Chapter 24
Aurora~
Seriously, it’d been too easy.
After I’d gotten the call that Decio had agreed to meet ‘Darya’, I had wasted no time lying to Viktor in order to put the second part of my plan into action.
I had pretended to be hungry, and with my refusal to eat anything in his house, he’d been fine with me going out to grab something as long as I’d had Isaak and Dima with me.
Now, as for Isaak and Dima, their mistake had been in not questioning the details.
When Viktor had given them permission to take me to get some food, they had accepted his direction blindly, not questioning me when I’d said that I was going to meet my father for dinner.
It had also helped when Marco and Georgio had already been waiting on Ivory Street for the exchange.
Once I’d gotten in the car with my guards, I had called my father to inform him that I’d had a hunch about something and that I was checking it out.
Trusting me as always, he had quickly agreed to let me handle my business, making me promise to relay the details once I was finished, to which I had readily agreed.
So, once Marco and Georgio had dropped me off at my condo, I’d gone inside, then had gotten prepared like so many other times in my life. As if Astaroth had been summoned, I had made sure to dress the part, and I’d had enough firepower on me to take out a small army.
At any rate, as luck would have it, I wasn’t the only woman on the planet that men constantly underestimated, and so Decio had taken no precautions in regard to his meeting with ‘Darya’, and like always, that easy feminine dismissal had worked out in my favor.
Decio had come to the meeting with an empty suitcase and only one gun inside.
His plan had been predictable, if only to me.
Taking ‘Darya’ for a fool, he had planned to lure her in with the contents of the suitcase, only to open it, pull out the gun, then kill her with it; easy, peasy, right?
However, while he’d been waiting for her to drive down the deserted road to the river embankment, I’d been sneaking up from behind the derelict barn, Decio mistaking any noises for rats, snakes, or whatever.
Again, it’d been too easy.
With him so focused on waiting for ‘Darya’ to drive down the dirt road, it’d been too late by the time that he’d felt my gun against his left temple, and the rest of what had followed had been just as easy, leaving Decio tied to a chair right now, spitting mad, and I didn’t blame him.
To be outsmarted by a woman was not the thing for an Italian man who believed in traditions and gender roles.
“Now, I could ask you the obvious question of why, but I’m pretty sure that I already know the answer,” I said lyrically as I sat down across from him. “Though you weren’t vocal about it, I’m very aware that a lot of people were not happy about my marriage to Viktor Korolev.”
“We should have gone to war,” he spat.
“Oh, well...that’s easy for you to say,” I replied steadily. “As one of my father’s most trusted guards, you would have been tucked away safely with the rest of us until it could no longer be helped. The war could have easily been over before you’d even have to get your hands bloody.”
“We would have won,” he said with enough conviction that he made me a believer.
“Maybe, maybe not,” I remarked. “It’s something that we’ll never know, and quite frankly, it’s pretty irrelevant at this point.”
“You’re laying down with the enemy,” he sneered. “That’s hardly irrelevant.”
“And what does killing me accomplish, Decio?” I asked evenly. “How does killing me fix anything for you?”
“It would get rid of the shame,” he answered, sounding a bit unhinged. “It would get rid of the dishonor.”
“The dishonor?” I echoed.
“You’re nothing but a Russian scum’s puttana,” he said, disgust lacing each word, and while he wasn’t the first man to ever call me a whore, he was the first of our trusted family to do so.
“You’re spreading your legs for him, and that’s the most dishonorable thing that a principessa mafiosa can do. You’ve shamed us all.”
I stood up, then beat the side of his head with the butt of my gun before he even knew what hit him, and it wasn’t because he had called me a whore. Truth be told, I loved every bit of what Viktor did to me in the bedroom, so I was perfectly fine with being his whore; looked forward to it even.
No, this was about how fucking stupid he was, and for that alone, Decio didn’t deserve to live. Granted, there’d never been any chance of that happening, but still.
I sat back down as he turned his head to keep the blood that was currently seeping from the gash on his head from getting into his eyes, and that was only the beginning, something that he was very aware of but didn’t seem to care.
“Listen here, you stupid fuck,” I hissed.
“What I did by marrying Korolev was the most honorable thing that I’ve ever done for our family.
Instead of allowing our legacy to go down in a hail of gunfire, I married Viktor to save everyone’s ass, including yours.
I did it to guarantee a future for all the Marchettis that have come and gone, and for all the ones that are still left to come.
I sacrificed everything that I’ve ever known to ensure that the Marchetti name didn’t die a painful and unnecessary death, so you can just go fuck yourself.
” I cocked my head mockingly before adding, “Oh, wait...you already did.”
A look of pure hate contorted his handsome features as he said, “That sounds all nice and well, but I was there. I was there when you said that you were falling in love with him, putting everything that we have at risk.”
“I never said that,” I argued. “I never said that I was falling in love with my husband.”
“You said you could!” he yelled. “Which is just as bad!”
He had me there.
“And killing me was your solution to that?” I countered. “Starting a war was the answer?”
“I’d rather go to war than be related to my enemy,” he snarled. “In fact, while you stand there, you’re no longer even a Marchetti. You’re a Korolev. You’re a Korolev, and your children are going to be Russian mutts. Your blood will be tainted by theirs, and for that alone, you deserve to die.”
Now, only yesterday, I’d been questioning whether Viktor and I would even have kids due to our explosive relationship, but hearing this man insult my non-existent children was enough to make me see red all over again, especially when I didn’t see it that way.
While it was true that any future children of mine would be half-Italian and half-Russian, that didn’t mean anything in comparison to the fact that they’d be half-Marchetti and half-Korolev, making them born leaders without even having to try.
My children would get the best of both worlds, and that would make them stronger than any of the rest of us.
Their sense of loyalty would be doubled, their sense of family would be doubled, and their future opportunities would be doubled.
So, fuck Decio Fontana.
“Russian mutts,” I echoed.
“Bastardi russi,” he repeated.
Another funny thing regarding this conversation about my non-existent children?
To ensure that they got the best of both worlds, I was going to have to show them that their Russian side mattered just as much as their Italian side, and the only way that I could do that was to finally embrace my marriage in the way that Viktor wanted me to.
He wanted me to be his wife and Roman Marchetti’s daughter, and if anyone could do it, I could.
So, knowing that it was finally time to give back a little, I ignored Decio, then stood up, walked over to the broken and rusted hale baler, then pulled my phone from my purse, turning it on, and grinning as text message after text message began lighting up my phone.
Without having to look, I knew that it was Viktor in all his pissed off glory, but I was hoping that this phone call would help make up for me lying to him again.
Ignoring all the messages, I finally dialed my husband, and unsurprisingly, he answered on the first ring, and unsurprisingly again, he sounded infuriated. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Maybe, but do you want to hear me out before you do?” I quipped as I walked back to the chair that was directly across from Decio.
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear anything that you have to say, except for where you’re at and when you’re coming the fuck home.”
“Okay, well...I’m in a rundown barn off Aluvial, and I don’t know when I’ll be home,” I answered cheekily.
“Aurora, I’m fucking warning you-”
“I’m also not alone,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m with who orchestrated my attack, and I thought you’d want to know that he just called our future children Russian mutts.”
Viktor was quiet for a bit before he asked, “Did he now?”
The steel in his voice was enough to admit to myself that I was probably already in love with him.