Veiled Vows: An age gap, marriage of convenience, secret pregnancy, mafia romance (Mafia Lords of Sin)

“The wedding’s off.” The words are like ash in my mouth. “But I’m not sure you’ll get the meeting you want.”

My father has his back to me, his attention down on several documents spread out across the meeting table. “Why?”

Telling him that I lied to Jasmine and hurt her to ensure she closed down and protected herself isn’t the best course of action.

I fudge the details. “She’s grieving. You know how women are. She’s not in the right mind space for any kind of clear thought. All I know is that she never wants to see me again.”

“Hm.” My father flips one sheet over and audibly sucks on his teeth. “Crushing her and the remains of her family will be easy. I hear her mother has had some sort of mental break and isn’t all there.” He taps his temple and laughs. “That woman was always distant. I’m surprised it took so long.”

My hands curl into fists. As much as I want to punch that smirk off his face, I can’t. Not yet. I need to give Jasmine some time to strengthen her security with people she trusts so that she’s truly safe. Only then can I act and take this fucker down like he deserves.

“So what’s next?” I ask, walking closer. “Her father is dead. She’s distraught. Her mother has crumpled. There’s nothing but a handful of men whose loyalty can be shifted with the right paycheck. Surely, it’s time to move on to bigger things.”

“You think it’s that easy?” Alto saunters in swinging keys around his fingers, one hand in his pocket. “You think we’ll just leave your little girlfriend to have her cry and then pick herself back up? Do you know how long this took me to implement? Getting that fucking woman to text me back was like pulling teeth until I realized how much she adored male attention. You see, when you announced your little proposal Roman, I was pissed. I won’t lie. If anyone should be marrying into a family it should be me.”

“Then you should have taken initiative,” I reply tightly, clenching my teeth. “Ain’t hard.”noveldrama

“And put Father in the same terrible position you forced him into?” Alto stops on the other side of the table and glances between us. “What kind of son would I be if I made him cozy up to his biggest enemy?”

“We all have to smile at snakes every once in a while,” I mutter.

“And yet Alto’s plan makes it so I never have to smile at snakes ever again.” My father finally leans up from the table and faces me. “Surely you see the beauty in his work?”

“What does it get us exactly?” Years of practice keeping my temper are unraveling. Once again, I’ve scraped by on bloody knuckles to make him proud and earn his attention and trust, and once again, Alto does the bare fucking minimum off a situation I set up, and suddenly he’s the mastermind.

Not that it matters now. I just need to keep this up long enough for Jasmine to be safe.

“Well, poisoning the family from the inside was slow going, as you can imagine. I had to put up with such bullshit,” Alto mutters. “But you see, I have one thing you don’t, which is kind of hilarious.”

“Which is?”

“The Yakuza. You see, after our last meeting where that bitch tried to freeze me out, I got in contact with a few of the other generals on our payroll. Once I painted the gorgeous picture of how easily they could take over the drug market from the Falzones by taking out Jasmine, they were more than happy to do the dirty work for me. Until you got in the way.”

Anger surges through me so forcefully that I can’t trust myself to speak.

“But with Enzo gone and the wedding off, we can be much more active in helping them. They take the fall for Enzo when it goes public that he was murdered, because it always goes public and they will earn a shit ton of street cred. Maybe some extra heat, but the money from the Falzone drug trade will keep them cozy.”

“Don’t you see?” Santino smiles briefly. “While your plan was peaceful, Roman, you should know that alliances never work in this world. All it takes is one wrong word and someone is trying to stab you in the back.”

“And once I force Jasmine to sign the rest of their shit over to me, we’ll hand her over too. The gun running on the East Coast will be ours,” Alto continues. “I’m sure they’ll make a pretty little bitch out of her for a while. And then we will be on top. It’s a win-win for all of us.”

I shouldn’t react. He’s taunting me with a terrible fate for Jasmine, and I can’t rise to it because keeping close to Santino so I can end his life is more important.

But one second, I’m staring at Alto’s creepy smirk, the next, I’m diving over the table and I’m on top of him, repeatedly punching his smarmy face into a bloody pulp. Rage pulses through me like molten iron. I can barely breathe around the anger.

How dare he talk about her like that? How dare he think there’s any world where I would let him send her off to be meat for the Yakzua? I hate him. I’m sick of him. I’m sick of this fucking family.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him⁠—

Then, in between the punches, I see his smirk. Cocky. Proud.

No … what am I doing?

Strong hands grab my flailing arms and several guards haul me off of Alto’s beaten face. I yell and fight, scrambling to get back at him and slam my fists around his scrawny throat, but I’m overpowered and unable to make it more than a few feet before I’m dragged back.

“I didn’t want to believe it.” My father’s cold voice cuts through the heat of my face like a knife. “Alto’s claims that you were in love with the enemy, that your loyalty was with her sounded so ridiculous after everything you have done for me over the years. How could a girl like that turn you in just a few months?”

Straining against the guards, I’m firmly held back as my father walks in front of me and blocks Alto’s bloody, smirking face from view.

“But it is true, isn’t it?”

In an instant, the revenge and future I’ve spent decades clawing toward crumbles right before my eyes. All because my love for Jasmine made it impossible for me to stand listening to Alto say those things.

And he knew it.

He fucking set me up.

My desire to protect her overrules every other feeling in my heart, and the gravity of my mistakes dawns on me as my father’s face turns into a look of cold disdain.

“I never should have trusted the son of a whore,” he spits. “You’re not my blood. You’re a filthy half-breed and I should have put you down the second you turned up on my doorstep.”

It’s my one chance.

My only chance.

Rage surges like the roar of a lion and I throw myself forward with every ounce of furious strength I possess. The surge is so sudden the guards let me slip through their grasp and I tackle my father down onto the table with my fists around his throat.

I have to kill him.

I have to!

For my mother.

For Jasmine.

For everything he’s ever put me through.

I have to or he’ll be free to do God knows what to the woman I love. I tried to warn her. I should have told her the truth.

I’m so fucking stupid.

Kill him!

Santino’s eyes bulge and his face flits through several shades of purple before something crashes hard against the back of my skull making me briefly pass out.

I wake up on the floor with hands and knees pinning me down to the floor to the point that I can barely breathe.

“I’ll kill you!” I yell, clawing at the wooden floor, but I’m unable to get any leverage to escape. The back of my head throbs sharply and wetness clings to the back of my neck as I’m hauled upward. The butt of an assault rifle crashes into my face. Pain explodes through my nose, and then my father’s panting face comes into view.

Gathering what saliva and blood I can in my mouth, I spit it at him as hard as I can, but he seems unfazed.

Almost too calm.

“I’m not going to kill you yet,” he croaks, rubbing his throat.

“What?!” Alto barks from somewhere behind me.

“I’m going to make you watch me destroy that bitch and her family,” Santino says flatly. “And then I’m going to kill you.”