Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
THREE MONTHS LATER
ORIETTA
Was it really a secret when I’d known all along?
The sinking feeling buried deep inside me that I’d carried all my life was the evidence of it.
Hidden within the contemptuous look of my father when his gaze fell on me.
The one that said, even with no words between us, that he didn’t want me.
Near him. Near his wife, his children, his house.
Worse than not being seen is not being wanted.
I was nothing to him. Even if Mamma had treated me like any of her other children, I’d known.
Because sometimes even Mamma’s gaze held turmoil.
As if she’d like nothing more than to forget the memory that was linked to my presence.
I was the soil in their clean home. The speck that tarnished the perfect picture of the Di Matteo famiglia.
The black sheep that hid in the darkness and peeped into their picture-perfect lives.
I was made out of lust, born into hate, and brought up with regrets and disdain.
Was it even a wonder then that I hated them all with a vengeance that ate me alive?
My two little sisters, because they were perfect, and they weren’t me.
They belonged. My brother, because he had a path lined for him from his birth.
His end goal to confirm his birthright by becoming the future don and ruling.
I even hated Mamma because she had never wanted to leave her marriage with a worthless dick.
Which is why I didn’t fathom this need to see them when I didn’t even want to be a part of their lives.
Yet ripping the black stone caged in my chest cavity would have been an easier task.
The longest I’d gone without them was a week.
Otherwise, again and again, I found myself hidden within the trees looking into the kitchen that had been my home for twenty-nine years, hoping to see a glimpse of one person at least who tied me to this God-forsaken family.
And we were tied to each other by the venomous snake of a man whore who had called himself our father.
No matter how much I hated my family, it was nothing compared to the poisonous rage I carried for the man who had fucked every single pussy that entered the house and was careless enough to put his seed in one of them.
Carlo Di Matteo was the devil incarnate.
A terror of a man, who commanded a clan but was a shitshow of a father and a hell of a husband.
He was the cause of all our nightmares. The only thing he ever did was ruin us.
He tainted our image of men by what he did to Mamma with his inability to keep his dick tucked in his pants.
Flaunting his affairs in front of his children and his wife.
For being the cause of Daria’s nightmares and Lia’s temper tantrums. I couldn’t have helped them even if I had wanted to.
When I’d tried, I’d failed, so I preferred to forget that I had ever tried.
The only thing I could do was cope. And I did it, ironically, like my father. I fucked.
I seduced Carlo’s trusted men and fucked them.
Just because it would piss him off if he ever caught me.
I yearned to see his eyes shift from disdain to recognition.
And until that day came, I had derived my pleasure from the act itself.
It was the one thing that stirred my heart to beat.
The only thing I could control. The reaction of a man’s dick.
They called women the weaker sex, but they forgot that a woman ruled the best when she was down on her knees.
They all fell for it. Married or not. Young or old.
One by one. Even the untouchable Luigi Santone.
I didn’t know when he’d started working for my father, but I hadn’t noticed him until he’d been appointed as Daria’s bodyguard.
For a heartbeat, my vision inside the kitchen window changed.
Instead of Mamma tirelessly rolling and shaping the tubes to make her Pasta Penne, I was at a different moment in the kitchen, taking me back eleven months.
“I don’t even know him, Papà.” Daria had whined when she’d caught him in a rare good mood and had cornered him while he was getting his espresso.
His good mood had sunk faster than bricks in the Alcantara.
“Know him?” He’d laughed his cruel, demeaning laugh.
“You’re a girl. What’s there to know? He’s your bodyguard, and you’ll do as he says.
” He’d brushed her aside and stormed out.
That was that then. The very next second, he was there.
A mere stranger who had no ties to the family, a constant shadow in the house, guarding the favourite daughter of the don.
I was already salivating before I’d met him.
Speculating about what he could have done to climb up the ranks to get to where he was.
Then I’d seen him. Slick, short-cut onyx hair scraped back tightly, narrow eyes glinting in cold brown, thin eyebrows, and a thinner nose and lips.
His face had a sculpted tightness to it that could only come from a harsh life.
It extended to his tattoo, which he wore on his neck like a scarf, in a pattern of a snakeskin that wrapped around it and dipped down, slinking underneath his tight black t-shirt, which rippled when he breathed or moved.
He was a forbidden apple put before me. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I had wanted to.
I had to find out how deep the tattoo went.
Did it cover his torso, his belly, fuck, his dick?
I wanted him like an addict on withdrawal wanted their drug.
My thighs clenched every time he entered a room.
My insides twisted like a poisonous knife every time he followed Daria.
So I hounded him. Seduced him. Relentlessly.
He hadn’t given in, putting my will to the test. He’d told me he was loyal to the Cosa Nostra.
Shoved my attention aside, unlike any man I’d cared enough to give it to.
It had only fuelled my need. He was the prize.
I wanted him, and I was having him. I’d told him so myself.
If anything, I had been honest. He should fuck his loyalty and fuck me instead.
He’d refused and held out for months. Months. A fucking joke.
At first, I’d thought he wanted my sister.
Daria was always at the centre of men’s attention.
Except I’d catch his gaze lingering on me, following me around.
When he thought I wasn’t looking, he was eating me up like his favourite meal.
When all he had to do was give in. I wanted him so badly that I forgot about all the willing men I had at my disposal.
There was something about him that drove me insane with need.
And one night, I put an end to the chase.
I’d strolled out of the house when darkness had long fallen and sought him outside patrolling the garden.
I was naked. He froze. I’d dropped to my knees and taken his thickening dick in my mouth before he could react.
I wanted him to be like every other man.
As it turned out, he was. He lost control, and I was the fucking queen again.
Strangely, it was both a disappointment and a thrill. I had wanted him to be different.
But just like my father, I used sex to get my high.
Luigi Santone, though, was a different kind of drug.
My kind of drug. The more I had him, the more I wanted him.
He made me forget. Every time we fucked, the rage burning me alive turned into something else.
He made me reckless too. I fucked him everywhere, hoping Carlo would find us.
But he never did. Then Carlo was killed, and my plans to detonate him fell apart.
I was lost. Didn’t know what to do with all the hate I’d kept bottled up.
I’d had one mission my entire life, and when it fell apart, I spun out of control.
Inside the kitchen, Mamma video-called Daria.
A twitch of guilt clouded my vision. Daria had called me two months ago, heartbroken when she’d found out I was the one who’d orchestrated the don’s choice.
He should have married me. That had at least been my brother’s plan when he arranged my marriage to the don from New York.
Vitale had told me, in the very kitchen where Mamma now sat, that we needed alliances.
The imbalance after Carlo’s death was showing the cracks in the Di Matteo famiglia.
Desperation was all I felt at leaving behind my newfound addiction.
Luigi Santone was the only thing holding me afloat, and I didn’t want to lose him.
I couldn’t, just like I couldn’t stop my vindictive moves.
I manipulated my family with a vengeance.
The moment I was alone with the don, I told him he should marry Daria instead.
And predictably, he did. Because that was Daria.
He’d taken one look at her and needed little convincing to shift his interest. Everyone fell for the Princess.