sex traffickers and thought they could fake her death so they could get our grandmother's fortune," Milo told them.
Even Katrina was speechless.
Aria was the last heir to the biggest and most powerful mafia in the world- at the time.
A girl who was brought up in poverty...had the biggest fortune waiting for her...
"But...Aria actually died and so did the sperm donor and birth giver. In turn, all things that Aria was supposed to inherit now went to our grandmother's right hand. And that right hand was Adrian who just so happened to be her husband, making Adrian our grandfather," Elias mumbled.
The triplets felt as if Aria's death was just yesterday.
Everyone else was more shocked than before.
They were definitely going to interrogate Adrian.
"You've probably heard that the Scandinavian mob went completely MIA and extinct well it turns out it did but not in the way you think. The King took ownership of the mob and turned it into his own Mafia. So Adrian was the very first person to see the King," Felix revealed.
Blade rubbed his forehead as he sat down. This information was more than what they were expecting.
The King's mafia is the Scandinavian mob...
"Four years ago, when we were sixteen, we got tired of not knowing what was going on. We heard that the King was rising to power and we wanted to be a part of the Mafia for revenge on our sister. So his right hand contacted us. She agreed but said it was the King's order to not get the tattoos and always wear a disguise whenever we went out," Milo explained.
Luca froze, his whole body going stone solid. She had posed as the right hand even to her own brothers.
"We've been around the world ever since as the King's trusted members to run some of the bases in other countries but we've never been allowed in Norway, Russia, and the U.S. We still don't know why," Elias finished.
They all sat in silence, digesting too much information for their liking. They were overwhelmed with realization and questions.
Suddenly, Katrina's head shot up.
"Were you at her funeral?" she whispered to the triplets. They instantly knew that they were talking about Aria.
"No. The police took her body because all of her organs were intact and she was signed up to be a donor, but she was still buried but not in a traditional funeral. Adrian was there though when they supposedly buried her remains," Felix muttered.
Katrina sucked in a harsh breath...coming to a grave realization.
"I have a theory but all of you are not going to like it," Katrina uttered, breathless. They all looked at her intently, wondering what she was going to say.
"We need to dig up Midnight's and Aria's graves," she announced.
~
Elias Aaron King
Milo Edgar King
Felix Liam King