Keeping his bride

Luca

W

HEN I WAKE up the next morning, I watch the security camera footage of Verona rooting around in the trash like a fucking raccoon. My lip curls in disgust as she rips open trash bag after trash bag until she finds her old clothes.

Hitting a button, the camera zooms in on her face, and I can see the absolute relief flooding her features when she finds what she’s looking for. An old dress? It just looks like a regular garment; nothing special about it. But obviously it holds some kind of significance to her. Maybe it’s vintage Gucci or something.

Benito knocks before entering a code into the newly installed keypad to my office. I pause the footage and look up at him when he enters.

“Enjoy your time dumpster diving last night?” I ask him with a smirk.

“It was her mother’s dress,” he tells me.

My brows furrow as I glance back at the laptop and see

Verona’s elated face frozen on the screen. “I see,” I mutter.

I’m not one for sentimental things, but I do have an old music box of my mother’s that I keep locked away. The song it plays reminds me of her. Perhaps this dress is just like the music box. Something to keep her mother’s memory alive whenever she needs it the most.

I give Benito a dismissive wave. I don’t want to talk about the past or Verona or the fucking dress she dug through the trash for. “Any news about the deal?” I ask.

That’s really what I’m interested in.

“Constantine isn’t budging,” he answers.

That angers me. Constantine Carbone has been a thorn in my side long enough. His mob is a rival in notoriety and size to my own family, and he’s been rising through the ranks just as fast as me. We’ve always competed against one another, even if we have completely different interests at heart.

For me, I value the drug market, arms dealing, laundering money.

For Constantine, he deals mostly in the flesh trade. Human trafficking. And more specifically, the trafficking of minors. His acquisitions are earning him a lot of money, making him more powerful by the minute and also more dangerous.

I’ve been trying to put a stop to his new acquired taste in unlawful activities, but he won’t even accept my offers to give him territories in exchange for him stopping the trafficking of children.

I don’t have a soul…or a heart. In fact, I like to think the darkness swirling inside of me spills out from time to time whenever needed. But there’s something about what he’s doing that gets under my skin, and I can’t let it keep happening.

“Offer him the west territory as well,” I tell Benito.

Benito stares at me for a while. “That’s our biggest territory. We will lose a lot of business and money if we do that.”

I narrow my eyes at my most trusted and only friend in the world. “I don’t give a fuck.”

“Your father would never allow it.”

“Last I heard my old man is stepping down and putting me in charge. He won’t have a say soon enough.”

“Very well,” Benito says before leaving my office.

I push away from the desk, fuming. First, my wife defies me at every turn, and now Benito is beginning to question my motives as well. What the fuck is going on in my world?

My legs carry me across the room to the safe that is housed behind a very expensive painting on the wall. I punch in the long code and open the door. Inside is everything I value in this world. Money and my mother’s music box.

I reach out and grab the small box, turning the delicate switch on the back before setting it down. The familiar, soothing music begins to fill the room, and I can instantly feel myself calming.

Yes, I can understand why Verona wanted that dress so badly. And a very small part of what can only be described as a guilty conscience gnaws at me that I ordered her belongings to be thrown away without asking her permission first.

After the song is finished, I lock up the safe once more with any new, foreign feelings I have developed towards my wife. It’s dangerous to care about someone in my world, and I can’t afford to care about anyone or anything, let alone a Moretti.

Verona

T

HE NEXT MORNING, I wake up early, too early. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was up before the sun. I take my time, stretching and relaxing in bed for a little while before going to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day.

After my shower, I go to the closet and sort through all the new clothes. It’s not that I’m not happy to have such nice, expensive things. It’s just that the things I owned were perfectly fine in my opinion, even if they weren’t good enough in his eyes. And now that he went through all this trouble of buying me new things, I feel like I owe him something. And I hate feeling that way.

After several minutes, I finally decide on a cute, blue summer dress. It fits me perfectly, and the material is so soft that it almost feels like silk against my skin.

I blow dry and straighten my hair and put on a little makeup. I’m just trying to kill time really. But when my stomach growls loudly, I decide it’s time to go downstairs. I don’t think the staff will have breakfast ready, but no matter. I can make something for myself. I’m completely capable of handling things on my own…right?

Trepidation follows me the whole way downstairs and into the kitchen. I wouldn’t consider myself spoiled, by any means. I would be more likely to say that I wasn’t given the opportunities that most people have in life. I wasn’t able to try new things or learn how to do even the most menial tasks.

My great aunt wouldn’t even let me step foot inside her kitchen. I swear she loved her appliances a whole hell of a lot more than me. No, scratch that. She didn’t love me at all. I guess I could say that maybe she loved her appliances more than her cats. Her cats were her babies, and they were the only ones who ever received any kind of affection from the cold-hearted woman.

The kitchen is quiet and empty when I enter. I flick on some lights and stare at the pile of dishes in the sink from last night’s dinner. I guess the housekeepers figured they’d tackle the dishes in the morning.

A smile graces my lips as I decide to give them a hand. I’m sure they’d be happy to have a little bit of workload off their plates for the day. Besides, they have to clean every room of this huge mansion, and I’m sure that’s timeconsuming and tedious enough.

I walk over to the dishwasher and stare at all the buttons. I’ve never used one of these before, but the description of what each button does is plain as day, so I don’t think it will be too hard to figure out. Getting to work, I rinse off the dishes in the sink and carefully load them into the racks.

When I’m finished, I stare down at the door where it indicates that’s where the soap should go.

Looking around, I find a bottle of dish liquid sitting near the sink. Grabbing the bottle, I squirt the liquid into the large detergent dispenser and close the little lid. Then, I add a generous amount to the pre-wash side as well.

Satisfied, I close the front of the dishwasher and press a button to start it. “All done,” I say to the empty room, smiling. It’s not rocket science, and I figured it out on my own.

I’m feeling pretty proud of myself by the time I go to the fridge and grab a yogurt and a cheese snack for a quick breakfast outside on the patio.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

I watch the sunrise as I eat, loving the way the sun slowly heats my skin in the cold air. After I’m done, I scoop up my trash and take it inside.

But as soon as I step foot into the kitchen, I know I messed up. Big time.