Ciao Bella

Chapter Twenty

“Always bring more wine to a wedding—it could end up being your funeral.” —King Campisi

King

“So…” Ash plopped down next to me. He’d already pulled off his black jacket and opened up his shirt, and by the looks of it, was clearly drunk. “How does this happen? We just send them off to the hotel and he—he—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” I snapped. “He won’t. He swore.”

“So, she doesn’t even get a wedding night?” Ash slammed his hand on the table between us just as Maksim sat down next to him. “Son of a bitch, that’s sick.”

Maksim tossed me a bottle of water. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Hers,” Ash groaned into his hands. “She should at least, I don’t know… I shouldn’t know, but I know.”

“He’s drunk?” Valerian mouthed to me.

I nodded.

“She’s…” Ash kept talking. “Look, I shouldn’t know these things, guys don’t talk about these things, but Junior…” He choked out his name. “He told me one time because Serena was pissed about Ivan always giving her shit and was afraid he would take advantage of Bella or some weird shitty shit thing like that, so she asked Bella if he’d tried anything and if she had questions.”

“Not really liking this story time,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Just listen.” Ash waved me off while Maksim and I shared a look. “Anyway, Bella told her the truth, she’s never even like been with a dude or a girl. I’m not discriminating or even like, done any of the serious things you do when you’re horny, you know?”

I slid my bottle of water toward Ash.

He grabbed it and started chugging.

Maksim sighed. “That’s besides the point, that’s a good thing, she wasn’t running around like the whores we were.”

“You were.” Ash grunted drunkenly.

Maksim just rolled his eyes while I flashed him my middle finger.

“Anyway, it just sucks, I mean, I don’t want him touching her, but it sucks for her, he didn’t even kiss her. It’s humiliating.”

I crossed my arms. “Better to be humiliated than at war.”

“Maybe.” Valerian didn’t seem to agree while he stole Ash’s water.

I checked my phone.

“How much longer?” Ash asked.

It was one minute past midnight.

I braced myself for Ivan to come charging toward me. The treaty between the Families was officially over. Either he’d renew it or break it off and all of this would be for nothing.

We needed him to renew it. To keep the peace now that Junior was gone, he was quite literally the only one who could.

And like clockwork, Tank walked up to me with a black folder in his hands. He nodded and set it on the table. When I opened it, it was the contract for the De Lange Family to be reinstated as one of the original Families, and on the bottom was Ivan’s signature in blood.

“There may not be any lovemaking tonight…” I slit open my right palm and squeezed my fist over the paper, dropping blood onto his signature. “But at least we have a guarantee of no war. He renewed it. De Langes are officially under my fist as the Capo.”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“And Bella?” Tank asked, taking the folder back.

I felt bad for the guy, he’d wanted to work with us not for them, but we needed eyes on the inside, and he was loyal to a fault, especially for a De Lange.

He was one of my favorite captains.

I thought about it for a minute. “Once they go to the honeymoon suite, send the men away, wait ten minutes, then sedate her if she needs it to sleep. He’ll find his fun elsewhere. I read through the stupid archaic rules that I’m changing this week, from the founding Families. None of our daughters or cousins will have to deal with this ever again, marriage will always be their choice.” We’d never abided by the old rules, the fact that Ivan even knew them was alarming, the fact that he called one of the oldest ones forth in order to keep Bella was ridiculous since he wasn’t going to touch her, which just meant, he needed the peace as much as we did.

The question was, why?

Why kill Junior in order to achieve it?

Why not let Junior keep doing it?

Nothing lined up.

Nothing made sense.

You didn’t just wake up one morning and decide you want to be a boss after years of hating the mafia and fighting for a chance to choose your own major.

I knew something was going on, and I trusted Junior, he wasn’t easy to kill, and our last conversation had me wondering if he knew something I didn’t.

It was a fucking mess.

Mine to clean up.

Mine to straighten out.

“Call a meeting in a week and Tank, watch the rest of the men. Eyes and ears everywhere. Either Ivan’s plotting something…”

Or someone else is.

And has been for a very long time.